PREMONITION

As kids we were carefree, as you would expect of kids. Perhaps careless is the right word. We would put a glass filled with water or juice at the edge of the table or near the bed or some place where it was in danger of falling or spilling. My Tita, who lived with us when she was single, would often utter, “If you don’t remove that glass from there right away, it is going to fall and break.” We would often not obey pretending we didn’t hear her only to be proven she was right. If it was not a glass that broke, it could be something that fell and hit the head, or a plate that broke, or food that got wasted on the floor, something like that. She would always sense that something was coming or going to happen.

When we were older, I guess her senses graduated to some extent that she would dream of something that would take place in the future.

The first thing that comes to mind was during the early 1980’s when she dreamt of my uncle, her brother. In the dream she saw my uncle’s red car, slowly being driven down our road. She couldn’t see who was driving though she assumed it was my uncle, since he drove in it everyday. Behind the car was my Grandma, pacing slowly, with my uncle’s wife and two young kids in tow. She said it was just like a funeral procession.

Two months later, my uncle would die of a stroke during a basketball game with his officemates. He was suffering from high blood pressure. Basketball was a regular Friday activity of their office. That night was especially exciting. Like the rest of his officemates, he was cheering loudly and jumping when he suddenly slumped dead on the ground holding his aching heart. It was a tragic blow, for his wife wasn’t there when it happened.

Another dream she had was of my Grandpa’s cousin. In her dream she saw a big fire eating up their huge white house. After two years, the bank they owned did go up in smoke, but not literally. The bank went bankrupt and shut down.

One death dream she had was involving her officemate. She saw her standing behind a black cloth that was placed in the woman’s living room. The living room was empty, except for the black cloth that hang completely covering the wall. After I don’t know how long, I forgot, her officemate’s mother would pass away.

Another event that would materialize after a series of “two somethings” was the crime perpetuated on my sister. After the devastating earthquake of 1990 that shook Baguio and brought it to its knees, crime rate shoot up due to 90% of shops, offices and establishments closing down literally. Two days before it happened, my Tita woke up at dawn because of the disturbing dream she had of my sister. That night she didn’t come home because she had gone to her friend’s birthday party. She spent the night there. When she came home the next morning, my parents and my Tita wouldn’t quit asking her what bad thing happened to her the previous night. She kept on saying nothing happened, and that she had a great party.

Two nights later, when she came home after work, she was followed by two hoodlums right from the moment she came out of her office until she reached the Cathedral Church. It was really dark in that portion of the street. They took their chance by walking alongside her, one on each side and pulling her into the dark, with a knife pointed at her side. In the dark they got everything she had except for the umbrella. She was lucky they set her free. When she arrived home, I thought it was funny that she was holding her closed umbrella, while the rain kept on pouring. She was rain-soaked and her clothes were dripping. She didn’t tell my parents at once, she immediately locked herself in the room and asked me for a dipper of water to clean up her wound. They set her free because she lied that her baby was waiting for her at home, when she was actually single and childless. She had sustained a moderately deep cut on her neck. The scar still remains to this day.

There was one more revealing vision she had sometime in 2007 but has not yet taken place. It’s been 2 years and counting…. I wouldn’t delay writing about it as soon as it materializes. Log in next week for more encounters of the third kind.

 

KARMA? Another Story

May kasabihan, “Matagal mamatay ang masamang damo”. But I guess this saying doesn’t always hold true.

When my Dad was younger, he once worked as an agent for some company. Unfortunately, the company flapped. To his surprise, one of the company’s clients, whom he himself introduced to the company as an agent, filed a legal suit against him for the reason that my Dad was the instrument who made him join the company. The client was running after his investments from the company since it has filed for bankruptcy.

My Dad was a victim, just as he was. He was out of job. He was just working for the company. He didn’t own the company. He was not liable for its downfall.

Anyway, this client was barking at the wrong tree. He wouldn’t listen to reason and even got my Dad arrested. He really gave him a hard time but of course for my Dad, justice prevailed.

Some years flew by, and one day this client was in the front page of the local daily news. He had died of a gunshot wound. He was shot from the back while seated in a waiting jeepney. The reason: he was wearing a jacket which he had borrowed from somebody whom he didn’t know had angered another person – the shooter. The shooter thought the client was the real owner of the jacket and needed to settle a score with him by shooting him. He wore the jacket at the wrong time, at the wrong place. It was somewhat an accidental shooting since the bullet was not intended for him in the first place.

It’s amazing how life plays out. Coincidence? Let’s see. Check out my next story and then tell me if this is coincidence.

KARMA?

