I am not very easy to scare – in fact, I like watching horror movies, reading horror books and seeing haunted places. At the height of popularity of The Ring, I watched it alone at midnight, only to laugh at Sadako’s “scary” face.
But nothing scares me more than when things hit a little close to home. Here are some of my personal experiences with the paranormal.
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Our high school, like all schools, had its own resident ghost – a former student, who was supposedly raped and murdered at the premises (I tried to research on her a bit, as we all knew her name and what she looked like, but turned up empty. Maybe one of these days I will research her in detail). I have vague memories but I do recall one instance when she was said to have possessed one of the junior high school students (I was a freshman) in the middle of class. Now, I knew the girl. She and I rode on the same school service every day. But I never got to ask her if any of it was true.
Anyway, one afternoon, I, along with two of my friends, went to use the comfort rooms on the third floor of the high school building during a break. We would normally use the ones on the ground floor but it was crowded that time and since the library was on the third floor as well, we figured why not use it on our way to the library?
We each took a cubicle and after our business, went out one by one. Right as we were washing our hands while looking at the mirror, we smelled the oh-so-familiar smell of burning candle. We were alone on that part of the building and the windows were closed.
Needless to say, we ran as fast as we could from the place and none of us talked about it except to confirm that we all smelled the same thing.
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Our family has more or less a few members born with a third eye. My mama has hers, and I think I might have inherited a bit of it. I don’t see ghosts or spirits, or monsters for that matter, but I can sense when something good or bad is about to happen. Or tell whether a person is good or bad. As I was saying, it runs in the family, and I think I passed it on to Joey.
It happened the day after Ondoy, on a Sunday two years ago. I had to get my laptop from the office in case I can’t make it to the office the next day and I had Joey with me. I wasn’t planning on staying long, just to get my stuff, log on a bit, and then go home.
I had to use the comfort room for a few minutes and since the floor was empty save for the two of us, I took Joey inside and told him to stand in front of my cubicle.
While peeing, Joey said something that made my heart skip a beat.
Joey: Mom, can we go now? I’m scared.
Me: Why Joey? We just got here. And mommy’s still peeing.
Joey: Because there’s a boy here wanting to play with me and I’m scared.
Me: Where Joey? There’s no boy.
Joey: He’s here in the CR.
I hastily finished my business, grabbed my laptop without shutting it down, and we ran all the way to the elevator.
To give you a brief background: the building itself had long been rumored to be haunted. I had my own share of it when I was still a new-hire. I was working early at 7:30am, when I heard the keyboard in the next cubicle typing furiously. My workstation was at the entrance to the area so I would have seen anyone coming in; and I knew for a fact that I was the first one at the office that day so there couldn’t have been anyone in that cubicle behind me.
In any case, ever the curious person, I stood up and looked around. The typing stopped. But as soon as I sat down, it started again. I didn’t think much of it (as I said, I don’t scare easily) but a couple of office mates reported other types of haunting on that floor (the 19th).
Two office mates who were said to be clairvoyant had said that there are two ghosts – a mother and a son, going up and down floors. What scared me about this incident is that I never told Joey about ghosts prior to this; and he couldn’t have known about the “ghost son” who might very well be the boy who wanted to play with him.
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Back in college, I was always the first one up every day at my parents’ house. My classes were from 7am to 11am, Monday to Saturday, and to be there on time meant I had to wake up at 4:30am and leave by 5:30 am. It was no big deal for me as I had always been a morning person.
As a consequence of this, however, I was given the front bedroom, since it was closest to the living and dining rooms and I wouldn’t disrupt the others when I wake up and go about my morning preparations.
I loved my bedroom but at night, I never want to be the last one to go to sleep – it meant having to turn off all the lights in the living and dining rooms, locking up the glass doors and walking up to the other side of our house where the bedrooms are. It was the same thing in the morning – I had to be the one to turn on all the lights, open the doors, and everything.
The task itself was no big deal – what I didn’t like about it was that from my bedroom, I could see, on an almost daily basis, a woman in white looking at me from the glass doors. And every morning, while I am busy switching on all the lights, she would be there, looking at me, watching my every move and just gliding aimlessly around the house.
I never told anyone about this for two years, when my papa and I were driving off to work one morning. I casually told him, “Pa, may white lady sa bahay natin.”
My papa looked at me, and stopped at the nearest gas station. I asked him why, and he told me that my mama had said the exact same thing to him a couple of days ago. My mom and I never talked about it and after my papa heard about the white lady from the two of us on separate occasions without talking about it, he had no choice but to believe it.
It was a sort of validation for me as well, that I wasn’t just imagining things. After all, there was one other person who had seen the white lady.
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It's a Charmed Life 