Ghost Mountain: part one - Beware, crocodiles

Summary

The Story — "Ghost Mountain: Part One"

Published June 12, 2026 | Hosted by Jane Flanagan (Africa correspondent, The Times)

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Episode Overview

In this gripping first installment of "Ghost Mountain," Jane Flanagan investigates the mysterious disappearance of Lorna McSorley, a 71-year-old British tourist last seen near Ghost Mountain in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Blending deep local myth, dangerous realities, and family interviews, the episode explores how superstition, organized crime, and the vast, haunting landscape create a backdrop for a baffling missing person case.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ghost Mountain: Setting & Superstitions ([01:21]–[02:59])

• Cultural Roots:
  • The mountain carries a formidable reputation among locals. It is believed to be haunted, tied to a history as a secret burial ground for chiefs whose mummified bodies are wrapped in black bull skins.
  • Francois Nell (local security chief) describes its reputation:

    "If you go there, you get eaten, you get assaulted by the ghosts and the forefathers and stuff like that. That was the myth." ([01:56])

• Enduring Beliefs:
  • Traditional healers, or "sangomas," have enduring influence. Consultation with sangomas (and threats about them) is a serious matter, with curses considered deadly.

    "People are still here, believe it or not. Still believes in witches... They take it very serious." — Francois Nell ([02:35])

2. Dangerous Realities of KwaZulu Natal ([02:59]–[04:01])

• Beyond the tourist façade (safaris, beaches, reserve lodges), lawlessness prevails.
  • "Poaching is rampant. Organized crime is unchecked. The murder rate is among the highest in the country. And in recent years... People have started to disappear." — Jane Flanagan ([02:59])
• Francois Nell explains the threat of abduction, linking local criminal markets to targeted disappearances ([03:31]).

3. Lorna McSorley’s Disappearance: Initial Facts ([04:01]–[08:27])

• Jane’s Investigation:
  • Jane Flanagan commits six months to investigate what happened to Lorna.
  • The case baffles police and unearths links to "chilling traditions and a gruesome trade." ([04:33])
• Details of the Day:
  • September 27, 2025: Lorna disappears while on a walk near Ghost Mountain.
  • Police and volunteers mount a multi-day search with dogs, drones, boats, and aircraft.
• Confusion & Lack of Information:
  • Misidentification in local reports (wrong nationality and name).
  • Lorna’s partner (Leon Probert), who was with her, vanishes from the scene, leaving authorities with little context for their search.

    "He has not been on scene... discussions with him to... aid in the search." — Police Officer ([08:27])

4. Lorna’s Background & Relationships ([09:31]–[14:55])

• Family Portrait:
  • Lorna is described as adventurous, fun-loving, and loyal by her brother, Geoff Sheward.

    "She would light the room up when she came in… she could be quite funny but also quite emotional at times." — Geoff ([09:31])

  • She served in the British Army (Signals) with postings in Ireland, Germany, Cyprus.
• Relationship Dynamics:
  • Leon Probert, her partner of 30 years, is seen as reserved and distant from her family and friends.
  • Gina, a long-time friend, describes Lorna as “resourceful, resilient, and above all, loyal.” ([12:43])
  • Leon is not integrated into Lorna’s close friendships and avoided accompanying her on social trips ([13:32]).
• Last Gestures:
  • Shortly before her trip, Lorna gives unexpected financial gifts to Geoff’s children, stating:

    "I might not get another chance, word for word, which I thought was a strange thing to say." — Geoff ([14:40])

5. The Day Lorna Went Missing ([17:43]–[23:59])

• Lorna and Leon begin a mapped walk from their lodge; Leon turns back after 15 minutes citing heat and lack of hat, leaving Lorna to continue alone in dangerous sun and unfamiliar territory ([19:50]).
• Crucial Encounter:
  • Lorna, lost, reaches a local farmhouse managed by Kuss Prinsloo. He offers her help; she declines a ride, wants to continue her walk ([21:36]).

    "She was calm, spoke fluently... hot because she was walking... but she wasn't stressed." — Kuss ([22:07])

  • Kuss is the last known person to see Lorna alive.
• Search Mobilization:
  • Leon first reports Lorna missing at 5:30pm; local volunteers and security forces begin a search across farmland/bush.

