Haunting stories of the 'Spook House'
The scary reputation of the "Spook House" in Milner Road, Rondebosch, looms large among the many ghost stories and urban legends in the history of Cape Town.
Most people who have driven or walked hurriedly past the three-storey, red-brick house - possibly with averted eyes - would have heard the place was haunted.
But the man who has been living in the house since he was a teenager says it is actually "very friendly".
A university student has described her experience of this famous, or notorious, house on an Internet blog. In 2007 she and three friends illegally visited the property and tried to open the front door.
"I turned the handle and the door opened. And then it slammed shut," she wrote.
There are tales about a diaphanous old man who has been seen wandering around the house, lights that flicker on and off mysteriously and doors that slam shut of their own accord.
One of the few Internet-based stories about the Spook House claims it was used "by a strange cult" in the 1970s.
the by imposing black-and-gold iron gates imported from Paris.
The 24-roomed house was bought on an auction in 1984 for R160 000.
The old house was dilapidated with nothing but birds living in the roof.
The interior is constructed mainly of Burmese teak and Oregon pine, from the staircases to the floorboards. According to the owner said that, as with other wooden structures, the house was always expanding and contracting, which could ex-plain the creaking noises.
Hans Fransen's Old Buildings of the Cape says Huize Eendracht, as it was called then, was designed by Dutch- born architect Anthony de Witt and built in 1904 for the Dutch ambassador, Jac Loopuyt.
The house was apparently commissioned to lure the ambassador's wife to the city. At the time, Rondebosch was mostly farmland accessed by gravel roads.
The house was sold several times and for a while was home to South African opera singer Cecilia Wessels, born in 1895.