In January 1996, whilst on school holidays, my mum and I went to visit my aunt and cousin in Melbourne. Whilst there, looking for things to do, we decided to all go and see a movie together at the cinema. Without any prior knowledge of the films that were playing, we bought tickets for one of the next films showing and all settled in to watch.
That film was ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’.
You never really know what will ignite a passion in someone. Over the years we have heard all sorts of causes, from books (Wilbur Smith and Alexander McCall Smith feature frequently) to films to music videos to documentaries to a poster hanging on the wall of a sibling’s childhood bedroom. However, once that spark has been lit, it is nearly impossible to put out.
If you don’t know the details, the film tells the story of two lions terrorising the workers of the Mombasa to Uganda railroad in Kenya. It’s based on the true events from 1898 of an engineer called John Henry Patterson and the two ‘Man-Eaters of Tsavo’. Numbers vary, but with the total number of victims ranging between 30 people (confirmed) and 130 people (not disproven), it is quite a famous tale. The Ghost and the Darkness wasn’t even the first film about the story, with two films alone being made in the 1950s. These include the “Killers of Kilimanjaro” (despite not really being near it) and the first-ever colour 3D film, nonsensically called ‘Bwana Devil’ (’Boss Devil’).
Let’s get something out of the way first. ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’ isn’t a great film. It’s great for me, as any rewatch of a childhood movie is, and it certainly isn’t a bad movie by any means. But if you are expecting anything more than a casual adventure romp, playing fast and loose with the story, then this isn’t that film. It’s also even more inaccurate if you know a little about Tsavo, or Kenya, or even Africa for that matter. For example, for some random reason, this version stars a completely fictional American hunter (played by Michael Douglas) who hunts alongside Maasai warriors. The two lions featured here are large male lions with glorious manes, despite the fact that the lions in Tsavo don’t grow manes. The timelines are off, the landscapes don’t always match (it was filmed in South Africa) and the distinctive Maasai are sometimes played by local South African actors. The title claims it is ‘based on a true story’, although clearly the word ‘based’ does a lot of the heavy lifting. In a small plus for accuracy, Val Kilmer plays John Henry Patterson pretty straight to the bone, despite a wandering Irish accent.
I don’t know whether it was the tale itself, or the memory of my aunt and mother screaming at volume during a particularly unexpected jump scare (if you know, then you know), but that story was burned into my brain. Whatever it was, the hook had sunk in deep. I had an upcoming book report at school that needed to be done, so I decided to do it on Patterson’s book, his diary retelling the events. The only trouble was, these were the very early days of the internet and I couldn’t get a copy of the book anywhere. No encyclopaedia I had access to carried information on the story. In fact, the only information I could find was a picture of the stuffed lions, now in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. With no book to report on, I simply retold the events of the film as if it were from a book. Being the very early days of the internet my teacher hadn’t read it either, and I got an A.
And then life went on. I grew up, moved out and left the country. This story bubbled around in the back of my brain for the next 10 years, occasionally surfacing as some flittering thought before disappearing back into the shadows. And then, I finally managed to get to Africa.
Starting in Kenya, as part of a 3-month long meandering, I had a few days to kill in Nairobi. Wandering around and looking for things to pass the time I somehow ended up at the Nairobi Railway Museum. It’s full of random historical artefacts, like the train used in the film “Out of Africa", tea sets used for Queen Elizabeth’s pre-coronation visit and specially designed hunting carriages that dignitaries like Theodore Roosevelt would shoot from the front of. I’m not a train enthusiast, so I sort of moseyed about until I was stopped dead in my tracks. A small plaque on a random railway carriage. It was Coach #12, and the plaque told the story of Charles Henry George Ryall. Ryall had set up a hunting platform inside this carriage from which to hunt the Tsavo Man-Eaters. Unfortunately for him, he fell asleep, and the lion jumped up into the carriage and pulled him from the window. This plaque was a physical link to history, both of Kenya and of my own personal history. The museum (I later found out) also has three claws from the lions and other items from that time.
