Lambert's Bay Hotel Investigation - Western Cape; West Coast, South Africa

We met up with someone that has worked at the Lambert’s Bay Hotel for years.  She confirmed that the hotel is super haunted.  You can feel the change in energy as you pass the restaurant area toward the toilets, at the back of the hotel.  The energy is almost static.  There have been many patrons commenting on that area.  This could be due to the phantom man standing, close where the toilets are today.  They start smelling the smoke and then they see his old school hat, the red coal of the cigarette and the smoke.

The reported sighting thought the years also included a tall woman with long red hair and a little girl.  They frequent the area between rooms 20 – 28.  I have spoken to staff before and they told me that one evening, out of season, the hotel wasn’t that full, they heard the most terrifying, loud scream.  It made everyone run up to the rooms.  It sounded like it could have been from room 20, but the room was empty as well as the other rooms next to it.  Maybe the scream belonged to the tall woman with the red hair, that the night guards also reported seeing.  The cleaners won’t work after 10 at night anymore, but they still get freaked out in the morning, when they find little hand prints on the mirrors, in rooms that was cleaned and locked the night before.

   

There has also been a phantom shower.  The staff was sitting in the staff room at the ground floor at the back of the hotel, when they heard someone opening water that sounded like a shower.  They continued hearing this person showering, but there is no shower in that part of the hotel anymore.   It could be that in the past this could have been the bathroom of the original hotel building of 1888.

 

I have tried to find the history of the red hair woman, little girl and the smoking man, but it is still vague. 

We do know that the Marine hotel was built by Mr. Joseph Carl Stephan in 1888, when he saw a need for the hotel during the Anglo Boer War, when all the British soldiers and traders started to use the Lambert’s Bay harbor, close the hotel.    The hotel’s name later changed to Lambert’s Bay Hotel, as it is known today.   With such a long history, it is no wander there is so much paranormal activity there.

With the current investigation I did find strange orbs that could not be explained and what looks like a face of a phantom man, but it looks like most of the bizarre things do happen after 10 at night. I think I shall have to go back and stay a night.  I am sure I will not be disappointed.

Photo Credit: Lambert's Bay Hotel    

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Die spoke van die Gansbaai woonstelblok. – Overberg Coast, Western Cape, South Africa

 As daar een plek is wat nogsteeds vir my nagmerries gee is dit die woonstel in Gansbaai, die een oorkant die ou Sea View Hotel. My ouers het daar ‘n plekkie gekry om te huur toe ons nog klein was, die woonstel op die onderste vloer, met sy ingang oorkant die hotel. Volgens my Pa was dit ‘n geluk, want in daardie tyd was daar nie vakansie huise beskikbaar in hierdie vissersdorp nie.

Geluk, is seker ‘n snaakse woord vir die wete dat die rede vir die oop woonstel die moord van ‘n man was. Nee, geluk het my Pa gesê, oor die feit dat die vissermanne so bygelowig was en nie in die woonstel wou bly nie. Ja, die vissermanne sou nie daar bly nie. Ook nie daar binnegaan nie. Ons moes self die bloed van die mure en plaffon, by die voordeur afwas.

Die moordenaar, was ‘n jong man wat daardie aand vanaf die hotel oorgenooi was na die woonstel. Iets het hom so kwaad gemaak dat jy nie eens die oom se kat gespaar het nie. Ons moes hom onder die bad, in die buite badkamer gaan uithaal om te begrawe.

Snaaks genoeg, volgens die stories was dit nie die eerste of enigste dood in die blok nie. So het ons mettertyd uitgevind.

In die einste woonstel het daar jare terug ook ‘n moord plaas gevind, een van die vissermanne het vroeg teruggekom en sy vrou met ‘n ander man gevind. In die voorste kamer, by die voordeur. Die presiese besonderhede wat daarna gebeur het, het al so met tyd bietjie ontduidelik geraak, maar iemand is dood.

Niemand het ooit die ou oom gesien spook nie, alhoewel dit altyd aardig was om na die buite badkamer te gaan. Daar was wel ‘n insedent, die een vakansie, met die woonstel vol mense. My ouers het die hoofslaapkamer afgestaan aan my Oupa en Ouma en het in die voorste spaarkamer gaan slaap.

Laat die nag, of sal ons sê vroeg oggend, daardie tyd wanneer alles rustig is, skop iemand die voordeur oop. Skop is die regte woord, want dit was so hard dat die deur oor die geswelde houtvloer gedruk het en die gangmuur getref het met ‘n slag wat almal kiertsregop in hul beddens laat sit het.

Die hele huis was wakker en met die kamer langs die voordeur, was my Pa dadelik op die toneel, maar daar was niemand. Die stoep was leeg, self die strate was leeg. Net die oop deur, wat my Pa met die hulp van my Oupa weer oor die swelde vloer moes kry om toe te maak.