    "This is not the place to be gate glossy. We know the agenda of a white lady walking alone in Zululand is not... this is Zululand, not Disneyland." — Francois Nell ([24:20])

6. Search & Suspicion ([27:04]–[33:21])

• Key Discovery:

  • Lorna’s crumpled map is found by Kuss Prinsloo’s daughters, providing the first concrete lead ([28:03]).
  • Despite intensive searches (thermal drones, dogs, helicopters), no further trace is found.

• Questions Around Leon:

  • Leon appears detached, gives minimal information, and leaves soon after, escorted by TUI staff and travel documents, as Lorna had their passports ([29:45]).

    "He was very dull... sitting in the police van... just like, staring in front of him... I will be like, berserk..." — Francois Nell ([29:45])

  • Friends and family express confusion at Leon's unwillingness to stay and help,

    "What I don't understand is why a partner of 30 years would not want to stay in the area..." — Gina ([31:51])

  • Leon does not want to be contacted by Jane regarding further updates ([32:59]).

• Eliminating Theories & Rise of the Unbelievable

  • Local security begins to rule out animal attack or robbery as explanations.

    "If this lady was just lost, somebody will see her... there was no trace of her... that's when I started saying, listen, I think we must look at this thing in a different way." — Francois Nell ([34:50])

  • Traditional beliefs and suspicions around "muti" (ritualistic) killings surface.

7. The Power of Superstition & Local Myths ([35:33]–End)

• The superstitions and "dark" beliefs in the area are taken very seriously by both Black and white locals; some believe if a missing person is not found after several days, they will never be found.

  "Some of the community people, they are very superstitious. They are very afraid of this tour doctors, you know, this witchcraft stuff." — Kuss Prinsloo ([35:40])

• Jane’s Insight as an Outsider:

  • The deeper she digs, the more she realizes the need to understand and respect local beliefs to discover the truth.

    "Reporters deal in facts. But the deeper I dug into Lorna McSorley's disappearance, the more I realized that I had to take the beliefs of this place seriously." — Jane Flanagan ([36:04])

• Preview of What’s Next:

  • Hints at more missing people (“nine alleged bodies”), the dangers for locals as well as tourists, and the sense of the uncanny pervading the area ([36:38]–[37:11]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ghost Mountain’s reputation:

  "The name Ghost Mountain comes from people staying there, and it was a secret burial place, and they said the mountain was haunted." — Francois Nell ([01:26])

• On local attitudes to the search:

  "We must do it because we know the area... This is Zululand, not Disneyland." — Francois Nell ([24:20])

• On the peculiar behavior of Lorna’s partner:

  "He was very dull... just like, staring in front of him... That made him suspicious." — Francois Nell ([29:45]);
  "He wants to draw a line under it all... he didn't want to face up to what happened." — Geoff Sheward ([33:21])

• On the impact of local myths:

  “If you haven't found something by now, you will never find it.” — Local saying, relayed by Kuss Prinsloo ([35:40])

• On the spiritual dimension of the case:

  "It was these local myths that could in fact reveal the truth of what happened to her." — Jane Flanagan ([36:04])

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Important Timestamps

• 01:21 — Introduction to Ghost Mountain and its haunted reputation
• 04:01 — Start of Lorna McSorley’s disappearance
• 09:31 — Interview with Lorna’s brother, Geoff Sheward
• 12:43 — Gina, Lorna’s friend, reflects on her loyalty and relationships
• 17:43 — Jane Flanagan’s arrival in KwaZulu Natal and background on the area
• 19:34 — Walk through Lorna’s last known movements with Francois Nell
• 21:06 — Lorna’s encounter with farmer Kuss Prinsloo
• 23:44 — Mobilization of search efforts
• 27:04 — Discovery of Lorna’s map by Kuss’s daughters
• 29:45 — Suspicion falls on Leon Probert’s behavior post-disappearance
• 34:50 — Security team re-evaluates theories; supernatural and criminal possibilities rise
• 35:33 — Locals’ superstitions and beliefs as a critical aspect of the case
• 36:38 — Tease for episode two: missing bodies, growing fear among locals

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Tone & Atmosphere

The episode blends journalistic rigor with a haunting, immersive tone—deep respect for local culture and myth, persistent investigative drive, and empathy for those affected by the disappearance. Listeners are left with a sense of both the factual uncertainties and the weight of local belief in shaping what comes next.

