Stories of Cape Town’s most haunted places

Cape Town, South Africa’s oldest city, was founded in 1652, so it’s no wonder it holds a handful of spooky tales and hauntings that have become legendary. So as the weather slowly begins to cool down, here are a couple of chilling tales from around the city.

ALSO READ: Two full days in the City of Oaks

Tokai Manor House

Built in 1796, Tokai Manor House was described at the time as being the most outstanding home built in the Cape Peninsula. Designed by French architect Louis Michel Thibault, the manor looks like something straight out of a vintage horror film, with its large pillars, winding staircases and sweeping lawns.

One of the manor’s first residents, Petrus Michiel Eksteen, a known party-throwing enthusiast, is said to haunt the premises on horseback. A dare gone wrong, to ride his horse up the stairs into the manor’s dining room, sadly took Eksteen and his equestrian pal’s lives. The spectral pair are now said to wander the forest and reattempt their dangerous dare.

• Location: Porter Reform Estate, Cape Town

Rust en Vreugd

Rust en Vreugd was built Built in 1778 for a member of the Dutch East India Company, Williem Cornelis Boers.

It is said to be home to a variety of spooks and spectres, including a ghostly woman who roams the first floor of the home, floating in mid-air from room to room.

Another feminine apparition peers down at visitors from windows and sends chills down their spines. Visitors have even claimed to have had their shoulders tapped and upon turning around to see who touched them, they are met with no one.

• Location: 78 Buitenkant St, Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town
• Contact: 021 464 3280

Castle of Good Hope

The Castle of Good Hope is world-renowned in paranormal communities for its hauntings and general eerie happenings.

The building’s Die Donker Gat (Dark Hole) once served as a torture chamber, and now this windowless room is home to disembodied voices, shadowy figures and footsteps.

The Castle is also said to be home to two resident ghosts. Lady Anne Barnard, who was a notable socialite, lived in the castle in life and death could not tear her away. She is said to still entertain guests and tend to visitors, as was once expected of her.

One of the more terrifying ghosts that roam the Castle is Governor Pieter Gysbert van Noodt. In life, he was tasked with sentencing prisoners to hang and in death, he has adopted the job of terrifying visitors and staff to no end. Allegedly cursed by a prisoner sentenced to hang, the governor roams the castle as a two-metre-tall, shadowy apparition full of fury.

• Location: Castle St, Foreshore, Cape Town
• Times: Monday to Sunday, 9am to 4pm
• Contact: 012 461 4673

Kronendal

Kronendal was built in 1715 and is home to a haunting sadder than it is scary. Owned for a brief time in the 1800s by the Cloete family, one of the family’s daughters, Elsa, has been witnessed as haunting the home.

Elsa fell in love with a British soldier during her life, a forbidden affair that resulted in the soldier taking his own life and Elsa dying of a broken heart.

Elsa’s ghost has been spotted five times since the 1970s and each sighting has had no malice or fright attached to it.

• Location: 140 Main Rd, Hout Bay, Cape Town