My Oupa en Ouma het permanent in hierdie woonstel begin woon, terwyl hulle vir hul ‘n aftree huis gebou het op Gansbaai. Ons het nogsteeds vankansies daarheen gegaan en vriende van my ouers het die woonstel net bo ons begin huur.

Een vakansie, net na ons by die woonstel aankom gekom het, noem my Oupa vir my Pa dat hul vriende van die woonstel nr6, bo hulle, verskriklik hard werk. My Pa vrae toe baie verbaas hoekom my Oupa dit sou sê, want soos jy verstaan het sou die Rutters nie af Gansbaai toe kom nie.

Duidelik het hulle van plan verander, het my Oupa volgehou, want hy kon duidelik hoor hoe iemand met hak skoene, die hele oggend, op en af loop in die woonstel bo hulle. Natuurlik het dit in ‘n struiery verander en toe besluit hulle dat hulle self sal gaan kyk of die Rutters daar is.

Toe my Pa en Oupa by die woonstel aankom. Is die deur op slot en grendel. Niemand was daar nie. Of sal ons sê die Rutters was nie daar nie, want tot en my my Oupa se dood het hy volgehou dat hy duidelik die vrou kon hoor skoonmaak.

Die Rutter het na ‘n tyd uitgetrek en ons het die geleentheid geneem om na die boonste woonstel nr6 te skuif. Om na die boonste woonstel te gaan moet jy deur ‘n ingangsdeur aan die sykant van die woonstel gaan. Daar is ‘n lang gang, wat die buitekant koppel aan ‘n binnehof, op die grondvloer en dan is daar nog ‘n stel trappe wat jou na die boonste vloer neem, dit is waar hierdie woonstel nr 6 was. Die ingangsgang het ook sy eie stel trappe gehad na ‘n aparte woonstel. My Pa het geweet dat ons kinder bang was vir die gang. Ek sou deur hardloop om die lig aan te skakel, dan terug hardloop, sodat my sussie kan deurloop. Met die kennis beluit hy om vir ons ‘n poets te bak.

Hy kruip toe weg onder die trap, in die gang en wag dat ons moet deurloop sodat hy kan uitspring sodrae ons verby hom stap. Die ironie was dat teen die tyd wat jy moes uitspring, om ons skrik te maak, was hy net so bang! Jare later het hy erken dat hy die gegiggel van ‘n kind gehoor het. Asof daar iemand, wat jy nie kon sien nie, saammet hom in die opening weggekruip het.

Ek het uitgevrae oor die kind. Dit is‘n seuntjie. Hy het by die trap afgeval en is dood aan sy beserings. Die mense wat in die huis langsaan die woonstel woon, beleef tot vandag toe nog sy streke. Hy speel in en om die woonstelblok. Hulle sal kom kry asbakke rondskuif en ander ondeunde goedjies doen. Geen wonder hy het dit so geniet toe my Pa die poets gebak het nie.

Ek was ongeveer 10 jaar oud toe ons na nr6 geskuif het. Die kamer was skuins oorkant die kombuis en het een ruit na die binnehof, van die boonste vloer van die woonstel gehad. Die snaakste ding was dat ek nag na nag sal wakkerskrik en dan regop in my bed sit. Ek was seker iemand kyk vir my.

Die gevoel was so werklik dat ek sou opstaan en na die ruit gaan om seker te maak dat niemand daar was nie en om die gordyn nog stuiwer toe te maak. Ek sou sit en staar na die kamerdeur, maar sou niks sien nie. Ek kon nie verstaan hoekom ek so sou voel nie. Ons as kinders wou ook glad nie in die nag alleen na die badkamer gaan nie. Sou liewer knuip.

Toe ek ouer raak het ek my ouers begin uitvrae oor die woonstel en hul vertel van die snaakse vrees wat ek as kind gehad het. Hulle het toe aan my erken dat hulle ook dit ervaar het. My ouers sou in die bed lê en dan hoor hulle hoe iemand in die kombuis die messelaai oopmaak en toe maak. Hulle het selfs die geluid van ‘n struikplank, wat iemand gewig op sit wanneer jy stuik, gehoor. My Pa sou opstaan om te gaan kyk, maar daar was niemand. Dan sodrae hy terug in die kamer is hoor hy en my Ma voetstappe wat af in die gang agterna kom. Beide sal dan sit en wag om te sien wat in die kamerdeur gaan verskyn, maar niks het nie. Paar minuter later begin die skoonmaak, maar weer.