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Next Episode Preview

The story promises to delve deeper into the rising tally of the missing, chilling local explanations, and the unnerving sense that reality and myth may be intertwined on Ghost Mountain.

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For listeners seeking a true-crime mystery anchored in unique cultural context, this is a suspenseful and detailed beginning, rich with character and atmospheric tension.

Transcript

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[Jane Flanagan]

Is that Ghost Mountain?

[Francois Nell]

That's Ghost Mountain.

[Jane Flanagan]

Tell me a bit about that mountain.

[Francois Nell]

The name Ghost Mountain comes from people staying there, and it was a secret burial place, and they said the mountain was haunted.

[Jane Flanagan]

At the southern end of the jagged Lebombo Mountains is a peak with a peculiar shape that looms over this corner of South Africa. High on its slopes is a sacred cave where generations of local chiefs are buried, their mummified bodies wrapped in black bull skins.

[Francois Nell]

If you go there, you get eaten, you get assaulted by the ghosts and the forefathers and stuff like that. That was the myth of the story of coast mountain.

[Jane Flanagan]

Beliefs like these remain deeply rooted in this part of KwaZulu Natal, a large province and the Zulu homeland on South Africa's eastern flank. It's a superstitious place. Traditional healers are consulted rather than medical doctors. Healers, known as sangomas, commune with ancestral spirits to diagnose problems physical or emotional.

[Francois Nell]

People are still here, believe it or not. Still believes in witches. And, yeah, if you want to get in big trouble and you tell one oak, I will go to the sangoma and I will lawyer you. Lawyer means Nzulu, means I will put a curse on you. They will kill you for that. They take it very serious.

[Jane Flanagan]

The beauty of this landscape, its historic battlefields, pristine coastline and game reserves, are a magnet for tourists. But beyond the fences of the high end lodges. It's more like the Wild West. Poaching is rampant. Organized crime is unchecked. The murder rate is among the highest in the country. And in recent years there are increasing reports of something more sinister still. People have started to disappear.

[Francois Nell]

There's a market for, let's say, white women. What they do is they wait for the right time. You could have been the first one today walking here, taking pictures. Hey. They would start talking to each other. We saw a white lady going out of the gate of Ghost Mountain or wherever. She's walking alone. Come. They have a market for everybody. There's a market for you right now as you sit here. They're just waiting for the right time to take you.

[Jane Flanagan]

My name is Jane Flanagan, Africa correspondent for the times. I'm in KwaZulu Natal to investigate the disappearance of a 71 year old British tourist, Lorna McSorley. On September 27, 2025, she took a walk near Ghost Mountain and then she vanished.

[News Reporter]

The search for a missing 70 year old tourist has entered its fifth day at Ghost Mountain in Mkuse, Northern KwaZulu. Natalie, the woman was lost.

[Jane Flanagan]

Over the past six months, I've been traveling across South Africa and the United Kingdom trying to discover what happened to Lorna McSorley. The more questions I asked the stranger, the story became. It appeared to be linked to chilling traditions and a gruesome trade.

[Kuss Prinsloo]

She's gone without a trace. Nobody know where she is. What happened?

[Geoff Sheward]

I was dumbfounded. I didn't think anything like that existed, let alone in this century.

[Jane Flanagan]

When the police investigation reached a dead end, I kept looking and found leads they had missed or ignored. From the times and Sunday times. This is ghost mountain. Episode 1 beware crocodiles. I've spent much of my career reporting on Africa, including the past eight years for the Times. It's a vast and endlessly challenging beat. I've stood on Chad's border with Sudan, interviewing families fleeing the genocide in Darfur. I've walked with rangers in eastern Congo, risking their lives to protect endangered guerrillas. I've interviewed African presidents, warlords and rock stars. Few places can take you so quickly. From humanity at its worst. To its best. Which is why nowhere has held my curiosity quite like this continent. It was in early October 2025 that I started seeing reports about Lorna McSorley's disappearance in KwaZulu Natal, or KZN as South Africans call it. The local media became engrossed in the hunt for her.

[News Reporter]

The search for a missing 70 year old tourist has entered its fifth day. At Ghost Mound disappearance.

