25/05/2025
The Mysterious Disappearance of Rosalind Ballingall, 1969🦉
In August 1969, 20-year-old Rosalind Ballingall vanished without a trace in the Knysna Forest. A student at the University of Cape Town, she was visiting the area with a group of friends when she was last seen walking away from a cottage near Fisantehoek.
Rosalind was originally from Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), and had moved to South Africa with her family. In 1969, she enrolled at UCT to study Speech and Drama. At the time of her disappearance, she was loosely affiliated with a group known as the “Cosmic Butterfly” - a small counterculture community exploring spirituality, communal living, and drug experimentation. The group had travelled to the forest for a break from city life.
On the morning of 12 August 1969, Rosalind reportedly left the cottage alone, barefoot and carrying only a Bible. She was seen by workers near a nearby lodge asking for directions to a church. That was the last confirmed sighting. She never returned, and by the following day, her friends reported her missing.
Search efforts began soon after and included police, volunteers, search dogs, and her father, a senior mining executive, who flew in from Johannesburg. Despite days of searching, no physical trace of her was ever found - no clothing, remains, or belongings. Several unconfirmed sightings were reported in the days that followed, but none led to answers. The police investigation eventually stalled. In the mid-1980s, she was declared legally dead.
Over the years, many theories have surfaced, accidental death, su***de, abduction, even voluntary disappearance, but no evidence has supported any of them.
Photographs of Rosalind appeared in publications like Scope magazine at the time, and her story has been revisited in recent years, including in academic discussions and a short documentary titled The Ballad of Rosalind Ballingall. Despite this, the mystery remains unsolved more than five decades later.
https://pletthistory.org/rosiland-ballingall/