My Pa het toe begin uitvrae in die dorp. Die storie van nr6 in die woonstel is dat daar ‘n vrou haarself doodgeskok het in die badkamer. Sy was besig om die laaste wasgoed te doen en huis skoon te maak net voor haar man van die see sou afkom. Sy het reeds mooi aangetrek en moes net die laaste wasgoed gaan uithaal en ophang. Wat sy nie geweet het nie is dat die wasmasjien ‘n krag lek gehad het en dat die draad in ‘n poel water beland het. Die einste poel water waarin sy toe perongeluk trap en haarself toe dood skok.

Die snaakste ding is dat dit toe sin maak wat my Oupa al daardie jare terug gehoor het. Die vrou wat op en af stap en skoon maak.

Ek het onlangs besluit ek wil my vrees vir hierdie woonstel oorkom en as ‘n volwassene na die woonstel toe gaan. Die woonstel was onder konstuksie. Die mense het nie baie lank in nr 2 en nr. 6 gebly nie. Hulle het self die eenhede probeer verander in kantore, maar dit verander ook gereeld van eienaar.

Die woonstel eenhede was gesluit, maar ek kon toegang kry na die blok. Die styl trap by die ingangsgang was toe gebou en die holte het ‘n deur gekry.

Ek kon na die boonste vloer gaan, waar ek deur die ruit op die stoep gaan kyk het. Ek het besluit om foto te neem.

So waar, daar staan die tannie nogsteeds, as of sy my erken. Nou ja, dink nie sommer ek is reg om binne die woonstel te gaan nie. 

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Can you see the face?

There was complaints of a tall ghostly figure lurking. After going through some pictures taken randomly in the house, we found this.

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Claremont Graveyard Apparition - Cape Town

On Halloween’s eve 2014, we walk into Claremont graveyard just as the clock struck 12!

It was eerily quiet and as we walked deeper into the cemetery on a grassy road, I felt like I was intruding.  I turned to my partner and asked: “I wander if any spirits are following us”.

Orbs in Claremont Cemetery

I turn without warning and started snapping pictures.   What a surprise I had, when I had a look at my camera screen.

The whole screen was full of orbs.  But not just normal orbs, they were of all colors and sizes.  Some of the orbs even had cores with different colors.

When going through the picture again, on a later stage, a friend noticed a shape looking like a man with a beard and a red coat standing by the tree.

You can even see his eyes, beard and red coat. Apparition in Claremont Cemetery

One of the famous people to be buried in Claremont cemetery was Sir. John Moltno, the first Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.

Molteno was unusually tall and powerfully built.  He acquired the nickname the "Lion of Beaufort" and the "Beaufort Boer", which his British opponents referred to him in private. The nicknames were both reportedly due to his deep booming voice, his height, and the large beard he grew in later life.

John Molteno - Lion of Beaufort

Soon afterwards the death of his first wife Maria, Molteno left his vast Nelspoort Estate and joined a Boer Commando that was heading for the frontier mountains to fight in the 1846 Amatola War.  In the early 1860s when Molteno moved back to Cape Town, he remarried and bought Claremont house, an estate of orchards and and vineyards, which later become the busy Claremont suburb we know today.

Could the apparition be of Sir John Molteno standing in his red uniform, still keeping a watchful eye over Claremont or maybe just some lost soldier keeping guard?

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You know you are a Ghost Hunter when...

How Devil's Peak Really Got it's name

According to most Cape Town residents, Devil’s Peak got its name from the popular legend of the Dutch pirate Van Hunks and his smoking duel with the Devil. That’s partly true – but what you probably don’t know is that the legend is a recent invention. You see, the Ballad of Jan Van Hunks was only published in 1909, but the residents of Cape Town have been accusing the Devil’s Peak of escorting the Cape Southeaster for a lot longer.

Devils Peak was actually first called Windberg by the early Dutch settlers. But it was also known as Duiwepiek, Duiwekop or Duiwenberg and early maps like the one below refer to it by both these names.

The name Windberg is self-explanatory to anyone who has ever experienced Cape Town’s Southeaster, and the dove reference may be as prosaic – the mountain was home to thousands of doves according to Lawrence Green’s book on the Cape Peninsula, I Heard the Old Men Say. ”You have only to stroll over the slopes to see the bush doves,” he wrote.

It could be the case that Duiwel was simply a malapropism for Duiwe, or a mistranslation by the English when they took over the Cape in 1795, but it’s an unlikely explanation.

After all, Jan van Riebeeck’s son Abraham referred to the peak as Devil’s Hill as early as 1676 when he visited Cape Town. Peter Kolbe, who worked at the Cape between 1705 and 1713 as South Africa’s first official astronomer also describes it as De Windberg or Duivels Berg and in 1769 Rear-Admiral John Splinter Stavorinus referred to Devils Mountain on his visit to the Cape.

