My Freaky Life

My first encounter with the supernatural was when I was four years old (that I can remember). My grandfather just died. Because me and my cousin were the babies in the family, my grandfather adored us. The night just after he passed away, I was sleeping in my bed. I remember that when I woke, someone was touching my head softly. The moon was shining through the open window and I could clearly see my grandfather sitting on my bed. I began to cry because I knew he was supposed to be dead and I did not want him touching my hair. My mother heard me crying and came to look what was going on. Entering the room, she also saw my grandfather sitting by me on the bed. When she said 'Dad!' and switch on the light, he was gone. We could still smell him - the tobacco he always smoked in his pipe.

The following day my mother called my cousin's mother. Before she could even tell what Happened, my aunt told my mother: "You would not believe what happened Last night, Neil (my cousin) had a visit from Dad!...

A bit later, I was about seven, I began to see a black cat that will be there for a few seconds, and the next he will vanish into thin air. This normally happened when someone that I knew was about to die. At first it was a bit creepy to see this black cat walking past me (I always saw him either from the side, or from behind) and then he will walk into something like a closed cupboard, and then be gone. Later I got used to it. My mother once saw this cat herself. She was making food in the kitchen, and saw the cat sitting underneath the table for one moment, and then he was gone. So this cat was REAL, not my imagination.

When I started to work at Louis Leipoldt Hospital in Bellville, Cape Town, things really got weird. I am not a scared person, so it did not freak me out that much, like it would others, but it was still freaky.

The day I started at the pathologists in this hospital, I was sitting at my new desk, busy on the computer. We were six people in a very large office. Someone touched me on my right shoulder (quite hard) and when I turned around in my chair, there was no one standing behind me. I could feel a presence, but could not see it. I told the ladies in the office what happened, but they laughed and said that it could be Charmaine, the cleaning lady, who was killed the week before by her husband, that wanted to welcome me at my new job! Just after me, a new girl started to work there, and we became best friends. Things would get very weird when we were alone in the office.

There was a large plant in a huge pot in a corner. We would hear soft whispers from that corner, like two people speaking to each other, but very very soft. Sometimes even the branches of this plant would bend down, like someone is pulling the branches. This happened lot of times, but only to me and Hester, not the other ladies working with us... This one lady, Karen, did not believe in such things, but one day we heard her screaming, and she said that someone was pulling at her dress while she was busy working, she was white in her face she got such a scare.

One day I was busy entering clinical data into my computer. The lady that answers the switchboard was sitting at the 'window' (little opening where people came to pay their accounts) and she was busy speaking to a friend on the switchboard. At the window, I could see a patient standing at the counter, and I assumed it was a patient that wanted to make a payment. Well, the payment/switchboard lady just kept on talking and laughing with her friend on the phone. I could see this old man still waiting at the window, his very white hand on the counter, and I thought the girl on the phone was so rude, just ignoring this old little man! I stood up, and went to the window, but there was no one! When the girl finished her conversation on the phone, I asked her why she did not help the poor old man. She said there NEVER was someone at the window...!

For some reason, I never went into the tearoom, it just freaked me out, and I never felt comfortable there like something is watching me. One day I was speaking with the technologist in the lab, and he told me that the part where the pathologists now are once was the theatre in the old hospital (we worked in the old hospital building, the new one is just next to the old one) and many many people died inside there, sometimes very tragic deaths. The corpses were kept in the part which was now the tearoom. Well, say no more about all this strange happenings I encountered there?

There is still lots to tell, but I will do this again later, first have to go now. Bye.

Anneke