[Jane Flanagan]

She was last seen on Saturday. She was hiking at Ghost Mountain in Mkuse in Kwazuru. Natalia, our Pilum Tembu has been following. I know the area well from reporting mostly on its volatile political scene and also from family holidays walking between its famous battlefields at Isantlwana and Rorke's Drift, snorkeling in the Indian Ocean and night safaris watching leatherback turtles hauling themselves up the beach to lay their eggs. As the news broke of Lorna McSorley's disappearance, I was busy shadowing a leading South African politician for a profile. But the name Ghost Mountain caught my attention.

[News Reporter]

The woman was last seen when she went hiking with her husband, who says he turned back halfway through the hike while she proceeded alone.

[Jane Flanagan]

Missing persons cases are depressingly common in this country, But a foreign tourist going missing near a well known hotel was always going to attract attention. A huge hunt was mounted involving police and volunteers with with dogs, drones, boats and aircraft. Theories came thick and fast. She'd been taken by a crocodile or another predator or kidnapped and a ransom demand would come. The hope that she was simply lost and would soon be found faded fast and strangely, nobody at the scene appeared to know much about her. Reports in the media identified her by the wrong name and said she was from Germany rather than Britain. Part of the reason information was so scarce was that Lorna's partner, who'd been walking with her no longer seemed to be there.

[Police Officer]

He has not been on scene, so us personally have not been in contact with him or had any discussions with him to kind of aid in the search, you know, what type of person she was, what she would show have done in a situation if she had gotten lost. Unfortunately without that information also does make our search a little bit more difficult because we can't quite predict what she might have done.

[Jane Flanagan]

When someone goes missing, it is important to know as much as possible about them to understand how they might cope. Are they physically fit and capable? Resourceful? Would they panic or stay calm? When the official search couldn't find these answers, I started digging. I looked into Lorna McSorley's background and that of her partner to see whether either held clues as to what had happened. I discovered she was born not far from London. So my journey begins not in Kwesulu Natal, but in Hertfordshire, on a quiet suburban street in the town of Royston.

[Geoff Sheward]

She was a fun, loving person. I mean, she light the room up when she came in and she loved the dance, wildlife and music and she can be quite funny but Also quite emotional at times.

[Jane Flanagan]

Jeff sheward is Lorna McSorley's brother. I went to see him in March this year. I would.

[Geoff Sheward]

It's only instant coffee.

[Jane Flanagan]

No, I haven't had enough tea today. I don't think I'm going to have

[Gina]

a cup of tea.

[Jane Flanagan]

Is that all right?

[Geoff Sheward]

Yes, thank you.

[Jane Flanagan]

Family photographs and prints of World War II planes fill the walls of his home, where we sit down for tea and biscuits. Geoff is speaking about Lorna's disappearance for the first time. He shows me a picture of her.

[Geoff Sheward]

There's a good picture of her, as she would like to be known.

[Jane Flanagan]

With her tiny feet.

[Geoff Sheward]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. She was very, very small. Get away with ladybird shoes.

[Jane Flanagan]

Lorna and Geoff grew up not far from here in Hertfordshire. After their parents separated, the siblings were raised in different households and saw very little of one another. It was only years later that their relationship deepened when she joined the army.

[Geoff Sheward]

More or less straight from school. I believe she was in the signals and when she got married, I didn't know her first husb. But after that we became closer.

[Jane Flanagan]

Lorna's time in the army took her to Northern Ireland, Germany and Cyprus. The experience gave her a lifelong appetite for travel and adventure. After her marriage ended in the mid-1990s, Lorna met Leon Probert, the man she would travel to South Africa with in September 2025. He was not her husband, as had been reported, but her partner of 30 years and a decade older than her. I have had several phone conversations with Leon Probert in recent months and he was clearly uncomfortable talking about Lorna's disappearance. He declined to contribute to this series. So I asked Geoff about their relationship.

[Geoff Sheward]

He came from Bristol, he's got that Bristol accent, quite strong. And I was taking the Mick out of it once and going, oh, you're from Bristol, you know. And he just sat there in that chair, stony faced. He never said a word. No, we didn't know Lock Norman.

[Jane Flanagan]

Lorna and Leon lived in Devon, far from her family and friends. Geoff would visit occasionally, though he told me he preferred to stay in a local guest house. A photograph from one of those trips shows the three of them on a day out. Jeff is smiling at the camera, his arm around Lorna. Leon stands stiffly apart from them, looking into the distance.

