Haunted by History: The Day I Heard the Screams

🕯️ A Personal Haunting & How It Shaped My Writing

Photo Source: WikiCommons

We all have that one moment—the first time fear truly took hold, wrapping cold fingers around our spine. For some, it’s a horror movie watched through trembling hands. For others, it’s an urban legend whispered just a little too convincingly.

For me, it wasn’t a book, a film, or even a ghost story. It was something I felt.

The Screams I Heard That Day

I was on a school trip to the Castle of Good Hope, one of South Africa’s most notoriously haunted locations. It was meant to be just another history lesson, a routine tour through the past. But when we stepped into a dark, airless cell where prisoners had once suffered, everything shifted.

A heavy, suffocating dread settled over me—thick, inescapable, like centuries of sorrow pressing into my chest. And then, I heard it.

Screaming.

Not distant murmurs. Not the echoes of our guide’s voice. Raw, tortured, agonized screams. Louder. Closer. It built into an unbearable crescendo until I couldn’t take it any more. I clamped my hands over my ears and yelled, “Stop! Please, make it stop!”

And then… silence.

I looked up, breathless, my heart hammering—only to find my classmates and the tour guide staring at me.

No one else had heard a thing.

That was the day I learned something unsettling about myself: places heavy with history affect me in ways I can’t explain. I don’t just walk through them—I feel them. The weight of what came before lingers, like a shadow just at the edge of my mind.

How This Experience Shaped My Writing

That moment didn’t just spark my love for horror—it deepened my obsession with the eerie and unexplained. It taught me that fear isn’t just about jump scares or creatures in the dark. Sometimes, it’s about the way history clings to a place, the emotions imprinted in its walls, the echoes of what once was.

That’s the kind of horror I love to explore in my writing.

In Madness in Bloom, grief and trauma twist a once-beautiful garden into something sinister. In The Hand Mixer, buried family secrets refuse to stay hidden, creeping into the present like ghosts with unfinished business. Both stories grapple with the weight of the past, the things we can’t escape, and the horror of questioning what’s real.

What Was the First Story That Ever Scared You?

Was it a ghost story? A horror film? A childhood legend that still lingers in your mind? Or, like me, was it something you felt?

I’d love to hear your stories—let’s talk fear in the comments. 👁️💀

Image Source: By Bernard Gagnon - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73105624