I was heading in the opposite direction so wasn’t able to visit Tsavo on that trip, but five or so trips to Kenya later I decided to make an effort. I rewatched the film and ordered a copy of the book online. The book added another layer of context to the things I had been seeing with my own eyes on visits. The book is largely full of glorified hunts of ‘great beasts’ and the end count of the animals that Patterson killed is quite shocking. But, overlooking the attitudes of the time, the book is a glimpse of the iconic Africa that most of us want to experience today: wild, vast and exciting.
It is with time that not only do attitudes change, but understanding deepens. At the time of the book, these animals were considered ungodly killers with a predilection for death and violence. All the stories of Africa from bygone eras mainly focus on a constant escape from imminent death and danger, an attitude which can also be seen in films like ‘Hatari’ with John Wayne. Hell, even the name “Hatari” even means ‘danger’ in Swahili. That attitude has become ingrained in our subconscious, much in the same way “Jaws” did for sharks. But, as the years have gone on, deeper research into lion behaviour has completely changed our view of these animals. With modern technology, we can even begin to understand the reasons why these two lions in particular turned to hunting people as food.
Typically, lions try to avoid people, as we are a dangerous adversary. That’s not to say they won’t kill us if we threaten them or if we provide an opportunity too good to pass up, but we aren’t really on their menu. Why would they risk likely death or serious injury at the hands of a human when an antelope won’t provide the same danger? After all, we have given many generations of them a reason to fear us. The reason for this change in behaviour is typically when the lion can’t hunt effectively anymore. For this reason, it instead turns to the slower and easier animal: Us.
Very recent studies on the jaw bones of the Tsavo lion skeletons reveal damage in one of the lions, possibly from the kick of escaping prey like a zebra. This, combined with a heavily infected tooth abscess would have meant that grabbing large prey would have been excruciating. This also ties in well with one of the great mysteries of the story, which is answering why the lions didn’t fully eat a lot of their victims. Although the story was played up to be that the lions ‘enjoyed killing’ or were actually demons in lion form, it could be as simple as the fact that this lion wasn't able to eat properly. Further scientific testing has revealed that it was one lion doing most of the human consumption, with the one sticking to a largely ‘normal diet’. Combine this with a rare rinderpest plague decimating their usual diet of buffalo around the same time, and a prior history of human bodies being left scattered across the area, a result of the horrific slave trade. When all added up, you have a series of disparate events that combined into a truly remarkable occurrence. One that was later dramatised, causing two middle-aged women to scare an entire movie theatre with their screams and encouraging a young boy to visit Africa.
It was on that next trip, entering Tsavo East National Park, that I saw them for the first time. There were two males, crouched in the scrub and trying to escape the heat. Maneless and lean, they looked similar to a typical female lion except for their size and shape. They also looked like a pair of, dare I say it, badasses. Even though their predecessors may have had dental issues and bad luck, these distant descendants still had their intimidating aura. Unlike others of their kin, these lions aren’t living in the lush oasis of the Serengeti, or on some cushy reserve in South Africa. These ones have fought for survival in this harsh and unforgiving environment, and every day is another battle. Watching them, having now finally completed my journey to the source of the tale and with my own African experiences under my belt, I understood the real story underneath the Hollywood glitz and glamour. It isn’t just a fight for survival of Patterson and his men, it is a fight for survival for these lions as well. Both sides are simply animals desperate to stay alive in an unforgiving place.
I took a photo of the pair and sent it to my mum, with no context except ‘Tsavo’. We hadn’t really discussed it in the 21 years since we saw the movie, except as a funny story about my aunt. A minute or so later, my phone pinged. It was my mum.
“Are those the two man-eaters? 🦁🦁😘”
As I said, once that spark has been lit, it is hard to put out.