A Corpse Screams at Hikers

It was scary enough for the two men hitching a lift in a hearse with a corpse in the coffin.

But when the corpse started screaming it suddenly became too much.

The men smashed the back window of the hearse and fled into the night, leaving all their belongings behind.

Now the "corpse" wants to find the men so he can give them their things back.

Mzolisi Skolpati laughs when he tells how the men ran for their lives from the screaming corpse.

Skolpati says he was hitching a lift to Mthatha on Sunday night when the hearse stopped to pick him up.

It was a freezing night, and he asked the driver to close the window.

But the driver said the window was broken and couldn't close. He suggested Skolpati snuggle down inside the brand-new, empty coffin in the back of the hearse to keep warm.

"Since I was drunk, I climbed into the coffin and fell asleep," he says.

When Skolpati was asleep, the hearse driver stopped to pick up two more men hitching a lift.

They got into the back but because they were a bit scared of the "corpse" lying in the coffin, they closed the lid.

"I thought I was dreaming when I heard them talking about the dead man in the coffin," says Skolpati.

The men lit cigarettes, and smoke drifted into the coffin and the smell woke Skolpati up.

He was terrified to find the lid closed, so he started screaming for help.

This was too much for the hitch-hikers, who smashed the back window of the hearse, jumped out and fled.

Fortunately, the hearse was travelling very slowly.

And that, my friends, is the winning article in the first week of our new contest, in which we find the best article from the Voice over the previous seven days and share it with you. I previously discussed the quality journalism of this Cape Town tabloid here.

But wait. There's more.

Click here for this week's winner in the headline category. You won't be disappointed.

Which isn't to say you won't be deeply offended.

But disappointed? No way.