An indentified Facebook user known as `Kelly Hassino” has organize a trip to the haunted Gooonu Banana with a team of other youth to spend three nights, he is a known Atheist who doubt the believe that Ghost exist which is the main reason he organize this trip. Continue Reading>>>
So I am going to share his experience firsthand on nairaland as he claim his prove that.
About the haunted The rumor behind the building is that the owner was a ritualist who lured a little girl who hawks banana on the street, killed her and buried her corpse on the land this house was built in. Continue Reading>>>
Upon completion of the house, tenants moved in to the house and was haunted by this same little girl’s spirit which always cried “Goonu banana” meaning buy your bananas.
It got worse that all the tenants left the house one by one because of the fear that gripped them every night.
It was later told that the owner died a mysterious death. Which people suspected it was the ghost of the little girl whom later haunted him to death.
Ever since then the house has been deserted.
Tonight a group of youth will be traveling to Anambra State.
The journey start
Am sitting in the right corner at the back of a
fifteen-passenger bus on a ten-hour journey
across the South of Nigeria. It’s a perfect
position to observe everything.
It’s quiet in the bus for the first hour or so.
People are pressing their phones, reading
books they’d dump when the journey is over.
Two women are drinking something from
inside a small bottle in a black nylon bag.
The driver is playing gospel music to ward off every spirit of armed robbers and bad roads and accident. I know this routine well.
Everyone tries to mind their business till the books start to become boring, and the small bottles become empty, and their batteries start running low.
Then the first person speaks. It’s the guy
seating behind the driver. He starts off with a story that should have been a joke. People laugh to encourage him for the effort. They need him to keep talking.
They need a conversation to start to help with their road sickness.
His voice is louder and more confident when he speaks again. And he starts to tease the woman beside him about how he knows that the small bottle they were drinking from is Orijin Bitters. She fires back about how it helps her stay sharp. About how it’s just fruits, herbs and alcohol. Everyone in the bus is laughing, including the woman behind them, also sipping from a small bottle in a black nylon bag.
They go on for hours and hours about who
should marry who in the bus shouting to the
driver every now and then to change the
music to something more hip. I just sit there, barely existing to them.
They are still talking when we see a crowd
gathered around a trailer from over two
hundred meters away. For the first time,
everyone in the bus agrees on something. It’s definitely an accident. Nothing draws a crowd this much on a highway like tragedy. Nothing draws people everywhere like tragedy.
As we get closer, it’s a crowd of at least
seventy people. At the scene, there’s a trailer and a lift-back ash-coloured Mazda car. The trailer is a little squeezed in the front. The Mazda on the other hand is lying on its back, like a flipped cockroach. The front of the car is gone –a huge chunk of chewed up metal has replaced it. I imagine the grinding of the Mazda between the truck and the road like meat between molars. It’s ugly. Worse still, there’s a man still in the Mazda.
Still on the journey
You’d have to give it up to the people who
were helping to rescue the victim. This was an accident almost in the middle of nowhere. It would probably take a death and a decent
burial for an ambulance to arrive in time to
save anyone.
Back to my co-passengers in the bus. As the
driver drove by the scene slowly, absolving
the sight as we did, everyone to the left of
the bus press their faces against the windows, people behind lean on them. Everyone wants to absolve as much of the scene as possible.
With the reality of the hours that lay ahead of us and the fact that we wouldn’t do much on the scene to make a difference, our driver speeds off.
Perhaps it’s the speed or the air-conditioning in the bus, but about five minutes later, my bus is back to normal. The people sipping Orijin are back to sipping.
The voices are loud again and all the melancholy has disappeared. The rest of the journey is normal too. Just people arguing over how their tribe is the best in Nigeria and how everyone else is a dumb bastard.
People begin to get down at their stops, a few arguments with the driver over poor handling of their luggage, more talk about how a woman should always respect her husband, etcetera.
All this, but not one mention again of the man lying in a hospital somewhere after being dragged out of a ruined Mazda –dead or alive, but definitely lying somewhere, with the best case scenario being that he’ll never walk again. I don’t hate or detest those people in that bus. The truth is, that is us, all of us, in our most natural human/animal state, caring very little or not even caring about what does not affect us or our interests, directly or indirectly.
