It Started at Veld School

Despite having different religious views as I grew older, I've always believed in ghosts and the paranormal and quite frankly, as fascinated and intrigued as I am by the subject, I cannot admit to ever liking the idea of seeing or experiencing anything related to it - to be honest, the mere thought scares the heck out of me.

However, it was not until I was about 15 that anything worth telling ever happened... not until one fateful night at veld school, otherwise known as a school field trip...

It was our second night there, we slept on the floor in sleeping bags in little round huts (naturally, the girls were separated from the boys). Six of my girl friends and myself shared one hut, the light switch was a little string hanging right in the middle of the hut, and they had strict rules that the electricity for those lights would only be switched on after dark (probably to save up on electricity during the day).

One night we had eaten dinner in the big hall and decided it was time to go back to our hut, just to relax a little after a rough day, a bunch of my friends and I started heading back, when I noticed that I was pretty far ahead of them, I figured I might as well go on quickly and switch the light on in the mean time.

As I walked into the room to find the switch, I noticed my shadow through the light coming from the door walk in next to me, and proceeded to wave around trying to find the string that would switch on the light. During this process, I noticed another shadow walk in through the door and stand behind me - I figured it was someone waiting for me to switch on the light. I turned around to see who it was, but there was no-one, I got a cold shiver, and quickly looked back at the wall - the shadow of a young man was still standing behind me...
Within the next few moments I found the string, pulled it and ran out there in hysterics. My friends got me to calm down and tell them what happened. I told them what had occured and then asked them if they saw absolutely anyone standing near the door while I was in there - they said they were sure no-one was there. It was a little hard to explain to them, considering the fact that I was the only one who witnessed it, so they asked me to act the scene out for them - I told them I would as long as the light stayed on - they agreed. Through the middle of my demonstration one of my friends thought it would be funny to switch the light off - after they saw how hysterical I became I think they started to realize I wasn't just making it up stories.

They took me to the cafeteria to buy me sweets and cheer me up, and as I was standing chatting to one of them, I noticed something that would bring terror into everyones eyes that night. Where we were standing, the wall was on our right, when I noticed a chilly wind blowing from the wall! I asked my friend to check and as she did, she just stood there - eyes wide at the realization that the wind was blowing through the wall! I asked numerous people to check it for me - each had the same reaction.

The entire night was filled with fearful events and the bunch of us scared out of our wits trying to make sense of it all. That night we were so scared we sneaked one of our guy friends into the hut with us to keep us company... I don't recall anything else happening for the rest of the trip, but it was after the trip when the most shocking discovery was made. One of our friends, Chantelle, had taken photos throughout the entire trip - the most fascinating thing was - every photo taken on the bus toward the trip and every photo taken after the trip on the bus came out - but not one single photo taken at veld school did.

Little did I know that that was only just the beginning for me.

The next strange thing that occured was maybe a few months after that trip, all was forgotten and everyone had moved on. I was sitting in my sister's room on the floor recording a tape for my at-the-time boyfriend. As one of the songs were recording I sat back and stared into the mirror in a daze, as I stared, I noticed my face begin to change... my hair started moving upwards into pigtails and going blonde, my eyes changed from green to bright blue. Soon enough I got up, left the room and simply said to myself "I don't believe in this nonsense!" to calm my nerves. I was sure that I was just day dreaming and my eyes had played tricks on me, so I never bothered to tell anyone about it, until many months later, my sister and I were chatting in her room when the subject came up and she admitted that she knew she had two ghosts in her room - an old man and a little girl. She said that once she moved in all the mirrors (little did we know she did it to get rid of them, as mirrors repel ghosts) she told me that the old man now stood outside her sliding door but she never knew what happened to the girl... I dared to ask... "Did she wear pigtails?", "Yes", she said. "Was she blonde?" I asked. "Yes" she said now looking slightly confused. Finally I asked her "Did she have blue eyes?" my sister told me she wasn't sure... Eventually she asked "How did you know?", I simply answered... "She's in your mirror". The next day, my sister threw that mirror out.

My final worthy story happened years later at my current boyfriend's brother and sister-in-law's flat... We were visiting and just after their kids were put to bed the guys left to go buy food and snacks for the evening. They had a futon and two couches in their living room, where Nicola and I sat chatting about whatever odd subjects came up at the time, one of the kids started whimpering so Nicola left the room to check what was wrong while I waited on the futon. As I sat quietly I felt something flick my ponytail over my shoulder, I quickly shrugged it off thinking it just fell off of my shoulder when I turned my head, until it was flicked right over to the other shoulder... I quickly moved to the couch and hoped Nicola would come back soon, when she did I told her what had happened - she said that her husband had noticed a little boy living in the flat with them, and that noisy toys would make sounds in the middle of the night, when they went to try and switch it off, they would eventually find it right at the bottom of the toy box and then take out it's batteries.

Eventually our conversation moved on and we both forgot about the ponytail incident. We both sat on the couch with our feet on the futon, when suddenly we felt a jolt from under the futon, like somebody was kicking it from underneath - we both checked each other's feet to see if it was one of us, and just as we realized it wasn't, it happened again. We quickly lifted our legs onto the couch and sat that way until the guys returned and my boyfriend and I finally left a few hours later. When I spoke to Nicola the next day, she told me that her husband and herself had fallen asleep on the futon that night, and that she woke up to something tickling her feet, she annoyedly got up thinking it was her husband, but instead noticed his feet tucked safely behind him... we suspect that little boy was having a little fun at our expense.

Thanks for reading my few worthy stories - I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoy reading the stories on this site. Feel free to contact me for more information or stories.