Tales from the crypt

In the age of the Internet, space exploration and cloning, people still believe in ghosts.

This is the season of swapping ghost stories, when you don’t feel sheepish about disclosing personal close encounters with the supernatural.

I guess the belief in the existence of ghosts provides some sort of comfort – the thought that a part of us lives on, perhaps forever, after our mortal bodies revert to dust. The idea also opens the possibility that we would eventually be reunited with our dearly departed, that there’s life after death.

Ghosts are expected by Pinoys particularly when the death is violent or sudden, from a stroke or car accident for example.

At one transportation office branch in Metro Manila, people are still talking about one of their supervisors who was seen by many people standing outside the door of his office at the time that he was already dead in a hospital. The only strange thing about the man at the office, it is said, is that he did not respond to any of those who talked to him.

Stories abound in this country of people talking on the phone with someone who has just died or seeing at the office a fellow employee, unaware that the person is lying dead several kilometers away in a hospital morgue.

Who knows what’s behind those supernatural manifestations? We still don’t even know for sure what happens when we sleep. Why do we chat with the dead in our dreams?

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In the spirit of the season, someone asked me yesterday if I ever encountered ghosts when I was a reporter covering offices housed in the old buildings of Manila.

I told her we often heard loud footsteps in empty rooms at Malacañang (no kidding), and old hands at the Palace told us that former presidents haunted its corridors and restrooms.

But eerie footsteps don’t scare me. All they do is make me wonder if I’ve had enough sleep. My scariest encounter as a Malacañang reporter was not with any ghost but with a rat bigger than a cat at the press center. After eyeing each other for a few seconds, we both jumped away from each other.

Together with the belief in ghosts, there’s the Pinoy belief in animist spirits. When we see certain mounds of earth, we have to ask the resident nuno sa punso for permission to pass through if we don’t want strange pains to afflict us. Since the mounds could be anthills, or worse, dried up carabao dung, it could actually be prudent to steer clear of them.

Mr. Brown, the kapre or half-man, half-horse spirit that lives in the old balete tree in front of the main Palace entrance, supposedly manifests his presence through tobacco smoke. These days, of course, it’s hard to tell if the smoke is coming from the kapre or the president of the republic. Mr. Brown never manifested his presence to me.

Many Filipinos still believe in tree spirits. The balete (banyan or ficus), which can be quite scary with its aerial roots strangling its host plant, is notorious in this country for hosting spirits. The rubber tree, also with aerial roots, and mango tree are also believed to be favorites of spirits.

I know Filipinos, including those in their 20s who are thoroughly steeped in modern ways, who still go to herbalists or arbularyo to get rid of stomach ache or fever that they develop after pruning small balete trees without the resident spirit’s by-your-leave. The offended spirits are placated with an offering of chicken, for example, which naturally goes directly to the arbularyo’s cooking pot.

Someone I know developed a throat infection that she initially blamed on the spirit in a mango tree. When the infection felt like a fishbone snagged in her throat, she made a cat run its claws lightly through her throat – another Pinoy superstition. I guess it didn’t work, because recently she finally underwent a tonsillectomy.

But these are spirits that inhabit the planet. What about those who are supposedly no longer of this world, who are supposed to be resting in peace?

I wouldn’t know because I have not felt the unearthly presence of my dearly departed, even with my father’s ashes right inside my house.

Our newspaper has lost all of its founding members – Betty Go Belmonte, Max Soliven and Art Borjal – plus two of our top columnists – Teddy Benigno and my former UP journalism professor Louie Beltran. We’ve also lost several colleagues at the newsdesk. None of them has haunted the office.

Maybe you need special talent to see dead people. I like to say that ghosts are scared of me.

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The road to ashes to ashes is the scarier part. Getting seriously ill is so expensive in this country that one look at your hospital bill could send you back from the recuperating room to the intensive care unit. A major surgery for a life-threatening illness and a month in the ICU could wipe away a middle-income patient’s life savings.

Those who qualify for charity in state-run hospitals have to line up even in the emergency room to wait for someone to attend to them. It’s not unusual to see patients spilling out into the sidewalk at the Philippine General Hospital and other government health centers.

For millions of Filipinos, surviving a life-threatening affliction is a luxury beyond their reach. So they turn to arbularyos for treatment, and animist spirits for help.

A Pinoy belief is that if an ailing person reports seeing his dearly departed visiting regularly, it’s a sure indication of approaching death. It proved true in the case of my father, an aunt, an uncle, and a neighbor.

The thought is more comforting than scary – that in our passing, there will be loved ones on the other side to hold our hand and guide us into another existence.