Page 84 - KBHA Bulletin 10

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would be flung open, and whoever entered would grab the blankets and pull them off
the sleeper.

Two or three of Abraham’s grandchildren heard of this and determined that if they were

in the bed they together would be man enough to stop the blankets being pulled off.

Upon a given night the boys were in bed and awaited the nightly visitor. Sure enough
the heavy footsteps began, and they lay counting the steps. After the last step the door

was flung open and the weights they had placed against it scattered. They were
frightened but ready. The tug of war began. They hung on until their fingernails bent

over, but there was no slackening of the tension in the blanket. They could hold no
longer. The blanket was off. Calm returned as they counted the steps down of the

mysterious visitor.

I am not able to fix a date to this happening. I would say that it was likely to have

happened after Abraham’s death in 1902. During his lifetime that loft was “home” for a

long time to Jewish pedlars who would overnight there on their way to the farms further
on. As nothing of this sort was reported by them I feel justified that the “spook”

appeared later.

The Outspan at Fish Hoek, was the place where transport teams rested overnight to and
from Simon’s Town. My grand-father related a similar mystical happening there. There

a transport rider was in-spanning his oxen early one morning. By the time he had the

front oxen yoked, the rear oxen were unyoked. He would dutifully start again at the rear
oxen only to find that, when he though the team was ready to take to the road, the oxen

were loose again. Apparently only at day break was he able to get going.

Whether it was the work of a competitor who played this prank so as to get ahead with
his load, we do not know. Apparently the transporters got wise to these pranks and it is

said that they would take the ox whip and last around the scene until the culprit was hit,

and identified. It is likely that the “happenings” at the Outspan and at Auret’s Cottage
were in the same era.