After receiving a fascinating paranormal photo taken
inside the well-known Green Point stadium in 2016 of an interesting orb with a tiny
face inside it, my interest was once again drawn to the Green Point area of
Cape Town and its infamous history of a brutal justice with gallows and a place
of torture situated on the prominent sand dune outside the harbour, to been
seen as a warning to incoming ships.
I did a study on the haunted Somerset Hospital,
but only after reading the official heritage impact assessment done by the
University of Cape Town, I realised that much of Green Point, just west of
the city and close to where Somerset Road is today was once the graveyards of
the Dutch Reformed Church, then the official and only recognised Church of the
Dutch East India Company who reserved the burial grounds only for members of
the church or VOC establishment, and its military dead.
Anyone else, including slaves baptised
in the Dutch Reformed Church, had to be buried outside of the official burial
grounds. Hence there are no formal records of who was buried where, individual
burial plots were never allocated, mapped or numbered. Furthermore, the few
regulations that were in place with respect to the burial of human remains were
regularly flouted.
Slaves, non-Dutch Reformed Church
members, free-blacks, executed criminals, suicide victims, unidentified
shipwreck victims, smallpox victims and persons who died in either the Company
or old Somerset Hospitals whose bodies were not claimed were buried on the
outskirts of the town.
Walking in the areas between Alfred
Street and the Green Point Stadium, you will probably be walking over some unnamed
graves of the underclass of 18th century Cape Town.
During the South African War from 1899
- 1902, Green Point common was, due to its proximity to the Victoria and Alfred
Basins, used as a military transit camp for British and Colonial troops who
were housed in temporary bungalows. Of particular interest is that the Green
Point Track was used as a Prisoner of War Camp for Boer captives who were
housed in tents while waiting to be shipped out to St Helena, Ceylon and
Bermuda. There are a number of military artefacts that were found during the
construction of the stadium that can be associated with the camp.
The death rate of approximately 3%, is
proof that the conditions under which the prisoners lived in these camps was
not ideal.
On the list of deceased Boer captives
was a surname Smit, the same surname as the girl who the orb was so interested
in. Could it be family, who knows?
One thing is sure all these people were the ordinary people of Cape Town – soldiers, artisans, labourers, fishermen, sailors, maids, washerwomen and their children. The lack of written records for most of the Cape Town unmarked graves means that, it is not possible to relate everyone to individual families or even extended families; however the broad truth that cannot be denied is that these are the ancestors of today’s Capetonians.
#greenpoint; #ghost; #hauntedhistory; #paranormal; #spoke; #haunted; #supernatural, #hauntedhistory, #paranormalinvestigation
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