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B J Laubscher – Where Mystery dwells

Mrs. B. who is a kindergarten teacher and who studied psychology for her profession at university wrote in Afrikaans about her little son Hennie.

"When he was a little more than a year old, and could only say a few words such as Hadda for Daddy and Mamma doo doo he took seriously ill with a severe attack of bronchitis.

My husband was working on the mines and he had to leave for an early shift, having sat up the whole night at the bedside of our little son.

After he had left for work I started on my duties in the house, keeping a constant watch on my baby who was asleep. All I could see were his little nostrils dilating as he breathed with difficulty. It was exactly seven o'clock in the morning, and I was in the room watching him anxiously, when the child jumped up out of his sleep, sat straight up and shouted, Mamma, Mamma-Hadda-Mamma, Hadda, Hadda, and then fell back exhausted.

I thought that he was confused or delirious from the fever, and so attached no other importance to this sudden and strange behaviour of such a sick small child. But half-an-hour later I received a message that my husband had been involved in a serious accident underground and had been removed to the mine hospital.

The accident had happened at seven o'clock and it was seven o'clock exactly when my little boy screamed in such a startled manner as if he had witnessed something terrible.

When Hennie was four years old he was playing in the garden one day and enjoying himself, very absorbed in some game. I was busy indoors with my household duties when at exactly eleven o'clock he came running and called out in a distressed voice,

"Mamma a motor car has just run over my 'Oupa' (grandfather). Where will I get another 'Oupa?'

At first I did not concern myself about it but he would not go back to play. He kept on hanging around me telling me that his 'Oupa' had been involved in an accident and that I must find out what had happened.

"I then 'phoned my father-in-law in Standerton, but they were all quite well. After that I 'phoned my own parents living in the Cape Province in the Karoo. Imagine my astonishment when my mother informed me that my stepfather had been knocked down by a motor car at eleven o’clock that morning, but luckily was not very seriously injured”.