Another event involving my Dad in his workplace took shape sometime when we were older. One of his officemates kept on breathing down orders on his neck in a manner that was somehow degrading. He was my Dad’s immediate boss. When he called my Dad, he wouldn’t even call out his name, he would say, “hoy” or something like that. He was eaten by jealousy for the main boss kept on praising out loud, his appreciation for my Dad’s commendable work output, to his superior’s disgust.

My dad was pissed off but he dared not say a word nor lift his hand in retaliation to this man, being his next-in-line boss. It was tough, he would say, to be treated in humiliation.

Eleven months would pass before my Dad would finally be able to work in peace. He wondered why his immediate boss didn’t report to work for quite some time. Then he heard that he was involved in a car accident. His car flew off a cliff while he was driving home one night. He just came from a party and was quite intoxicated. His accident rendered him paralyzed down the waist. He was bedridden and out of work.

It was a sad story but honestly calming to some extent.

It is funny (and understandable) how older people, I mean really old, would first look at the obituary section of the newspaper every time they got hold of one. Well, a number of those who had passed away, my dad would mention, when he recognized one, did him wrong in the past. Although their stories are not so interesting as the ones I had written, it still busts that saying that “matagal mamatay ang masasamang damo.”

One bully person who died of stroke in his old age was my Dad’s former boss. During the time when we were constructing our house, my Dad went to a government office to file a loan so he can buy more construction materials. To his surprise he found out that their monthly office contributions from their salaries were not being remitted to the office although it was stated as a deduction in the salary slip. The boss pocketed the money. When he found that out, they had a shouting engagement.

I guess, everything has its own time…

Now my Dad lives in California with my Mom and my sister. 

 

Huling Paalam

A not-so-close encounter happened exactly during the time when my paternal grandfather died. My grandfather was 96 when he died. It was the year 1996. He was bed-ridden and refused to eat for 10 days prior to his death. It seemed that his spirit wanted to move on already but his body didn’t. Anyway, he died in his sleep around dawn. When my Dad came up to his room in the morning with breakfast, he discovered that my grandfather’s body was cold, stiff and purple already. He didn’t die of any ailment; he just died of old age.

A day before my Grandpa died, my sister went vacationing at a beach resort in La Union. Early in the morning, about 4 am, they were disturbed by persistent knocking at their beach hut. Thinking how crazy it was for anyone to disturb their sleep at an unholy hour, they ignored it thinking the person would just give up and go away. But they were wrong. The knocking didn’t stop until they finally opened the door only to find no one.

Also at dawn, my eldest sister who lived in another place, woke up thinking she heard someone outside knocking. She peeked out the window but nobody was there. That was the time my Grandpa was dying. His spirit went roaming before he went. He was bidding them goodbye. As for me, I was the last one he saw the day before. After he saw me, he called out for my brother.

After he died, Dad had his room repainted because on the wall where his head would rest ever single day while he sat on his bed, was the shape of his head.

Have you had this experience? Or heard a similar story? Tell me about it.

Messages From The Spirit Guides - The Intruders

The same thing would repeat itself in 2007. Through the summer, my parents would often sleep with their windows open, especially when the temperatures rose. This time, with all of us grown and living separately, they had the house to themselves.

Although the windows had no protective bars, their room was upstairs so they didn’t have second thoughts about the safety of leaving the windows open at night.

It is a known fact that thieves and robbers would stroll at night on escapade especially on hot evenings, more often than on cold rainy nights. And this was one of those nights.

At about 4 am, a voice told my Dad to wake up. When he opened his eyes, he was alarmed to see 3 figures on the roof outside their window. The men were slowly and silently creeping up, one man clutching the opened window and almost setting his foot on the window sill. Immediately he stood up and shouted loudly at them. My Mom woke up instantly. The three men suddenly leaped from the roof and went flying down the street. They all started running down the road and disappeared into the night. That was about a 15 foot leap! It was amazing they didn’t break their tendons. It seems they have developed the expertise of high jump being who they are and doing what they do.

It was a frightening experience since we never would have guessed what tragedy might have taken place that night, had it been for that voice. It sends up a warm feeling inside knowing that someone’s looking out there for us. 

Messages From The Spirit Guides - The Candle

This one didn’t happen to me. It was my Dad’s experience. It was the early 80’s when the electric company’s service wasn’t so good that ever so often, the city would experience blackouts mostly lasting through the night. It was one of those familiar days. All 7 of us would spend the evening seated together around the table playing scrabble by candle light, munching on fritters that my mom used to make served in papers rolled up like ice cream cones.

