Anything ghost

I’ve never had any encounters of the ghastly, ghostly or even ghoulish kind. I grew up loving Casper with a passion and thinking all ghosts were friendly. As for ghouls, well, ghouls will be ghouls!

I don’t see dead people walking and scaring the living daylights out of me. I guess ghosts are scared of me. But there have been times when I would feel (even smell or hear) a different kind of presence but again, nothing frightful enough to make me run for my life or grab a bottle of holy water from Lourdes and a rosary that I keep handy.

Just a few months ago, my dear old friend and colleague Lita Consignado-Lee died after a bruising battle with breast cancer. She was cremated and the whole barkada was there to see her (I mean her urn) for the last time at her wake. I came late as usual (my friends tell me I’d be late for my own funeral, but that’s another morbid story). It was almost 1:30 a.m. and the door of the chapel was already closed. I peeked through the glass door, hoping for some sign of activity inside. But all I could see were fuzzy outlines of pictures. I panicked and called up Lita’s husband Albert on his cell phone. He hurriedly unlocked the door for me and as I walked in, a kind of calm, like I’d never felt before, swept over me. My eyes were drawn to a photo blowup of a pretty young Lita. Beside that, I browsed a collage of pictures of Lita with family and assorted friends that told fragments of her life story. And then I turned again to Lita’s big portrait and I swear I saw her leaping out of the picture and smiling faintly. The portrait suddenly became three-dimensional. Did Lita really smile at me or was it just my overworked imagination playing tricks on me? Whatever. But something told me that my dear departed friend is in a far better place now.

I’m a nocturnal creature and the earliest time I go to bed is 3 a.m. According to European folklore, the period from midnight to 3 a.m. is the witching hour, when the witches, demons, and ghosts are at their most powerful. But I’ll never be a witch because I’m not good at spell-ing. Levity aside, I call the wee morning hours my private time, when I can do anything I can’t do during the busy day. Like curl up with a book titled The World’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries (disappearances, death, assassination and tragedy ... unknown, unsolved) that I bought out of morbid curiosity (it was on sale, too) at National Book Store. Like an amateur bloodhound, I was so absorbed in the book in the dead of night in my bedroom (the only thing lacking was a funeral dirge) when I heard one of my music boxes (I collect music boxes) suddenly playing Send in the Clowns by itself. Unruffled, I simply asked myself, “Is that you, Lita?” and went back to my book. A few days later, I was tidying up my room when I decided to check out my music boxes that hadn’t been cranked in long, long time. Funny but I didn’t find a box that had the music of Send in the Clowns. Not even the box that’s got a clown sitting on it with an accordion. Did I get goose bumps all over!

But that didn’t make me lose sleep, and I still sleep like a baby, surrounded by my music boxes. I’m such a sound sleeper that I often go into the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, when dreams generally occur. I would dream of a dead loved one, like my father. When he died three years ago of old age, I knew he would never scare us his daughters by making a ghost appearance (literally). But I wanted to know how he was in the next life so I prayed for a sign from heaven. Did St. Peter give him an admission pass at the pearly gates? Then one night, as if in answer to my prayer, I saw my father in my dream. He was wearing a floral printed shirt and looked hale and hearty, and about half his age when he died (he was 89).

Before that, I saw my colleague Eric Catipon in my dream, also wearing a Hawaiian shirt and looking half his age and weight when he died (he was 47). A common friend also saw Eric in his dream. He was bronze-skinned, like he had been sunbathing or had just come out of a spa.

But what’s with the floral Hawaiian shirt? Why are both my father and Eric wearing one? When I told my colleague Therese Garceau about it, she instantly asked, “Is heaven in Hawaii?”

A dream expert says that when we dream of dead people who are close to us, it means we’re being watched over by these loved ones and they may be trying to communicate with us through dreams. They may visit us in our dreams to show us how they are doing on the other side (and when our turn comes to go to the other side, we’re rest assured that we have friends waiting there). According to Eric Ackroyd, dead people come back not to haunt you but to advise and help you. You could use a spiritual adviser, don’t you think? Ackroyd adds that the dead person actually represents parts of your unconscious self that is wiser than your waking ego.

Another dream expert says that “to see (and yes, talk) with dead loved ones represents your fears of losing them or your way of coping with the loss. You may want that last opportunity to say your final goodbyes to them.”

But for me, it’s more like hello again than goodbye forever. I feel the dead are just around, only in another dimension. At the office, we would sometimes feel a presence through a sudden whiff of strong perfume in the middle of presswork or balled paper shooting itself into the waste bin. I know somebody who has ESP and can see if there are spirits hovering around you. I don’t really like to know, but when I’m alone, there are times when I can feel it in my jittery bones that there’s somebody else in the room with me and I’m tempted to ask: Who ghost there?