Ex-magician and illusionist, Mark Rose-Christie, who performed magic for none other than President George Bush Sr., ventured onto the London Ghost Tour n 1988 with his cousin, Paul Williamson. He immediately thought that his own country (SA) needed something just as good.
He launched the Mystery Ghost Bus Tours to South African audiences in 2001 at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. These were an immediate sell-out, prompting Rose-Christie to begin opening tours in major cities around South Africa. Rose-Christie will now add Durban to the list, with the first tour opening to the public on November 6.
Rose-Christie has had an interest in the paranormal since a very young age, having lived in two haunted houses. He carefully researches each case that he comes across or is presented, ranging from haunted schools to hospitals, houses to old hotels, and back again.
"However, there are several different types of ghosts" Rose-Christie said "which most people are not aware of. For instance, it is really only the Interactive ghost that will interact with people, whereas Replay ghosts are like videos which merely replay themselves in the great cinema of time, and will therefore not interact with you at all. In fact they are not aware of time or place, and they follow their same old pathways repetitively. Therefore, if you bricked up a door to make it a wall, the Replay ghost will simply continue to walk along its same old path, and to the viewer it looks like the ghost walks through a wall. Replay ghosts do not therefore walk through walls deliberately; it is because there was once a door there. Poltergeists are one of the only ghosts that are not ghosts at all, and are generated by the minds of human beings, usually adolescents undergoing puberty, when their mental energies spill off onto the environment in this time of insecurity. There are also Single apparitions, Crisis ghosts, Revenge ghosts, Doppelgangers and Vardogers, which are also explained on the tours".
Some of the haunted venues on the Durban tour include a sailor ghost who did not emerge alive from Rosey Dry's brothel at Point Road; the various ghosts (including a spectre of an old nurse from days long gone) at Addington Hospital; the extremely nasty Revenge ghost of Winder Road; the outcast little boy ghost at the art deco-styled old Victoria Mansions; the apparition at the Playhouse Theatre (seen by famous actor Joseph Clarke); the tantalising Doppelganger at the Supreme Court, and notorious poison murderess Daisy de Melcker's story at the Berea Nursing Home where she began her career as a nurse. There are also several playful phantasms at the old Durban City Police and City Engineers Department; the eerie White Lady of 'The Spookhouse' of Musgrave Road in all her Victorian splendour; several school ghosts at Durban Boys High; the old Haunted Houses of Florida Road and Campbell Road; the mischievous poltergeist at the Warrior’s Gate Moth Museum; with the with an eerie and climactic ending at the Old Fort.
"As a degreed sociologist, I am somewhat of a hard-nosed scientist, and it took me a long time to accept that ghosts might exist,” emphasises Rose-Christie. “The most convincing explanations I've heard for their existence are those of the Replay Ghosts and Poltergeists, as both have sufficiently scientific explanations to my mind. This led me to adding a great deal of science to the tours, and we tell our audiences why ghosts could exist, using such explanations as Quantum Physics and how unseen energies and force fields work. In fact, we even introduce some audience participation on the tours, during which the public are handed dowsing rods to detect the force fields around water, using their own body's energy, which most people know very little about. Like the audiences themselves, I have found this a very convincing way to investigate unseen energies and force fields. More than this, when we explain the Law of Conservation, even non-believers have to accept that energy is never created, never destroyed, but only transferred - so something must happen to our energies when we die, no matter what we do or don't believe. And that is hard science telling us that".
On Rose-Christie’s version of the London Bus tours, audiences get off at various stops and enter places like dark rooms, even haunted pub & grub stops. There are also recorded stories with eerie sound effects, amidst all the live stories told by the tour guides. The audience participation factor appeals to everyone from historian to scientist, to those who simply want to be entertained to those with a deep interest in the paranormal ie: 'Para-Psychology'.
"The tours are not frivolous, they are informative, historical, scientific and entertaining - and so they are not like a 'ghost train' type ride at a carnival, nor a 'theme-park' haunted house ride - but there are two clever scares along the way", Rose-Christie stated. "Of course, we can not guarantee that a ghost will be seen on every tour," Rose-Christie pointed out, "however, if our patrons do not see one, we make sure they see something else, but I do not want to say what that is, as it is a surprise. Digital cameras are the best in picking up ghosts, and the public are told on their tickets to bring a camera. There are several photographs of ghosts recorded by audiences on our tours, which we have posted on our website. We make sure that we publish only the most credible ones, after consulting experts overseas".
The tours run from 19h00 to midnight. Tickets R295 pp, with the starting/meeting venue printed on the tickets. Bookings for Opening Night on November 6 at Computicket 083 915 8000 or any Checkers / Shoprite. There will only be one other public tour this year, which is likely to be in early December. However, companies and private groups wishing to book year-end functions and parties on the bus, can contact Mark Rose-Christie on 079 193 7536, email: tour@mysteryghostbus.co.za or visit www.mysteryghostbus.co.za