A ghost tour is a novel way to experience an old favourite: the historic gold mining village of Pilgrim’s Rest on Mpumalanga’s Panorama Route.
‘Whaaat’s that?’ shrieked the last person leaving the room as the door of a teak wardrobe creaked open by itself in a bedroom at Alanglade House, the grand double-storey home built in 1915 for the mine manager which is now a museum.
Nervous titters as someone pushed it tightly shut. In the children’s room, our guide chuckled as she pointed to a doll’s pram. ‘It’s moved again. It’s supposed to be in the other room,’ said Sherry Goodwin of Brummer Tours, explaining that one of the Barry daughters had died of meningitis in the house at the age of 10 but that visitors occasionally still encountered her ghostly presence.
‘There is a lot of energy in this house,’ she told us at the beginning of the tour as the sun set. ‘Nothing is guaranteed, but people often get sudden hot or cold feelings, or see orbs of light in photos, or smell cooking, despite the fact that no one has lived here for years.’ Sherry explained that orbs are disembodied balls of energy sometimes seen at night, rather than full bodied ghosts.
The house is furnished as it was in the Barry family’s time and was remarkable for being the first to have a flush toilet in the mining village of Pilgrim’s Rest. Gladys Barry, the mine manager’s wife, did not find the small corrugated iron houses in the village acceptable and the mansion was built for her, complete with butler’ pantry beside the spacious dining room where guests were treated to banquets as stylish as any in London.
Mrs Barry’s presence was strongest on the veranda overlooking her rose garden. Beside her hat and secateurs a single fresh rose had mysteriously appeared and I felt the hairs on my neck prickle. The family was repeatedly hit by tragedy, with all three sons dying in their 20s. Mrs Barry died broken hearted and only one of the daughters made it to old age.
We left Alanglade in the dark, glad it was Sherry and not one of us whose job it was to switch off the lights. Next stop was the cemetery, where a row of hurricane lanterns waited for us to take them for a walk among the headstones.
‘Many of the young fortune seekers arrived here during the 1870s gold rush almost penniless, having spent most of their cash getting to Pilgrim’s Rest,’ Sherry said as she poured us tots of sherry for Dutch courage. ‘If they didn’t find gold soon, they starved or died of fever. Some got so desperate they committed suicide.’
One poor lad botched his attempt at slitting his throat and, as his friends carrying him to the makeshift hospital up the hill stopped to rest outside the cemetery, he told them to leave him there. When they refused, he stuck his hand into his wound and ripped out his own jugular – right at the spot where we stood knocking back our sherries. After that, we didn’t need too much encouragement to move off and followed Sherry into the dark, trying not to tread on any graves.
Sherry ‘introduced’ us to more dead diggers, telling us stories about how the little cemetery above the village became their final resting place: Teddie Blacklow, who was kind to so many that they chipped in to erect a tombstone in his memory; the boozer who spent his last shillings on a cask of rum and rigged it up in his tent so he could lie under the tap and let it trickle down his throat; and the unnamed tent robber who was shot and buried with his head to the north, nameless for eternity.
Beyond the circle of light cast by the hurricane lanterns we heard a strange rustling. ‘Whaaat’s that??’ This time the shriek was a collective one. Was it a ghost? An orb of light? We saw nothing in the darkness. Was it just a cow grazing on the hillside, or an angry robber’s ghost seeking to clear his name? On these kind of tours, you never can tell.
Pilgrim’s Rest Ghost Tours information
To get the latest rates, contact Brummer Tours at the Pilgrim’s Rest Information Centre. Tel 082-522-1958, www.krugerlowveld.com.
Pilgrim’s Rest top tips
Up Town Pilgrim’s Rest can get chock-a-block with tour buses. I escaped to Down Town where my favourite places were lunch and a pint with Johnny Reinders at The Vine restaurant (tel 013 768 1080), the amazing cappuccino at Pilgrim’s Pantry (013 768 1129) accompanied by Elna Gundry’s stories of a tough woman digger, and shopping at Ponieskrantz Arts & Crafts (tel 082 885 1780) for gifts handmade by talented local residents.
