Are ghosts for real?

My late dad Frank Mayor didn’t believe in ghosts and never had ghost stories to share. My mom Sonia, whose own father was a liberal thinker, had no kapres and aswangs in her treasure trove of bedtime stories. The only ghost we were familiar with was Casper.

When my dad was assigned to Legazpi City in Albay in the course of his work for Elizalde International, we lived for a year in a Spanish colonial house in Daraga that resembled that of Jose Rizal’s family home in Calamba. Dad, who arrived ahead of us in Daraga, stayed alone at night in that house and always woke up in one piece the next day.

When we joined him in that old house, my mom, sisters and I reveled in its charm — the foot-wide narra wooden planks on the floor, the ornate carved partitions, the barandillas and the capiz windows. But neighbors would whisper, and soon our maids were telling us that the house was “haunted.”

One night, while my dad was out of town, my mom started hearing someone strumming the guitar from my bedroom, where the original owner of the house was said to have died. It couldn’t have been me strumming the guitar, as all her daughters were around her in the dining table. The strumming would stop, then commence again — a haunting sound, indeed.

My mom, truly her father’s daughter, then proceeded to my room to face the musical ghost. And lo and behold, she entered the room just as the willowy white curtains, blown by the wind, stroked the guitar that was hanging on a nail right beside the window! So every time the wind blew, we had a strings ensemble playing!

“See!” my mom victoriously told her quivering daughters. “It was just the wind!”

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But we were not immune to the spine-tingling ghost stories. On summers in my mom’s hometown of Bongabon, Oriental Mindoro, my older male cousins would drive my Uncle Pete’s Ford Fiera and take us to the kampo santo and turn off the headlights till our screams became unbearable to their ears.

As I grew older, I realized that ghost stories weren’t just for children. Adults actually believed in ghosts, and those who claim to have a “sixth” sense or a “third” eye actually feel and see them.

Actually, I noticed most ghost stories revolve around sightings of a woman.

A colleague, who I highly respect, recalls his university days, when the landlady of his boarding house gave him the spare key to his bedroom. There was nothing scary about that — till he found out later on that the landlady died an hour before she gave him the spare key!

A relative, on the other hand, used to live in an apartment where neighbors would see through the curtains a lady with flowing black hair and a pair of shears in one hand. They would see her while he was at work. He just dismissed their talk, till he woke up one day with the shears on the pillow beside him!

He scooted out of the apartment in an instant, never to return.

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A successful PR executive based in Makati is known for her active “third” eye. “Do you see dead people?” I asked her yesterday.

“All the time,” she answered. She believes dead people roam among the living, “either because they have some unfinished business on earth or if they still have a mission to fulfill.” She also believes that some of them are “territorial” and believes they “own” certain places.

She says that there is this certain building in Metro Manila where she always sees people whose faces are covered in blood. She says she sees these bloodstained faces especially when she rides the elevators. It is possible, she says, that there was a bloody accident in the building and the victims still haunt the place. I often pass by this building and it looks like a bright and bustling place with successful tenants.

This PR executive always carries with her a medallion of St. Benedict, “the fighter of all evils.”

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If most ghost stories scare the wits out of you, this one will warm your heart. Top university official and PR guru Bob Zozobrado’s ghost story is that of a loving “ghost.”

“My mom continues to watch over me until now. Since she knows I’m scared of ghosts, she appeared to me only once, gently roused me from sleep in the middle of the night and told me to check my lanai. This was at the height of a typhoon hitting Manila. Sure enough, the decor was in disarray and the sofa was wet, which my maid and I immediately took care of. When she was still alive, she would call me from wherever she was (New York or Cebu) every time she learns of a typhoon hitting Manila,” shares Bob.

“These days, I still feel her presence, smell her perfume, every time I ask her for help. Just last week, at the start of a cruise, I asked her to intercede for me with Mama Mary for a smooth sail because I heard the open sea is quite rough this time of the year.  Everything went well. On our last day, while I was finishing my breakfast alone, in the ship’s dining hall, an old Chinese lady decided to share my table. She was using the same perfume as my mom, so I looked up! She was the spitting image of my mom! I had to take her picture and told her why.”

Then Bob hurried back to his cabin because he needed a private place to cry! 

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Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in souls, and I believe some of them don’t leave earth right away (I was told by a senior respected doctor that some ghosts are beings who haven’t realized they have already passed on to the next life). I also believe some of them come back, perhaps in a dream. The Bible talks of the significance of dreams.

In an appendix entitled “Is There Such a Thing as Wandering Souls?” in his book Exorcist, Fr. Jose Francisco Syquia writes that if there were indeed “wandering souls,” Jesus and His Church “would absolutely have a ministry for these souls since they are souls totally in need of compassion and mercy.”

But Father Syquia says the Church has never had a ministry for “wandering souls,” only for  the “poor souls in purgatory.”

“Second, at death, when a soul leaves the material body, the reality is that the person becomes much more aware and intelligent of what is real and now sees things as they truly are; this allows him to see clearly where he is supposed to go to heaven, hell or purgatory.” Therefore the  good priest says the theory of the wandering souls is “false.”

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Sometimes, I wonder. Are we who think we are alive, “ghosts” — and the beings we think of as “ghosts,” the ones who are truly alive? (Remember the Nicole Kidman starrer, The Others?)

Boooo! And a Happy Halloween to you all!

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)