Tsavo, Kenya (historical event and legend)

The Ghost Lions of Tsavo

Folklore — not a documented case

In 1898 two maneless lions halted the building of a railway bridge in Kenya for months, and the workers are said to have seen them not as ordinary animals but as evil spirits.

In 1898 the British were building the Uganda Railway to link Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast with Lake Victoria. Where the line crossed the Tsavo River, a railway bridge was to be built. The engineer in charge soon faced a major crisis in camps where thousands of labourers worked.

The stories in this section are folk tales and legends; they are not verified, real events and should not be confused with the rest of the archive.

From the same region