My own Uniondale ghost ‘Dave is watching over us’

 Most of you know her as the Uniondale Ghost. Roux died on 12 April, 1968 when her fiancé lost control of the car in which they were travelling between Uniondale and Willowmore in the Klein Karoo.

Her spirit reputedly haunts that stretch of road, hitching lifts from passing motorists and then dematerialising from their vehicles. I’m not saying what I’m going to tell you is a ghost story.

I’m only going to relate my personal experiences on and around a specific farm at De Hoop between Uniondale and Avontuur … the other side of town from where Ms Roux is said to roam.

I met Dave Hodgson in Oudtshoorn when we were teenagers. We joined up later in northern Namibia and started a friendship that grew steadily over nearly 40 years.

Dave was a soldier when I met him but a farmer at heart, an imposing man in a land of such men, and he became a leading light in the Kammanassie farming community. His authority was offset by an impish sense of humour and one of my favourite memories is of him dashing around Mountain Pastures farm on a quadbike with his pet crow perched on his shoulder, wings stretched wide to catch the wind in his feathers.

We’d often sit – Dave, wife Johanna and me – with many glasses of red wine on weekends when I visited; either around a fire or, later when he developed back and hip problems, with me at the foot of their bed … usually with one or more of their three cats on my lap.

Dave died of a heart attack in January 2015: one second he was there, the next he wasn’t. I delivered a eulogy at his memorial service and, for almost the entire time the family was gathered, a hawk circled above.

I pointed this out to his sister who commented that “Dave is watching over us”. I returned a year later, even though the house was empty, to pay my respects. The plan was to spend the night, so I’d packed a sleeping bag and camping mattress.

I arrived and went through to the deserted main bedroom. All that remained, on the floor on what used to be Dave’s side of the bed, was the white Telkom telephone. It rang the instant I walked in.

I picked it up and it was dead. Some people say the Scottish are fey and I took it as a sign of Dave welcoming me to his home. Late that night, while I was feeding wood into the fireplace in the lounge, I felt something brush my leg. It was one of the cats. Soon the others joined. They had not been into the house since Johanna moved out half a year before. They slept on my sleeping bag … just as they used to sleep on my bed when I I returned a year later, even though the house was empty, to pay my respects.

I’ve been back several times, and every time I’ve had some sort of experience, most times involving the presence of a raptor.

I popped in three weeks ago after calling his sister who told me a family had moved in to the house, ostensibly on behalf of people who were making an offer to buy the farm. The offer to purchase lapsed and the occupants claimed squatters’ rights.

When I approached the (I presume) husband and told him who I was and that I wanted to honour my friend’s memory by pouring a libation of rum (a ritual in our former military unit) out on his ground while pouring another down my throat, he refused to allow me in the house.

I told him I did not need to go through the house but would enter the garden through the side gate.

He said he’d ask his wife. I lost it completely.

I was in the garden a minute later and the two of them had fled. As I left, a pale chanting goshawk was sitting on the Telkom pole at the gate.

Image : Jim Freeman