It’s not every town that has a statue of a ghost looming up from the roadside, but Uniondale in the Klein Karoo is famous for its resident ghost and ghost story.
As the story goes, on the evening of the 12th April 1968, before the Easter weekend, student nurse Maria (Ria) Roux and her fiancé, army corporal Michiel (Giel) Pretorius were travelling from Pretoria in their Volksie Beetle to share their wedding plans with Ria’s parents in Riversdale.
Near the town, a strong gust of wind is said to have buffeted the Beetle and Giel lost control of the car. It overturned and Ria, who was sleeping on the back seat, was flung out of the car into a ditch and died on impact. Giel survived.
Eight years later, in 1976, stories of a ghost hitching a ride on the road between Uniondale and Willowmore began to circulate. When Anton Le Grange saw a young woman hitching on the side of the road, he stopped and offered her a lift. A few minutes later, when he turned to ask her where she wanted to go, she was gone. Shaken, Le Grange went straight to the police station to report the incident. He finally convinced them to drive out to the area where he had picked her up. On the drive, the sceptical policeman noticed the car door opening and closing of its own accord. When they returned to the police station Le Grange was able to identify the mysterious hitchhiker as Maria from an old photograph.
In 1978 army corporal Van Jaarsveld was riding his motorbike when he spotted a young woman with long dark hair and wearing dark clothing hitching a ride on the side of the road. He stopped and she climbed on the bike, putting on his spare helmet and wrapping her arms around his waist. As they drove along, he felt a small jolt behind him and when he looked, he saw that his passenger had disappeared. Concerned that she had fallen off, he turned the bike around, but there was no sign of her. That is when he noticed the helmet neatly fastened to his luggage rack.
More stories surfaced over the years of the young woman hitching a ride near the turnoff to the R341. Others also experienced the vehicle doors opening and closing, an icy chill in the air and their passenger disappearing after a few kilometres. People wondered if Maria’s ghost had remained in this world, hitchhiking, searching for her beloved fiancé.
The statue was created by Ian Visser from the accounts of people who had seen Maria. He sculpted her hair and dress blowing in the wind and an apple in her hand to convey the smell of apples that was associated with her before she disappeared into thin air. The story also inspired the song by Anton Goosen (aka Liedjieboer) and the movie ‘Die Spook van Uniondale’.
The last reported sighting of the ghost was in 1984. The sightings seemed to have stopped after Giel’s death, also in a car accident. Uniondale residents believe and hope that Maria’s soul may finally have come to rest.
(Reference: Information from African Aloe Café, Uniondale)
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