That specific evening, my sister and I didn’t want to wrap up the night yet. We chatted through nightfall until we fell asleep. I used to share a room with her on the second floor. My parents’ bedroom was on the first floor. My siblings stayed in the other 2 rooms upstairs.

By 2 am, we were sound asleep when there was a scuffle in our room. I was shocked to see my Dad fighting fire with a smoking blanket in hand. Suddenly I remembered, we left our candle burning! The candle was sitting on a round stool that was beside the bed near my sister’s pillow. The stool was on fire! The stool caught fire easily since it was wooden. My Dad came to our rescue just in time before the flame spread.

My dad sleeps like a log to such extent that his heavy snoring, heard upstairs doesn’t wake him up a bit. He said a voice woke him up and told him to check our room.

To this day that wooden stool with its burned top is a reminder of that incredible night. 

The Ghosts of the Subic Hotels

I never really believed in ghosts until I had my firsthand experience.
It was the year 2001 when I was employed as call center agent in a US-based company in Subic, Zambales. All the agents were girls and we stayed by two’s in hotel suites in one of the pre-war buildings that were renovated into hotels. We didn’t have prior knowledge about the history of the hotel since we all hailed from other cities.

My suite, C148, had 2 double beds, a ceiling fan, carpeted floors, a T & B and huge draperies that touched the floor. The hotel was a two-storey elongated structure. The entrance led to a long carpeted hallway, with rooms on either side. But before reaching the rooms, the head of the hallway had a wall-to-wall glass panel window to the right, overlooking the endless greenery in the garden bordering the hotel. To the left was a brown door that concealed a cabinet where blankets and bed sheets were neatly stored.

Always engrossed in our chatter, I never really gave much thought as to why every time we passed that brown cabinet, we felt a draft. There were neither windows nor air-conditioning facility in the hallway but there was a chill about it. The temperature noticeably dropped in that section of the hallway. Then five steps away, the temperature jacked up, which should have been expected all throughout the broad extent of the windowless hallway.

On my first night there in November 2001 at around 10 pm, I came out the hallway to refill my jug. We could request water delivered to our rooms but I couldn’t hold my thirst. There was a water dispenser sitting at the end of the hallway. The night air felt sticky. Subic sits right by the sea, so it’s really a hot place. But on that warm night, after filling up three fourths of my jug, I suddenly felt scared. The feeling crept up my spine. I felt a cold sensation surround me. It was hair-raising because I was sure that someone I couldn’t see was with me. I didn’t bother filling up my jug anymore and briskly walked back to my room. I never talked about that incident. It didn’t bother me anyway.

After some days, we found out from an old timer, a cab driver for the Freeport, that the hotel building where we were staying in used to be the headquarters of American soldiers during the Second World War. He said wounded American soldiers died there too. He even told us about shuttle bus drivers who would pick up a lady in a white dress near the chapel late at night. When the drivers would glance at their rear view mirror, she wasn’t there anymore.

The weeks passed uneventfully and we have almost forgotten about it until the holidays arrived. We were all packed and seated in the van that would take us back home. Home was 7 hours away. We went on our way and as the night wore on, our driver, a resident of the locality, began telling us ghost experiences he knew about in the hotel area where we were staying. We all got really scared and suddenly everyone started sharing their ghostly experience in the hotel building. So I wasn’t the only one. Almost everyone had a story to tell, though we all brushed it aside as some unusual experience. It was only then that we found out that we were all being haunted without giving much thought about it.

In one of the girls’ rooms, a man’s voice would wake them up in the wee hours of the morning. The rough sounding voice would shout at their ears as if they were soldiers being woken up by their officer. One of the girls would turn the TV volume up at dawn to drown out the eerie voice. They said they could hear the sound of rubber boots walking on the carpeted floor in their room. In another room, they would hear disturbing knocks at their door at night. No one would be there when they answered the door. They just dismissed it as a prank from the other girls.

Once in a while, we would have swimming pool parties sponsored by our office. Once during one of those pool parties, one of the girls retired early. She was alone in their room taking a bath when she thought her roommate called her 3 times. She kept telling her that she was almost done. When she came out, she was surprised to find herself alone in the room. Her roommate was still at the pool. She was talking to someone else!

One girl related that one night when she was alone in the room taking a bath, the toilet bowl flushed by itself! Just imagine how stiff that flush handle is, that it couldn’t possibly have flushed itself. That would mean that the ghost was in the bathroom with her! They were just separated by the rolling glass door of the bathtub. Screaming, she ran out the hallway with only a bath towel draped around her waist.

In the hallway where I first had my experience, one of the girls said she felt a cold breeze when she walked in front of the empty small stock room, like I always did. She wondered where the breeze came from. The hair on her spine stood up.