[Geoff Sheward]

I thought she was happy because she stayed with him for 30 years and she was a well connected woman and she had a brain on her. She had all the means possible to just leave him if she was unhappy.

[Gina]

If I had to sum her up, it would be resourceful resilient and above all, loyal. She was totally loyal.

[Jane Flanagan]

From Devon, Lorna maintained several close and long standing friendships, including with Gina. They were at school together in their teens. I met Gina at her home in southwest London.

[Gina]

Lorna always sent beautiful birthday cards. The inscription inside says, to the bestest friend in the world, love and hope. Everything is always good for you. And that's exactly the sort of person she was. She put a huge store on her friendships.

[Jane Flanagan]

So how did Leon fit into all these important friendships and relationships?

[Gina]

He didn't. Lorna used to like to come away for the weekend and Leon never came with her. She always came on her own. I think she liked to come and just be herself and enjoy the friendships. I think like a lot of people in relationships, she was a different version of herself. She was, I would say, not as bubbly, more subdued. I did ask her once, if you're that unhappy, why do you stay? And I feel quite bad now that that probably shut down the dialogue.

[Jane Flanagan]

Had they done a lot of wildlife holidays or what had been the building up to this one?

[Gina]

No, they've been to Greece a lot. They've been to Egypt, Singapore.

[Jane Flanagan]

You knew about the South African holiday that was coming up that seemed like quite a big one for them. What did Lorna mention about that?

[Gina]

Just that she was excited about seeing the Big Five and taking lots of pictures and we were looking forward to seeing them when she came back.

[Jane Flanagan]

Lorna visited Geoff and his family shortly before that trip to South Africa and made an unexpected gesture.

[Geoff Sheward]

Yes, that's when she gave the children the money. She wrote two checks out, 3,000 pound each for the children. And I said to her, why? Why are you doing it? And she said, I might not get another chance, word for word, which I thought was a strange thing to say.

[Jane Flanagan]

So it was shortly before her trip to South Africa. It seemed like it was planned that she would give a gift to your.

[Geoff Sheward]

No, no, they're not very close, my children and Lorna. I don't know if she was worried about me and my health or some sort of vision about herself, but it was only a few days before she went on holiday to South Africa and she went missing, I think, 27th.

[Jane Flanagan]

In calls with her other friends, I heard about Lorna's passion for animals and nature, her love of dancing and her ready sense of humour. No one saw her as reckless or naive. Lorna and leon left the UK on September 22, 2025 for a packed two week coach tour of South Africa with the travel agent Tui. After spending their first few days spotting wildlife in Kruger National Park. They travel through the tiny kingdom of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, before crossing back into South Africa and arriving in Makuze. It's a tiny rural town of fewer than 6,000 people that sits in the shadow of Ghost Mountain, the ideal place to savour more of the country's wild natural beauty. They checked into a four star lodge at around lunchtime on Saturday, September 27th. Just a few hours later, Lorna McSorley had vanished. I arrived in KwaZulu Natal on a hot, humid day in January 2026. It had been four months since Lorna's disappearance and I was keen to discover what had happened to her. I crossed the Tugela river into the remote rural north of the province. It was this breathtaking scenery that inspired the Victorian adventure novel King Solomon's Mines, a tale of lost kingdoms and hidden treasure. In the distance, Ghost Mountain rises between the farms and reserves as though it belongs to another world. But this is no tourist fantasy. KwaZulu Natal is a hotspot for organized crime, including rhino poaching, with gangs making fortunes from the illegal trade in Horn. In the absence of effective policing, landowners employ their own well equipped security forces to protect infrastructure and wildlife. Leopard tracks. How often do you see leopards here?

[Francois Nell]

There's a lot of leopards here, but one and night. I have cameras all over the place, so you only see them at night.

[Jane Flanagan]

Francois Nelle is wide, gruff and impatient, a typical Boer. Boer meaning farmer in Afrikaans. He speaks with a thick accent and often slips into Afrikaans or Zulu when words escape him in English. Francois heads security for the largest farm in the Macouse area. He and his men regularly go up against rhino poachers and gangs stealing equipment.

[Francois Nell]

Mkuze is actually a lawless town. Nobody looks after the lawyer. I mean, dockets get lost, cases doesn't get investigated.

