Strange as they may seem, these apparitions have apparently been regular sights on Wouter Pienaar's farm Dronkfontein (Drunk Fountain) over the past 80 years. The farm has belonged to the family since 1876.
Pienaar says that ghosts are regularly seen on Dronkfontein, about 20 km from the town on the road to Goedemoed.
The apparitions are most frequently and most clearly seen on a 3 km stretch of road along which the Voortrekkers travelled to an outspan situated on the farm at the time.
Pienaar and a neighbour, Braam Coetzee, still use this road regularly. He says that the ossewa tracks can still be seen etched in the rock in some places.
The outspan was apparently the first overnight stop the Voortrekkers reached on the Free State side after crossing the Orange River at Zanddrift.
Pienaar says approaching car lights that just disappear into nowhere are a common sight at about eight or nine o'clock in the evening. "The lights are seen near a farm gate on the old Voortrekker route. It is a dirt track in the veld and nowhere near the main road."
Solomon Saul, who lives near the old track, says "my people often see the lights. My ancestors, who have been living on the farm for 80 years, have also seen the lights according to legend".
Pienaar says the thing that is really driving his family, friends and labourers to distraction is the large white wolf-like cat beast that appears near the much feared farm gate.
Pienaar and a former neighbour, Pierre Hauptfleish who previously owned Zanddrift, hunted rabbits in that area about 20 years ago.
"We came across the creature in a stretch of ploughed land. It was easily 1,5m long and about 0.8m tall. We hunted around it in circles and fired numerous shots at it. It was at close range and we could see it very clearly. While we were shooting at it, it just all of a sudden disappeared. We could find no carcass or any trace of it."
Pienaar says his labourers refuse to go anywhere near that land or to use the road or the gate after dark.
Saul's grandmother Lucy and her friend apparently walked through the gate one evening and the "monster" charged them.
Saul clearly remembers one evening when he was ploughing the field in the vicinity of the gate at dusk.
"The voices of a ghost kept shouting at me from both sides of the field, 'Ndize. Ngame ncinci.' (Must I come? Wait a bit). But there was nobody in sight."
Pienaar tells of an evening when a labourer arrived at this house, stark naked and completely out of breath. "He was bathing in the fountain near the gate at dusk. Apparently the white apparition chased him from the water."
Pienaar's wife Anna and his son Wynand (34) have also seen the creature. Wynand was six years old when he had to close the gate late one evening after a visit to the Hauptfleishes.
"The thing chased me. To this day I get cold shivers down my spine every time I have to drive through that gate."
Coetzee says, "He has very often heard about the ghost, but has never personally encountered it".
Wynand says there is a popular theory that the apparitions are the ghosts of the Voortrekkers who want to pay a visit to Dronkfontein. His grandmother, Rika Pienaar, felt differently. She blamed it all on the grave of a "bywoner" near the gate. Apparently he was a quite a restless and difficult character.
Wynand's grandmother, Dony, and Saul have spotted flying saucers in their garden on more than one occasion.
Who says there's no excitement in the Free State?
Die Burger via News 24 / South Africa | By Marietha du Plessis - April 6 2000
South Africa's Vortex of the Weird
Aliwal North - This sleepy town's notorious river monster is facing stiff competition these days from various other alien apparitions. Flying saucers, extra-terrestrials, a ghost that looks like a giant wolf-like cat and vehicle lights that appear and disappear from nowhere are all in the running to oust the river monster from his main attraction status.
[Original headline: Spooks, aliens and monsters at Drunk Fountain ]
