Casper and me

I don’t like recalling ghostly experiences because many times I’m alone in my study room. Besides, their occurrences are unexplainable. I like to see what I get and touch what is real. Yet I must recall them (by editor’s request).

It’s 4:30 a.m. Enough silence and darkness to get me to run to where Peping is asleep. He’s literally behind me as I write this. I shouldn’t get scared, I repeat to myself as I recall how, in the early 1980s, I bought a beautifully irresistible four-poster bed from an antique house dealer in San Juan. It became Mikee’s possession. After some months she complained that she was restless at night and that she was having bad dreams. She could not express these dreams adequately at age 12. Then one day she told me, “I don’t like my bed. I don’t want to sleep on it anymore.” That’s when she began sleeping on my side of the bed and I slept on her bed.

After a few weeks I had a bad dream. In fact, it was a vision. A woman had come very close to my face and said to me, “Pananagutan.” Those who know me know I am a lousy Tagalog conversationalist. I admit that embarrasses me so how would I know the complicated word pananagutan?

After that black, intense shadow which slowly faded further and further away from me, I woke up very slowly with that woman repeating the word “pananagutan.” I knew I had had a paranormal experience. After digesting her message I jumped into bed next to Mikee, cold and afraid.

Very early the next morning I called up Baby Domondon who had a friend, Mrs. Gonzales, who was known to have a sixth sense. Feeling objects to know their history was her forte. From a touch she could acquire the vibrations from its former owners, now restless spirits.

She entered the room and felt the elegant, carved four-poster bed and said to Baby and myself: “A child of 12 years old died here, lying on this bed. The lady that approached you during the night was her mother.” In all probability aside from frightening me, she reminded me that I had an obligation. From then on, Mikee slept beside me — or it was more like I slept beside her — after buying a new bed. The haunted bed, as instructed by Mrs. Gonzales, was brought under the sun — the reason being that the sun kills the bad energy of a former owner. For three days I left the bed under the sun and then I gave it away as a present to... Baby Domondon. She put that bed in the quarters of her husband’s bodyguards and the apparition never returned again. Since that time, I place every antique item I buy under the sun for at least half a day to remove the sentiments of its previous owners. Let my experience be a reminder to antique lovers — which certainly does not describe my husband — that the sun is a great present that acts as a sanitizer.

Let me tell you another anecdote. I had bought at my favorite antique store in Baguio owned by Ed and Tessie a wooden platter used for mountain province rituals. I put it on a wooden stand in my house in Tarlac. My maid Inday dusted our decor daily and every time she got nearer the platter it seemed to have moved around even before she dusted it. Of course, I never believed the frightened Inday.

That incident just reminded me of coming home late in the evenings from work at the Province Capitolyo of Tarlac. Lulu Tanalgo, a member of my staff, and a home “border” with Bobby Blanco would run up the stairs ahead of me, because they saw me running ahead of them. Now that was totally impossible because I was following them from a distance away with Baby Antonio. That happened thrice and finally I asked Pete Cura to bring Jules from Banahaw to check my house for good and bad fairies. It turned out that I had a good white fairy. Whether she carried me upward ahead of my housemates or was the entity who frightened me in the walk-in closet one night, I wouldn’t know. But her very strong presence made me feel goose bumps, enough to make me run from the closet to the hallway and enter Baby and Bobby’s room, shut the door and lock it. Baby and Bobby asked me, “What happened?” and I said, “I just shut out the ghost from entering the room.” Hilarious, of course, because if the ghost was like Casper, he could go through the walls.

To my amazement Lulu called me one day from Baguio. She had a frightening experience that involved me. She had seen me combing my long hair sitting by my Baguio antique dresser. Lulu spoke to me, saying “Hello, Ma’am,” only to see me disappear. Did my desire to go to Baguio transport my spirit, even as my physical being remained behind in Manila? It had happened, after all, in my own house in Dasmariñas Village. My yaya Liezl spoke to me while I was walking by the bar but I was not at home. Another time, Yaya Excel saw me walking in the garden when I was actually in my room. I wish Jimmy Licauco would be reading my column so he could explain to me what that was all about.

Now lastly, I’m a stickler for deadlines or just a person of habit. I wake up at 4:30 a.m. because I have to be at school by 7:30 a.m. That’s fine by me; I arrange my papers for the day or rearrange my closet and drawers, as I did on this one particular morning. As an hour had gone by it was time to write. I sat at my desk in a room I call my “computer room.” Why? I had two computers before and now none at all because I transferred them to a government office in need of some, while waiting for our budget. Anyway I sat facing the hallway and very often for days and months I’d see shadows pass by, to and fro. After a while it wasn’t just my eyes that were in distress. So I’d say a prayer after it had happened again, muttering “I’m not afraid” (of course, I actually was!). I even added, “I challenge you… I welcome you… Don’t frighten me…”

China’s friend Kakay had come to the house during those days of acting and singing for both girls. They were performing in stage plays — Alikabok and Ibon Adarna. She and China were sitting in China’s room chatting when Kakay opened the door to go to our hallway. She said, “Ai, there’s a man wearing an Americana and tie standing in your hallway.” To which China said, “No way. Dad’s friends don’t wear outfits like that. What would a stranger be doing at the main house beside the master bedroom?” “No one had entered the house,” the maid said.

On another occasion my secretary Ashlyn was waiting for her car at our front door with a man who was there ahead of her on her right in a coat and tie. When she stepped downward to leave, the man beside her had disappeared. She ran down the driveway, called my secretary Tony from her car and I promptly stuck it on a nail set in the cement wall and put a rosary to hang from it. I knew it was Kakay’s man.

Finally I decided to call a medium who could cleanse the house of spirits, after prodding by Annie Andanar. Frank Regis arrived before 6 p.m., surveyed the house inside and out and set up his table with candles and salt and matches over a pure white cloth and got going — praying, moving about the garden to where Mai-Mai as a little girl used to smile and laugh upward to someone in the vines who was playing with her. Who? We’ll never know who. Regis left by 9 p.m. after blessing the house, even all the surrounding grounds. He left us with instructions to light a candle and incense every day at 6 p.m. He prepared salt on ceramic dishes for every room after blessing the salt with his prayers; I’ve kept the dishes untouched since two years ago.

I’ve also had words of prayer from Mikee’s room written down by Jules of Mt. Banahaw to ward off evil black fairies, because he didn’t receive good vibes from that room. It’s the last one near plants and flowers hardly used now. Here are the words:

“YEHOWAH… YAHWEH… SATOR… ARETO… TENET… OTERA… ROTAS… ROPET +++”

All set down next to the novena of the Sacred Heart! You know folk religious practitioners? That’s me. And Catholic religious practitioners? That’s me, too.