[Jane Flanagan]

He wears shorts, leather boots and a khaki shirt stretched across the his vast torso. A gun sits at his belt. Lorna Maley disappeared on land Francois protects. He was among the first to be alerted and offered to show me the route she took that day.

[Francois Nell]

She wanted to go to this dam. I'll take you to this dam where the man eating crocodiles is.

[Jane Flanagan]

Lorna and her partner Leon set off for a walk from their hotel, the Ghost Mountain inn, at around 2:30 on Saturday, September 27th. It was a windy afternoon. A boat trip on the nearby Jazzini Dam to see crocodiles and hippos had been cancelled. Instead, they headed on foot for the nearest lake. Lorna brought her camera but not her phone. The two and a half mile route was considered safe enough for the hotel to provide them with a route map and let them walk it alone. So is this sugarcane? What?

[Francois Nell]

Is this sugarcane? Yeah, we. Yeah, Now.

[Jane Flanagan]

And this is where they'd walked to this point together?

[Francois Nell]

Yes. And then around, about here. He decided, no, he's going to turn around and go back, come back the

[Jane Flanagan]

way we've just come.

[Francois Nell]

So he went all the way back and he went into the hotel.

[Jane Flanagan]

About 15 minutes into their walk, Leon turned back. He told me he found it too hot and had forgotten his hat. Lorna carried on alone, in her 70s, fair skinned and prone to burning in the sun. She was now heading by herself into the South African bush. Her friends told me she was not especially fit.

[Francois Nell]

Yeah, she had to turn this way.

[Jane Flanagan]

She was supposed to take the right

[Francois Nell]

here, walk around the pivot. It's just not far. She had to turn the right and she had to be at the dam. But she made. Yeah, yeah, she made the wrong decision. We don't know how. Did she read the map or she made a mistake.

[Jane Flanagan]

According to the hotel map, Lorna should have taken a track on her right towards the lake. But she was soon lost and way off the route entirely. It may be that she was affected by the heat and humidity. She was carrying no water, or perhaps the tall sugar cane fields confused her sense of direction. But luckily she came across a farmhouse where she asked for help.

[Francois Nell]

What?

[Kuss Prinsloo]

I remember it was around about 3 o' clock in the afternoon when the dogs was by. I've got a lot of dogs was barking.

[Jane Flanagan]

Curs Prinsloo is one of the managers on the farm where Lorna was walking beneath a baseball cap. His face is deeply tanned and his nose misshapen from an earlier rugby career. His farmhouse is about a mile from Ghost Mountain Inn, the hotel where Lorna and Leon were staying.

[Kuss Prinsloo]

My wife went out of the house and she came back and said, there's a lady here with a map that wants directions to the dam to look at the crocodiles and the Hebrews. So I went out and I spoke to the lady and I told her she's totally on the wrong way. She's got to go back with the way she came off. And I showed her on the map which way to turn.

[Jane Flanagan]

So how did she seem to you? Was she hot? Was she stressed? No.

[Kuss Prinsloo]

No. Okay. You could see she's hot because she was walking, you know, but she wasn't stressed. She was calm, spoke fluently. There was no Nothing in her voice that says, hey, I've got a problem. You understand? It's weird how it happened.

[Jane Flanagan]

Was it unusual for you to see a visitor, a guest from the hotel, walking around the sugar cane street? No.

[Kuss Prinsloo]

No, I've seen it a couple of times. Sometimes you see just one guy or a guy and a woman. But I've never seen a woman alone.

[Jane Flanagan]

So you offered her a lift to the dam or back to the hotel, but she said she wanted a walk.

[Kuss Prinsloo]

No, she wanted to walk.

[Jane Flanagan]

Chris told me he waited at his gate to make sure Lorna was on the correct track before going inside. We don't know if she stayed on the right path or ever reached the lake. Kuss is the last person we know to have seen Lorna alive. Back at Ghost mountain inn by 5:30pm, Leon felt uneasy. The walk should have taken 90 minutes at most. Three hours had passed. He told the hotel that Lorna was missing. A senior staff member first drove the route expecting to find Lorna exhausted. When she didn't, the alarm went out to the police and across the local farm's radio network calling for help. Soon a hunt was underway. Workers, landowners and neighbors converged on the area, including Kuss.

[Kuss Prinsloo]

That night, around about 7 o', clock, I got a call from a guy that said, they are looking for the lady. The lady is gone. And so I grabbed my kids and my wife and everybody and we, we started looking for the lady.

