You meet your tour guide for the Johannesburg Mystery Ghost Bus Tour at a pub at the Victorian-era Sunnyside Park Hotel, and since that’s a naturally social setting, you’ll get a chance to get to know your fellow tour-goers and drink away a little bit of the fear of a ghost tour in advance.
Like replay ghosts, interactive ghosts, poltergeists — their names vary depending on how they died, how they go about doing their haunting, how dangerous they are and so on. Your tour guide will describe in detail each type of ghost.
You’re given a pair of steel rods that can supposedly detect paranormal activity, and whether or not you’re telling the truth. The rods will move and contort in response to certain “energies” on the tour, including when you tell a lie.
Your rods are also meant to pick up on electronic voice phenomena, so if a ghost is talking nearby, your rod might react in strange ways.
One of the early stops on the tour is to Mikes Kitchen — a restaurant that used to be a home. Legend has it the mistress of the house had a very sick infant who she’d nurse at night, walking up and down the stairs, and those who believe say you can still hear her footsteps today. It’s said one of her house chefs was murdered in the house, and his ghost sometimes wreaks havoc on the current kitchen staff.
You’ll visit Old Tranvaal Children’s Hospital, where the ghost of deranged nurse Daisy de Melker is said to still walk the halls. de Melker poisoned two of her husbands for the insurance money, as well as her own son for reasons unknown.
You’ll also visit the Supreme Court where de Melker was convicted and sentenced to death, as well as the Constitution Hill women’s jail where de Melker was imprisoned before being hung.
You’ll visit Jeppe Boys High School, which is said to have experienced a lot of ghost activity over the years. The creaky lockers, flickering florescent lights and long hallways make for a naturally eerie setting.
The tour destinations change regularly, but there is often a stop at the home of Josephine Dale Lace — a socialite, gold miner and owner of Northwards, a Parktown mansion that is one of the most historic landmarks in Johnnesburg. Financial downfall forced Lace to leave her home for a much smaller one, but her ghost returned to the mansion. Her ghost is said to occasionally move a larger-than-life portrait of Lace that hangs in one of the rooms.
Source: Joburg.co.za
The tour ends at Braamfontein cemetery, where you’ll be brought to the graves of all the ghosts you visited earlier that evening. It’s a rather spooky way for things to come full circle: first visiting their active spirits, then their very dead corpses.
