The Lighter Side! The Ghostly Story

There was no sudden gust of wind nor eerie moaning that first night when the ghost stepped onto my boat (Uncle Andrew said). No evil cackling, no faint halo around the spectral head, nor any of the other ghoulish stereotypes normally associated with visitors from the other side.

The ghost just climbed aboard and sat down on the fish hatch in the corner.

I knew it was a ghost not because of any obvious supernatural feature – there was none. Other than the fact that it looked exactly like me.

Now when there’s a ghost on your boat the last thing you do is stand up or make any sudden movements. This we know from Terry Coetzee who once tried to chase a ghost off his anchor rope in the early morning mist near Moddergat and woke up the next morning on top of a windmill outside Swellendam. They are still looking for his boat.

Nor do you try to argue with your ghost or tell it to bugger off back to where it came from and just leave you alone, because that’s what got Siener van Rensburg into trouble late one night on the balcony of the Cape Infant Lighthouse. That ghost didn’t leave him alone for two years. 

The thing to do when there’s a ghost on your boat is to act completely normal and carry on doing whatever you were doing. Even if your ghost is worked up and flying about the place, just smile and light up a smoke. Show no fear.

And so when my ghost sat down on the fish hatch, I just nodded hello, then casually baited my hook and cast out into the tide eddying next to Groves Jetty. 

Now when I told the guys at the Oysterbeds Bar about all of this they could barely stop laughing. “Only you would nod hello to a ghost!” Stompie Anderson roared with delight. “Whoever heard of such a thing!”

“You should not even look at a ghost,” concurred Siener, his gaze trailing out the window into the night. “Definitely don’t look it in the eye –  if it has eyes,” Siener added with a conclusive puff of his cigarette, by which we knew he would not go into further detail on this matter.

“And what if the ghost doesn’t have a head?” said our barman Nigel Kritzinger, by which we knew we were about to hear a whole lot of detail about something that never happened. And indeed we did. 

It was shortly after Nigel Kritzinger’s story, far too shortly after it for my liking, that Stompie Anderson fixed me with a knowing look, by which I knew he suspected my ghost story was of the Nigel Kritzinger variety. “So what did yours look like, your ghost?” Stompie arched an eyebrow my way.

And so right then I knew I had to tell the whole awful truth about that ghost on my boat, which was not something I had planned to do.  And the truth was that there had been no missing legs nor eyes, no missing body parts whatsoever so far as I could see; my ghost looked exactly like me.

The ghost looked exactly like me because it was me.

Well I had everybody’s attention after that, and there was no more unsolicited advice about what to do if a ghost tugged on your the rope, or got caught up in your outboard engine, or nipped into the cabin to steal a beer out of the cooler box – or any other such nonsense. Everybody just wanted to hear about my ghost. And so I told them, just like I’m telling you.

Now the first thing you must know about a ghost that is in fact you is that it is impossible not to look it in the eyes, especially if it is sitting just a few metres away. It feels no different to looking in the mirror, and so inevitably our eyes met and we gave each other a good stare. My ghost was wearing an old pair of shoes – an old pair of my shoes – my favourite pair of jeans, and a woollen beanie I lost overboard years ago in a storm.   It’s face was my face, except wiser somehow, and more at peace. It struck me as a little unfair that it didn’t have the crater on the left side of its nose like the one inflicted on me the week before by the skin doctor from Heidelberg.

For a while nothing happened, my ghost didn’t say a word and neither did I, just sat there staring at each other across the existential divide. Then without warning up it stood up, grabbed the spare fishing rod lying under the gunwale, and cast out towards Groves Jetty, right into the sweet spot where the outlet pipes from the Agri co-op attract spotted grunter in their thousands.

And so there we sat fishing, me and my ghost, a chilly finger of mist nudging my boat against the early morning tide.  

Before long the ghost hooked something big, though it didn’t seem too cheerful about it; in fact it looked most upset as it reeled in and hoisted its prey onto the deck.

It was a fish like no other. Spots like a grunter, yes, but they were bright green. Instead of scales it seemed to have pussy sores. It’s face was so ugly I still don’t really like to think about it, and as it flopped onto its side it seemed to look at me and sigh as it exhaled its last breath.

To make it worse the ghost gave the creature a little kick, sliding it over my way for me to get a better look. Instinctively I kicked it back, my ghost did not like this one bit; he scooped it up and flicked it overboard, then shot me a spooky look that would have made a younger me call it a day.

But you don’t get to be my age in the Breede River Valley without seeing a lot of weird shit out on the water, and I wasn’t about to let some half-formed version of me get the better of the real thing. So I baited up and cast out into the current again.

I could see my ghost was getting worked up, as any ghost would, I suppose, if it was being ignored. It stood up now, folded its arms, then sat down again, took a step towards me, then bent down and opened my contents of my fish hatch into the river.

No warning. Two large spotted grunters over the gunwale and back into the drink.

You will surely appreciate, notwithstanding all the advice about how to treat visitors from the other side, just how difficult it was not to jump up and pulverise whatever part of that ghost I could lay my hands on. Instead I grabbed my gaffe and hoisted those grunter back onto the deck. Then I sat back down, picked up my rod, and carried on fishing as before. 

My ghost would have none of it. In a flash he had those spotted grunter back in the water, scooping them up so fast I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d tried. I gaffed them back. And so it went on for a few minutes until finally my ghost picked up the biggest of the fish and threw it so far it landed 50 metres away in the shallows next to the co-op outlet pipes, sending up a plume of green water.

Of bubbly green luminous water.

It was only then that I realised what my ghost was trying to say.

Of course by then it was too late for the three fishermen who had eaten contaminated spotted grunter caught at Groves Jetty, where officials later confirmed a cyanide leak from the agri co-op.   Why my ghost decided to spare me that fate is still a mystery to me, and I’m ashamed to say I never told anybody about the encounter until much later, out of respect to the dead. It hardly seems fair that my ghost should have saved me, me who is already a ghost, rather than the others who still had years left on the river of life.

My ghost gave the strangest look just before he walked off across the water.

I think he saw in me the man he was, and I saw the ghost I wanted to be.

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