Caring for someone that would never appreciate us, someone that’ll never rub the
ego whose existence we all deny, someone
who would never pay back, or even know us
at all; that is the hardest and noblest type of care to give..
This is probably, the riskiest, most dangerous and silly adventure I’ve taken upon. My partner Chizoba Izuogu and I at the so called goonu house with extreme difficulty and stress. Locating the house wasn’t as easy as we thought.
Nobody around seemed to know it by it’s famous name “goonu banana” but all were familiar with the controversial haunted house. We only got headways in our search for it’s address when we described it by the story, the house said to be haunted by the ghost of a little girl who was sacrificed by it’s owner.
We arrived the gate of the goonu banana house and met a couple of women, traders in their shops just opposite the house.
I took my phone and attempted to take photos of it and do videos of me while there but the women, in one swing all dashed out screaming hysterical what we were doing there and what our mission is. We explained that we are documentary film makers working for a media house and we heard certain stories about the house and would like to take pictures before we approach anyone to make our findings or ask questions.
The women vehemently opposed, we should leave immediately before they call the youths of the community on us. And that we have no business taking a picture of the house. And if we must, then we must come in company of the landlord. So we asked to be directed to the landlord and be given his number and they said they aren’t aware of his location and don’t have his number.
The crowd started thickening as they peered at us fiercely. The only thing we had on our minds is how to leave as we came, in one piece or at least not to be too rough handled if we had to be. There is a police post just a stone throw away and I already prepared to dash their if they decide to take it farther.
I’d rather settle scores with the police than face the mob.
So we apologized as they kept insulting in Igbo and like Lot’s wife in the Bible, we didn’t make the mistake of looking back.
We headed for a nearby restaurant and bought Coke which we strategize our next plans.
We waited and after a while, I came up with an idea, I changed into a different dress to disguise myself and went back to the community, closer to the twin, multiple apartment building known as the goonu house to try to try to find out the real story behind the house.
It’s way scarier than I thought for all the people sharply declined giving us any information saying, they “can’t talk about that house please” shrugging their shoulders as they exclaimed “mbanu” something I believe means “no way” in Igbo.
All efforts proved abortive, but all people surely knew, it’s as though they’ve all taken an oath of secrecy.
Afterwards my extremely brave partner Chizoba successful interviewed a meat seller who simply told us that we are not safe asking out for the house or the man who owns it but he must inform us that the man in question is a very dangerous and evil man and that he drives by sometimes. He said some people know his resident address but he assures us that no one will disclose it. He made us understood that we were better off not meeting the man in person as it wouldn’t have been a funny experience.
We aborted the mission and on coming back, we met a social media user, we were buying a phone accessory when he walked up to us smiling and saying, “so how’s your mission, did you succeed” I panicked, I thought it was the landlord or his agent who must have heard about our coming and decided to set a trap. I asked him who he was and he said, he’s a follower of mine on Facebook.
I asked for his username and he told me and I searched and confirmed he wasn’t a bad guy. Then we talked and I explained our ordeal and he smiled and told us confidently that he wasn’t surprised. He said the issues are deep rooted, we took pictures which I promised not to put out for his security.
I called a few friends within Onitsha and all advised me to evacuate the state as we might be trailed, but one advised me to hold on till Sunday, and we’ll work out a detailed and professional plan involving some authorities and assuring the owner that our intention is of good and our hope is to dispel the rumours and see his house as well as all other alleged haunted houses become inhabited once again and if their structures are compromised, they at least can be demolished and the land reused.
I’m prepared to see this to the finish.
As it stands I’ve put Chizoba on the bus back to Lagos where she came from while I draft out other plans.
I didn’t travel miles, for 12 hours on empty stomach and hurting joints just to go back in vein.
I can’t guarantee anyone of my safety presently. Everyone looks suspicious to me now.
Watch out.Remember today is my birthday and it’s feels already like the first day of the rest of my life.
There is a similar house at Okwuta, Ibeku, Umuahia in Abia state.
A new 2-storey building containing six flats.
Completely empty for the past 6 years. Previous tenants would hear cries of babies at night all around the house, but would see no child. Everyone packed out of the building in fear and to this day, nobody has moved in.
People say the owner buried children alive in the compound before building the house. My sister told me that the owner also had another property at another location with the same problem.
The man is dead and the properties now lie desolate as weeds have overgrown the building entrances.
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