[Jane Flanagan]

The farm's head of security, Francois Nell, was leading the team of volunteers.

[Francois Nell]

There were about 10, 12 vehicles driving up and down, up in all the farms.

[Jane Flanagan]

When you have a. When you get a report like that, a missing tourist and it's a Saturday night, what is the feeling like, we must do it or are people.

[Francois Nell]

No, we must do it because we know the area. This is not the place to be gate glossy. We know the agenda of a white lady walking alone in Zulu land is not. I usually say this is Zululand, not Disneyland. We know what is going to happen. You're either going to get mocked or picked up.

[Jane Flanagan]

What has marked me?

[Francois Nell]

Robbed.

[Jane Flanagan]

As night fell on Ghost Mountain, the search team had found no nothing and were beginning to fear the worst. Until they stumbled across the first big clue, which we'll hear more about after the break.

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[Jane Flanagan]

On the evening of September 27, 2025, local volunteers had spent two hours searching for Lorna McSorley in the sugarcane fields beneath Ghost Mountain. Francois Nell, who heads security on the farm where Lorna went missing, was directing the volunteer hunt.

[Francois Nell]

It was getting dark. Very soon we decided to call in the drones, which is thermal drones, to look for. Maybe she's sitting somewhere in waiting for us or she's scared or whatever. But when we put it up, the drones, we couldn't find any heat along the rivers in the fields, the thermal

[Jane Flanagan]

drones would have detected the heat of a person in the bush. They found nothing. But then Kurz Prinsloo, the local farmer who was the last person to see Lorna, made a vital discovery. He was out searching with his wife in their car, and his two daughters were searching in their own.

[Kuss Prinsloo]

My youngest child saw a paper fumbled up next to the road and she told her sister, stop, stop, stop, there's a paper. And they found the map.

[Francois Nell]

When we found the map and we saw it was wrinkled and stuff like that, we knew, okay, there's only one, one place giving out maps like that.

[Jane Flanagan]

This was the hotel map that Lorna had tried to follow, discarded on the side of a track about half a mile from Kuss's farmhouse.

[Francois Nell]

When we found the map, it was like, okay. Then we had a direction, and then we knew she had to be here, she had to be here or she had to pass here. So that was actually the best lead we had on that stage.

[Jane Flanagan]

Now they had an area to focus on.

[Francois Nell]

There were still people driving right through the night looking for up and down in every hour. They phoned me, said, no, they didn't find anything. And so, yeah, that is when we decided we will regroup the next morning and start calling the authorities in and call for reinforcements.

[Jane Flanagan]

At first light, the hunt resumed. The full force of the police and local private security networks was deployed. Tracking dogs, drones, boats, a helicopter, fixed wing aircraft, and scores of volunteers on foot. Lorna's partner, Leon Probert, made a statement to police, but he gave the search team little other information to work with. The only photograph they could circulate was the hotel's copy of Lorna's passport.

[Francois Nell]

He was very dull, as I remember. He was sitting in the police van and the policeman was my friend. He was one of my best friends. And he said he was sitting there like a puppet, just like, staring in front of him where I will be like, berserk. I will tell you, listen, I'm gonna walk and look for my wife. I will walk in these bushes. I will not even be scared, even if I'm a foreigner. That made him suspicious.

[Jane Flanagan]

Shortly after Lorna went missing, Leon was already making plans to leave. But Lorna had been carrying their passports in her bag when she disappeared. Staff from TUI who flew to South Africa to support him helped him get emergency travel documents to fly home. On September 30, three days after Lorna disappeared, I received a press statement from Ghost Mountain Inn that said Leon Probert had left the area. A week later, Lorna's friend Gina received a phone call.

[Gina]

It was on Tuesday 7th October. My mobile phone rang and it was Lorna's mobile number. And it was actually Leon on the phone saying that something dreadful had happened and Lorna was missing in South Africa. And obviously I was really shocked and queried what had happened. And he told me that she had gone out on her own to go and find a leak with a hippo in it. And I questioned that and said I thought it was unusual for anyone to go on their own walking in the bush in South Africa, let alone a woman. And he told me that she had insisted she was going. My first question to him was, when did this happen? And he said, Saturday, so I assumed he meant the fourth. And it wasn't until I looked online and saw the newspaper reports and and News Africa television interviews that I realized she'd gone missing. On the 27th of September, Gina contacted

[Jane Flanagan]

the search team on the ground in KwaZulu Natal.

