31 October marks Halloween, All Hallows' Evening or All Saints' Eve, originally a three-day observance dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed. The roots of Halloween may be traced back to the Pagan Gaelic harvest festival of Samhain which had been transformed by the church to commemorate the deceased.
Whatever its origins, the festival has morphed into a fanfare of ghosts, witches, goblins, zombies and other macabre underworld creatures roaming the streets begging for sweets. During the Middle Ages, churches that were too poor to display the relics of martyred saints at All Hallows’ Evening invited parishioners dress up as saints instead and from there came the custom to dress up in costume. Globally the dead are celebrated on this night, and haunted places attract the brave and the curious like moths to a candle.
Paranormalist Mark Rose-Christie takes an In-Depth look at the phenomena of paranormal manifestations and especially their activities in South Africa. Join us for the night and share Mark’s encounters with residual ghosts, crises ghosts, single apparitions and everyone’s favorite, the poltergeist. He also discusses some of South Africa’s most famous haunted historic homes, like the Erasmus Castle, St Aidan’s Jesuit College and a Feather Baron’s Palace in Oudtshoorn.
Mark Rose-Christie is academically a sociologist, a professional TV/film-maker, theatrical producer/director, entertainer and illusionist, as well as being South Africa's leading paranormalist, his work appearing in several ghost books.
As a sociologist he lectured at the University of Port Elizabeth (today NMMU), and continued studying at Rhodes University, whilst also producing the shark movie “White Death” (a parody of the movie “Jaws”), plus magazine programs for the launch of the SATV-2 Xhosa-Zulu channel back in its day in South Africa, under the mentorship of the late Bill Faure.
Mark prematurely launched the Mystery Ghost Bus of South Africa, a 'Theatre-On-Wheels' production which remains unparalleled to date in that it offers more than any other known ghost production in the world. It has become the longest running ‘production-on-wheels’ in the country, winning the esteemed International Luxury Travel Guide Awards three years in a row. |
Join us for a spooky and thrilling In-Depth Interview, and get a sneak-peek at Mark’s paranormal investigations in the Ancient Origins article, “Former Home of South African Statesman Rumored To Be Haunted”!