Once, when I came out of our building to go to another building at night, I suddenly felt the urge to run. My hair stood up! I just walked a little faster and pretended that I didn’t care because I did not want to acknowledge the feeling that someone was following me although I was alone.

One of my co-employees, an African-American Filipino and a woman of age, had a third eye. She was a psychic of some sort. When everyone was going back to their rooms during lunch break, she announced that a black figure was standing at some corner of the hotel. There was a pandemonium. Everyone started screaming and ran downstairs.

Another one told of a woman’s voice they heard echoing the end of the Christmas song they were rehearsing for our Christmas program. The hall wherein they were polishing their songs, was housed in another pre-war building, just adjacent our hotel suite. It was the song leader who screamed first before everyone followed suit and ran out the building. She had her microphone OFF and was definitely startled to hear the last phrase of the song ring out of the speakers.

Being call center agents meant working in the wee hours of the morning. Our shift began at 4 am. We had to be up by 3 am or earlier. The workplace was another 6-minute walk to another building. Walking in the dark, we always went in groups. But one time, one of the girls had to return to her suite to collect her mobile phone. She came back to the calling center all white and pale and running after her breath. She started running in the dark when she felt someone was following her like I did. But she was alone.

My final encounter with the 3rd kind occurred on my last day at the suite. I had just handed over my resignation letter and went back to the suite to pack up my stuff. All the girls were at work, so that left me completely alone in the entire hotel building. I wasn’t afraid at all, since my mind was preoccupied. Haunting was the least on my mind. As I stepped out the door, I placed down my suitcase on the hallway and preceded back into the room to double check my bedside drawers if I had indeed emptied it. As I headed for the drawers, immediately, the door slammed shut! It did not just close, it locked itself! Something outside just locked me inside my room! One has to pull the door hard enough to lock it. Chills ran down my spine. Our shutters have forever remained closed since we had a ceiling fan, which I had just turned OFF. There was no wind coming from the windows or even from the hallway which was windowless. I figured the ghost didn’t want me to leave. Gathering all the courage that was left of me, I stepped out the hallway, walked briskly toward the entrance with my suitcase in hand. I cannot deny that a cold sensation was walking with me all throughout the hallway! It was the scariest. My only consolation was that I couldn’t see who or what was walking with me. If I did, maybe I had fainted. The temperature at the hallway only got warm after I reached the glass window. I felt great relief coming out of the building. I guess, it knew that I was leaving and never coming back and wanted to keep me there. It was just after 12 noon.

From what I had experienced, I think it or they are not violent spirits but according to the psychic woman, the spirits that roam the second floor, were they were staying, are quite violent. There was one room where upon entering, a heavy feeling would set in. It was very uncomfortable. And a smell would greet you, no matter how well kept and well made it was.

That hotel chain in that part of Subic has been sold by the owners. They have moved on but the ghosts still lurk the hallways. I wonder what’s keeping them from moving on. But I think I know why one by one the girls resigned….

People believe that before a person died, there were signs. They would make “bilin” or would suddenly become very “maasikaso”. My next story happened when my Grandpa died in 1995. He didn’t spell his last wishes or spend time with us since he was already in his deathbed; he did it while he was dying! I will be posting it next week.

Want to know what ghosts must linger the hallways and rooms of those Hotels in Subic? Here’s Subic Bay's Wartime History

In the 17th Century, Spanish naval forces began to use Subic Bay to safeguard their holdings in the Philippines. The Spanish held the place for over a century until the Spanish fleet's defeat at Manila Bay in 1898. As soon as the Americans took possession of Subic Bay, they found the place strategically important for food and fuel for the fleet. The sudden bombing of Pearl Harbor and the invasion of the Philippines by the Japanese brought a swift end to the good times in Olongapo. In the latter part of 1942, the Japanese Imperial forces occupied Olongapo. Finally, on the morning of January 29, 1945, the people of Olongapo awoke to find hundreds of American planes in the sky. Hours later, Subic Bay filled with American vessels, and the American troops landed without resistance. As soon as the enemy left, the Americans recognized the plight of the people of Olongapo and began to help them in all posssible ways. Employment boomed and by 1946, there were 10,000 Filipinos employed in the various Naval activities. Stores were reopened, roads rebuilt and housing projects initiated and the city and Naval Base were on the way to becoming the economic and military force it continued to be through the 1990's.
--Taken from the "Souvenir Handbook of Olongapo in Subic Bay" (1956) by Mariano L. Bada, PNS, BSE, former 1st Lieutenant, Olongapo Police and Leonardo DelRosario, published by DelRosario Press, Olongapo

Who knows how many of them died in Subic?