'via Blog this'
I know this phenomenon very intimately. I was a serious sleep-walker as a child; my younger brother was a sleepwalker too. My worst incidents of sleep-walking were firstly at age 11 when I walked out of a hospital bed in Ermelo (Mpumalanga Province, where I was hospitalized for a haemorrhoids operation). I only came to when I stood at the main entrance of the hospital. And the next most memorable incident was when on some third floor of a building where I slept in Johannesburg, I came to standing on the balcony. My first girl friend when I was aged 22 complained bitterly one shared early morning how I nearly broke her arm in my sleep. Hilarious, huh?? But that is mad me!
There is another element of madness in my family: the experience as a child where you sometimes, if for no reason, suddenly see everything miniaturized. In that regard, I have personally on occasions seen humans in a room sized like the heads of matchsticks.
My younger sister, the late Grace Phiri-Mangonde reported the same experience too ('Brother! Father would sometimes suddenly turn the size of an ant while chatting with me while I was still a child'), although the only sleepwalker I know shared the experience with me is my younger brother Robert, now 50.
The real reason why I write this post is this: Far too many elderly people are murdered in South Africa accused of witchcraft because this elderly lady or gentleman is suddenly found in the middle of the night (if in the middle of a neighbours yard or premises) stark-naked and us ignorant South Africans will accuse him or her of comitting wizardry against the said neighbour when in fact the poor old person is deep in sleep-walking.
I read somewhere that what you did along sleepwalking as a child will probably return to you when you get aged.
Please stop accusing neighbours of witchraft, my fellow-South Africans particularly from the northern provinces of the country inclusive of Vendaland. WITCHCRAFT DOES NOT EXIST!
Of course, the other persisting superstition for South Africa is the belief in ghosts. Not even comedians succeed in disabusing just too many South Africans black and white in this occult but asinine belief in ghosts and the coming back of dead people to meddle in the affairs of the living!