What is certainly true is that it was the British journalist Ian Colvin, who first connected the popular story of Van Hunks and the Devil to Cape Town. In a chapter of his very popular book South Africa: Romance of Empire, he claimed the legend of Van Hunks was based on an old slave tale heard while “gossiping with one of the old Hajis or Moulvis who know so much that we do not understand”, but it’s more likely that he appropriated the story from a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, published a few months earlier in the English Review.

In Colvin’s version, Van Hunks was a Dutch pirate who had retired to Cape Town and escaped his wife’s sharp tongue by spending his days smoking his pipe at his favourite spot on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain.

One day Van Hunks was startled to see a tall stranger sitting exactly where he normally sat. The mysterious stranger asked the retired pirate if he could spare him a little tobacco and Van Hunks started to boast about the fact that he was the only man who was able to smoke as large a quantity of it as he did. The stranger replied that he could easily smoke as much, if not more, than the old pirate. Angrily, an indignant Van Hunks challenged the man to a smoking contest.

It was not too long before huge plumes of smoke enveloped them and started creeping up the mountain. All day long the contest continued – some folks say that it actually went on for days. Eventually the whole mountain was covered as clouds of smoke poured over the mountain.

Van Hunks became tired, hot and frustrated but he noticed that his strange competitor was not looking too happy himself. Suddenly, unable to continue, the stranger leaned forward and his black hat was dislodged and Van Hunks discovered that his challenger was the devil himself. The devil was furious at having been beaten by a mortal and in a bright flash of lightning Van Hunks and the lean stranger vanished into the smoke leaving behind a scorched patch of ground.

In Colvin’s legend, the cloud of tobacco smoke they left behind became Cape Town’s famous tablecloth – and every year, Van Hunks is forced to repeat his duel.

It’s certainly a great tale, and its well worth reading Colvin’s telling of How Table Mountain Got its Cloud, but the original story of Van Hunks had nothing to do with the Cape and certainly wasn’t a legend that went very far back in time.

Only a few months before Colvin’s book was published, the pre-Raphaelite poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ballad of Jan van Hunks was published in the English Review, and although Colvin claimed that his story was written several months before Rossetti’s, literary critics are unanimous that How Table Mountain Got its Cloud is “a skillfully contrived literary product owing more to Kipling and Rossetti than to the folk imagination of the Cape Malays.”

In fact, although Rossetti’s tale of Van Hunks was only published in 1909, he started writing it in 1846 after enjoying the story of Henkerwyssel’s Challenge by John Rutter Chorley in Tales of Chivalry as a teenager.

Henkerwyssels Challenge was actually first published in 1829, and in the original tale, Van Hunks was in fact Hans Henkerwyssel, a retired pirate who lived in Dordt, Netherlands. Unlike in Colvin’s version, Henkerwyssel lost his duel with the Devil, and had his dead body found by the local vicar.

Rossetti’s Ballad of Jan van Hunks doesn’t mention Cape Town or a mountain either. His version is also set in the Netherlands where the streets are paved with ice and the sky is frosty.

In it Van Hunks and the Devil do indeed have a smoke-off but at the end of two days of smoking, Van Hunks is found dead by the local pastor and his mutilated body is used as a pipe by the Devil.

The poem ends somewhat grotesquely:

They have sliced the very crown from his head,

Worse tonsure than a monk’s—

Lopped arms and legs, stuck a red-hot tube

In his wretchedest of trunks;

And when the Devil wants his pipe

They bring him Jan Van Hunks.

There is a chance that the story came directly to Cape Town from the Netherlands. Dordt, whereHenkerwyssel’s Challenge is set, was one of the five Dutch cities represented in the Dutch East India Company that first settled the Cape, but it’s more likely that it landed in Cape Town via Rossetti.

What is certainly clear is that the Cape Town legend of Jan van Hunks had nothing to do with the actual naming of Devils Peak, but became accepted as the reason because of the popularity of Colvin’s book on South Africa.

So how did Devils Peak get its name?

The answer may lie in the very earliest references to the Cape. What we know today as the Cape of Good Hope, was only so named when Barthomelew Diaz returned to Portugal after his failure to find a route to the east in 1487.

Forty years before Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape in 1497, the Venetian cartographer Fra Mauro created a map of the world for King Alfonso V of Portugal, based on knowledge drawn from the Arabians. On this map, which became the definitive view of the world for the early Portuguese explorers, he named the southernmost tip of Africa, Capo di Diab – the Devil’s Cape.

It’s very likely the association with the Devil simply migrated from the Cape to the mountain that flanks it. After all, sailors are a superstitious lot and Devils Peak remains the path through which the Cape Southeaster howls, churning up the waves in the Cape of Storms.

Viewed from the sea, Table Mountain may indeed have represented the Last Supper to religious seafarers, biblically book-ended on the one side by Lion’s Head (representing Lion of Judah) and the Twelve Apostles – and the Devil’s Mountain on the other.

(Credit to: Devil's Peak Brewing Company)

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