Despite leading a nation of millions of people and being the head of the armed forces, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta still could not spend nights at specific places for fear of 'ghosts'.
The head of state was a superstitious man who believed in the existence of invisible beings and linked some to the British colonialists whom he played an important role in kicking out.
He could not spend a night at the Nairobi State House over claims that it contained ghosts of the white men who inhabited the premises before, then known as the Government House.
There came a day when he had to go out of his way and do the exact thing he feared most, spending the night in the same premises, after attending the pre-Jamhuri Day ball dance at the City Hall, which ran until late in the night.
However, according to his then Escort Commander Bernard Njinu, the security personnel were called in at about midnight to take the president to his home in Gatundu.
"He told us he could not catch sleep because colonial ghosts had invaded his bedroom,” said Njinu.
This was in the 1970s when most people belonging to Kenyatta's generation believed in the existence of ghosts.