[Gina]

And at that point I thought it might actually help them look for her. I had no idea. It was almost two weeks later. What I don't understand is why a partner of 30 years would not want to stay in the area and be there if she was found. Because you would want to be there to look after your partner, wouldn't you? You wouldn't want to say, I want to go home.

[Jane Flanagan]

The same day Leon rang Gina, he also called Jeff, Lorna's brother.

[Geoff Sheward]

My phone rang and came up Lorna. So I said, hi, Lorna, how are you? Because I knew she'd come back from holiday. And Mr. Probert said, it's not Lorna, it's me, and I've got some bad news for you. And he said she went missing and told the story about how he went with her and then went back to the hotel. I was just in deep shock at the time and it wasn't till later on, when it all sank in, that I thought, well, fancy living her on our own in a strange country in the wilderness with all sorts of nasty sanging about, or could be potentially.

[Jane Flanagan]

The last time I spoke to Leon was in April when I phoned with an update on what I had found out on my trip to Ghost Mountain. He asked me not to contact him again, saying he preferred not to be reminded about what had happened to Lorna. I told Jeff, Lorna's brother, and he said he wasn't surprised to hear that

[Geoff Sheward]

as far as Leon was concerned, he wants to draw a line under it all. It was a bit soon, but he didn't want to face up to what

[Jane Flanagan]

happened after the hunt produced no clues except for the map. Leon's departure from the walk with Lorna and then from the scene was drawing local suspicion about his possible involvement in her disappearance. But it was too far fetched. How could an elderly man possibly plot a crime during a coach tour of a country he'd never visited before? During my several phone calls with Leon Probert, he showed little emotion about the case, except in one conversation when his voice broke as he spoke about the guilt he felt at leaving Lorna to walk alone. If I had stayed with her, he told me, the chances are nothing would have happened. As the police investigation stalled, Francois Nell and his team looked again at the various theories about Lorna's fate. An animal attack, a robbery. And they ruled them out. But rumors and local talk began to center on one unbelievable explanation. When was it you really started having a bad feeling about what had happened?

[Francois Nell]

I thought, you know, if this lady was just lost, somebody will see her. A local cattle boy, let's say she wandered so far off along the river, there's so many people fishing, and they will say, yeah, we saw her. You know, we saw this white lady and she went in this direction. And let's say she ended up in the district road. There will always be information, but there was no trace of her. We spoke to locals. As I said, they didn't even knew she was walking there. And that is when I started saying, listen, I think we must look at this thing in a different way.

[Jane Flanagan]

As I said earlier, this is a place where traditional beliefs and superstitions dominate

[Kuss Prinsloo]

some of the community people, they are very superstitious. They are very afraid of this tour doctors, you know, this witchcraft stuff. And they told me about four or five days after it. If you haven't found something by now, you will never find it.

[Jane Flanagan]

Reporters deal in facts. But the deeper I dug into Lorna McSorley's disappearance, the more I realized that I had to take the beliefs of this place seriously. I came to understand that it was these local myths that could in fact reveal the truth of what happened to her. Next time on Ghost Mountain.

[Francois Nell]

You are also scared for us, our lives, because now we are not able to to go out at night because you never know when you're gonna be go missing yourself. According to sources, we have nine alleged bodies they found through the years.

[Police Officer]

My daughter said, said to me, it was like aliens had just come and just taken them. And I said to her, like, you can't. What do you mean? Surely there's something. And she said, no, there's nothing.

[Jane Flanagan]

From the Times and Sunday Times. This is Ghost Mountain, a series for the story. I'm your host, Jane Flanagan. The producer is Harry Stott. The executive producers are Taryn Siegel and Kate Lamble. Sound design and composition is by Mao Laceto. We'll be back tomorrow with episode two of Ghost Mountain.

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[Jane Flanagan]

because you didn't just say, how can

[Kuss Prinsloo]

I provide these investments? You think, how do I holistically provide everything?

[Jane Flanagan]

How do I bring in the legal,

[Kuss Prinsloo]

the accounting, all this, and do it

[Jane Flanagan]

at a price point no one else is doing it?

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