The Port Elizabeth Mystery Ghost Bus will run on the superstitious “13th” of October, the number also being the reverse of the digits of the official date of Halloween.
Mystery Ghost Bus marketing manager Gareth Holmes outlined the programme for the night and said the tour explored a new dimension this year, as guests will be shown how to download free ghost-hunting apps to their cellphones, rather than having to spend upwards of R5,000 on buying electromagnetic field meters.
Holmes says tour guests can not only download EMF meters, but also EVP (electronic voice phenomena) recorders.
Tour host Mark Rose-Christie says “and it really works because you can move a magnet towards your phone, and the EMF meter begins to spike”.
The most popular app, says Holmes, is “the remarkable Spirit Box, which scans radio frequencies and prints the words onto one’s cellphone screen, as they are being uttered by unseen entities in the other dimension”.
On the last tour he said the word “ties” appeared on one guest’s screen at the Maritime Club, which wasn’t surprising given that ties that once belonged to Mel Channer – the most famous of the host of ghosts at the club – hang inside the library at the club.
Beginning at the News Café (where you can eat and drink before the tour) at the Boardwalk Casino Complex at 7pm, the bus passes the Old Seaman’s Mission (today the South End Museum), the Opera House and Little Theatre, and Fort Frederick.
The fort once acted as a theatre itself when soldiers stationed there staged the play Hamlet, with one the soldier-actors still making his appearance there on the anniversary date of the production.
“This is known as an Anniversary Replay Ghost, which is only one of the many types of ghosts,” says Rose-Christie.
Then it’s off to the Maritime Club to have a drink before entering the haunted dark room with an unnerving visual effect.
“Certainly on the last PE tour earlier this year, with the pub having by then re-opened at Richly House, guests captured a group of orbs at the well-known haunted tower, where a nun is rumoured hanged herself after having a baby (out of wedlock),” said Holmes.
“Ever since, owners, staff and visitors have heard a baby crying in the tower for its mother, as babies are wont to do.”
One of the popular off-the-bus-stops is at Knockfierna in Park Drive, which now houses St George’s Prep school.
Once a manor house, he said guests had “captured a little girl on camera there”, believed to be the daughter of wool-merchant John Daverin, one of PE’s merchant princes – as many of the wealthy were called back in PE’s Victorian times.
From there the bus goes to the once prestigious old Park Hotel – today a nursing college which was started by Sharley Cribb – with its Blue Lady and Grey Lady ghosts, plus the tale of a gruesome murder.
The notorious Poltergeist house opposite the Provincial Hospital – which has a sad tale of a little boy who died alone before his family could see him – is one of the highlights of the tour, the house having suffered 70 fires before it was razed to the ground by the 71st fire.
Unknown to most Port Elizabethans, it’s the most well documented poltergeist house in the country.
More drinks are to be had, this time at Richly House – the pub reopening recently under yet another name – to really get into the “spirit” before being regaled with the tales of the many ghosts which roam the premises, one of which is particularly malevolent.
The phantoms of Grey High School are followed by the dowsing rods, with audience participation, at the bottom of Target Kloof where guests are able to detect force fields with the L-shaped wire rods, before visiting Walmer’s most famous Spook House.
“We’ve added our original CD track about the mysteries of the universe, back to the tours, which we last used when we first started the tours at the National Arts Festival way back in 2001,” said Rose-Christie.
“We play this on the back roads of Walmer, with the twinkly lights around the Baakens Valley providing an atmosphere imitating the stars in the heavens.”
It is a welcome break too as the next and final stop is the cemetery – at midnight of course – which winds up with a thrilling surprise scare, before the bus returns to the Boardwalk Casino Complex.
Guests are asked to bring pub and grub money, torches, flat walking shoes and a cellphone for the ghost-hunting apps. Feel free to dress up for Halloween.
The five-hour tour is R330 per person.
Further information is available on the website www.MysteryGhostBus.co.za and the Facebook page Mystery Ghost Bus of South Africa.