Supernatural

I see dead people.

Well, not really. At least, not in the way the character of Haley Joel Osment did in the film, The Sixth Sense. But I am sorta attuned to sense the unseen, so to speak. Or it could be that I just have an over-active imagination. It all depends on how you look at it.

I do not have a lot of ghost stories to share; I’d rather call them unexplained stories because most of the time the stories didn’t involve ‘ghosts’ or something like them. They’re just difficult to explain. I could tell that when I was 9 years old I saw the ghost of a classmate’s dead relative when we went to her house. Of course, when I saw her I didn’t know what she was, I just thought she’s my classmate’s grandmother so I greeted her politely and then though nothing of it. Until I got sick hours later.

Other than that, almost nothing. I could say that when I was in university, when I started coming home late due to school or due to a newly-acquired skill in gallivanting, our household help–even my mother, would see me coming home in the afternoon, saying nothing and going straight to my room. Then they would be astonished to see me come home between 7-8PM. They’d ask me where I came from and when I did they’d say that they have seen me come home hours before. This happened many times.

Or, I could tell you that in our main house, which belonged to my family even before World War II, whenever I’d come home really late (like, 1AM and beyond), I would see a man standing under the makopa (rose apple) tree that stood between the gate and the entrance to our house. The first few sightings frightened me a bit but this diminished as time went by. In fact, last year, when I was on holiday in Manila, I saw him again when I went home at 3AM from a night-out with friends.

When I moved to Cambodia, I imagined a city full of ghosts by virtue of its violent past. But my first year of stay was uneventful in that respect. I lived with Navuth, my Cambodian friend, for more than 16 weeks in a 3-storey building that was over 30 years old and I sensed nothing. I heard a few ghost stories from Ted, a Filipino friend I met in this country but also sensed nothing when I stayed in his flat for almost 8 weeks. When I moved to my new flat, however, I sensed something, but saw and heard nothing. It was all that: feelings.

Three months into 2005, as I was battling depression over a relationship that had gone awry, I began having recurring dreams of a Cambodian man befriending me. It got to a point where all I wanted to do was dream so I could continue my conversation with this man. I was only roused from this stupor when he began to subtly suggest the virtues of committing suicide. I promptly looked for another flat and quickly moved into it when a suitable one became available.

A year into moving to my new flat, after my back-to-back trip to Indonesia and India, I began to get sickly. It was also during this time that I began dreaming again of 7 ‘people’, led by a little girl who kept on offering me relief from my pain in exchange for me allowing them to ‘borrow’ my room-mate M for a while. They did not frighten me in any way. Bu the borrowing thing bothered M, who had just arrived from Manila. When I told this to Kimrun, he suggested we perform a ritual to get rid of these spirits–as he called them. 

He bought 7 kinds of fruit, put them on a round tray,  and placed it on the center of the flat. He then lit a couple of white candles and 7 sticks of incense. He said we should pray together and I followed his lead. Right after the ritual, there was a perceptible positive vibe within the house. That very night, I didn’t dream of my 7. And I hadn’t since. Health-wise, I began to feel better also.

I know, there is probably some rational explanation for what really happened in these situations. But I don’t really care. My nights became peaceful and I felt well again. 

Weeks ago, N and I were walking home from a friend’s house a couple of blocks away from my own flat. It was almost 3 in the morning. We stopped in front of the building where my flat is and we were waiting for N’s ride home. We were gaily talking; N’s eyes were on the streets while mine were wandering. I looked at the rooftop of my building and saw a lady dressed in white, with long hair parted in the middle, and huge eyes that glared at me. Unsure of what I’d seen, I turned to N and asked him to look up and when we did, there was nobody there. N thought I was joking but I became really frightened. N ended up spending the night because I didn’t want to sleep alone.

I told this story to Kimrun and we performed the ritual again. But contrary to the first time we did it, I didn’t feel any positive vibe after the last incense was extinguished (pictured below). I decided not to tell Kimrun and began considering other possibilities.

I examined the building and I realized that people were living on the top-most floor, mainly my landlady’s household help. Then I realized that my landlady has one helper who has round eyes and long hair that she keeps in a tight bun all the time. She’s pleasant enough, always smiling at me when we cross paths. It was highly possible that this was the lady I saw. This was probably why the ritual didn’t do anything; because there was no supernatural things to deal with. The more I accepted this explanation, the less my fear got.

In this particular instance, I found a rational (physical) explanation. As for my other experiences, well, they remain to be unexplained.