Playful Ghosts

The Island of Zanzibar was not unlike many islands in the Indian Ocean. What made it unique, however, was its history and its mythology.

Houses in the Stone Town were built very close to each other. One described the closeness by declaring that if you took a bath in your house, all that you had to do was stretch your hand and take your neighbour’s towel. This oddity in town planning could be attributed to no town planning when the town itself was evolving several decades earlier. Another reason is that the very closeness of the buildings provided the people with some form of security in case of an outside invasion and so there seemed some justification in building them the way they were.

What was very evident is that most Muslim homes had a small plot of land attached to the house where the dead members of the family were buried. Some of those graves were over a hundred years old.  After some effort was made to control growth of the town in more recent times, community burial grounds were then acquired by Christians and Muslims alike.  These burial grounds were located some distance away from the town.  However, all the old graves within the town limits were to be respected and were said to provide Zanzibar with a distinct character. As young children, most of us knew where these graves were, and as soon as it got dark, we would run for our lives past these graves and get home completely out of breath.

One myth finding currency in Zanzibar was that the sea would claim at least one individual every year.  The sinister story is told that when the walls at the sea front were being built way back in Zanzibar’s early development, Africans were put to death and their blood was strewn all over the foundation. The belief was that this human offering would strengthen the walls which would keep the sea out from making any incursions.  But the offshoot of this was that the dead slaves would seek compensation, by taking at least one Zanzibari’s life no matter how innocent he may be. Muslim women were rarely seen swimming since they had to be in purdah most of the time. Zanzibar was predominantly Muslim.

The point to be made here is that if one believes strongly enough that something is going to happen, invariably it will happen. As a result, the sea never disappointed the people of Zanzibar, and parents were very protective of their children (no matter how old they were) from venturing into the sea.

At the age of eighteen, I was employed by Cable & Wireless Ltd. as a radio operator trainee. The building itself was a very solid stone structure two storeys high. The telegraph office was located on the ground floor and so was the training school. When I joined Cable and Wireless my training and that of three other candidates as radio operators, was to be of eighteen months duration.   During this time, all our training was held during regular office hours though as trainees, we started a little earlier than most offices did.

We were out by 1600 hours. Finally, we received our Certificates and were then seconded to the Staff of Cable & Wireless as full-fledged radio men.  We were assigned a six-hour operating duty each day and since ours was a twenty-four hour operation, we were assigned duties round the clock.  We referred to these as morning, afternoon, evening and night duties.(each of these was a six hour stretch.)

Night duties have often been referred to as graveyard shifts.  Nothing described our night duties more accurately.  It was usually at this time that strange things were known to happen in this office of dots and dashes.

I guess that I can talk about this with some authority since I had an experience with the occult that I will never forget.  I was slated for a night duty which started around midnight to seven in the morning.  As a rule, I took in a movie the evening of the night shift at The Sultana Cinema, The Empire Cinema or the Majestic Cinema, primarily because the movies got over about eleven-thirty and within half an hour I would be at my desk.  This particular night, I parked my Lambretta scooter in the assigned area and then decided to head for the washroom which was located a few yards away from the instrument room. (This was a

more technical name of the place where telegraph operations took place.) The way to the washroom was brightly lit.  As I walked towards the washroom, I suddenly felt as though I could not move.  I froze in one place.  I tried to yell for help but my lips would not move.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up; the hair on my hands stood up, and I broke out into a sweat.  My next recollection is that I felt something like a foreign body move into me from the right to the left side of my body.  After a few seconds, my entire body relaxed and I could feel my faculties come to life all over again.  Instead of going to the washroom, I ran back to the instrument room and held fast to a chair.  One of my colleagues commented after a hearty greeting: Hey George you look as though you have seen a ghost.!

He did not realize how right he was. I may not have seen one, but I certainly felt one.  I was in top shape physically.  I was not coming down with anything.  And the very experience was not like anything I had ever had in my eighteen years.  As a young man, I could not share my experiences with my friends because of the insensitive backlash I would have got from them.  It was a story that could easily be held out to ridicule.  I therefore kept silent and allowed it to be one of my skeletons in my closet.  One thing I was sure about, the Cable and Wireless washroom was out of bounds for me even during the bright mornings and afternoons...the nights were completely out.

While I continued to work for Cable and Wireless, I was hoping that perhaps another radio operator would announce that something weird had happened to him.  I did not have to wait long. Hamoud Kindy, an Arab Muslim became the next target.  The instrument room was manned by three operators during the night shift.  Since two operators could handle the traffic of messages coming through, one operator was given the opportunity of turning in for a couple of hours.  Needless to say this was not a policy of the Company but was an agreed arrangement by the staffers themselves.  Hamoud was asked to take the first two hours.  He excused himself and made for the billiard table which was to be the bed, just next to the training school. After half an hour, Hamoud came dashing into the instrument room looking very angry.  He accused us of hitting him on the head while he was sleeping.  We told him that perhaps he had a bad dream and that both of us who were keeping track of messages were far too busy to breathe.

It was a particularly busy night for press messages.  We suggested that Hamoud try it again.  With some reluctance he went back.  After the allotted two hours, there was no sign of Hamoud.  In an effort to be a little more accommodating, we decided to allow him another half hour.  When we went to get him, there was no sign of Hamoud.

There was no sign of him anywhere.  He had disappeared.  My colleague and I struggled through the rest of our duty and hoped that Hamoud had not taken ill.  At seven in the morning we called Hamoud at home.  A very sleepy voice said Hello.  Hamoud, measuring every one of his words said to us that he would never come back to work at the offices present location.  He was putting in for a transfer.  Naturally our demand for an explanation came but reluctantly.  He told us that as he was trying to sleep on his back on the billiard table, a face suddenly materialized over his head.  When he saw this apparition, he jumped up and ran for his life. 

I thought that perhaps here was a good excuse to relate my own experiences to the rest of the staff, but I still thought that it might be a little premature.  I had waited this long I could wait for just a bit longer.

Shortly thereafter, a young Irish assistant engineer, Peter Kelleher had arrived  from Port Curno in the U.K.  Unlike the other assistant engineers from the U.K. he was very friendly with the local Staff as most of them were when they had only just arrived.  Given a couple of months the A/E’s as they were known were soon acculturated into cold and indifferent individuals who were obviously trained that there was a  potential for trouble if they befriended the locals.  Before this happened, however, Peter asked me whether I had experienced anything unusual on the Cable and Wireless Grounds.  I told him that I hadn’t and encouraged him to explain to me what he meant.  It did not take him long to open up to me.  He said that in the middle of the night he would hear knocks on his door to his apartment on the 2nd floor.  When he got up to check, there would be nobody there.  He would get into bed and once again the knocks even louder than the first ones would come through.  He would open the door and find nobody there.  There wasn’t a sound of anybody making a wild dash for it, and besides, he would get to the door in a flash, open the door, and there was nobody there.  But this was not all.  He would keep a glass of water on his night table.  In the morning, the glass would be found in the lower drawer. There had to be something that was causing this, but neither of us even attempted to use the word Ghost.

From my investigation, I discovered that the Cable & Wireless building was built on an ancient cemetery.  Obviously, the dots and dashes of Cable and Wireless were not providing them with the eternal rest that they were claiming.

Today, His Highness the Agakhan has turned Cable and Wireless into a state of the art five star hotel.  From all accounts he has done a fine job of it too.  My fear is that the tourists visiting and staying at this hotel are not going to be the only clients there!!!