Cez and I were the only ones sharing a room at this time, because Nala had gone on to the U.S. We left our room to hang out in our parents’ bedroom. When we got back, the radio was turned on. And we didn’t leave it on when we left. It was then that our mother reminded us that my deceased maternal grandmother’s birthday was near.

Blackouts occurred frequently when I was in fifth grade, so after school, my sisters, our mother, and I would usually hang out outside until it grew too dark to do so or until the lights came back on. So everyone else was downstairs when I went up to our bedroom. I was looking at pictures from my sister’s trip to Tagaytay with her friends when I distinctly heard a voice say my name. I fled the room immediately.

My brother-in-law Euge’s family–specifically his mother, his two sisters, and his niece–has a strange talent for seeing the supernatural. Writing about their ghostly encounters could take up several posts, but here are a few more recent tales.

His family went home to Aklan some time ago, with his young niece in tow. She fell sick in the first week of their stay, and his sister heard voices converging on the bed on which their niece was lying. Having had plenty of experience in this matter, she told them to bugger off if they won’t be able to help. The voices disappeared. She has been hearing strange voices in their old house since she was young. One day, after some voices spoke to her, she challenged them and told them she wasn’t afraid of them, at which point the window slammed shut on its own.

During college in California, she was walking on the grounds with her friends when she noticed a big black dog hunting something. The dog noticed that she was looking at it, then decided to go after her instead. No one else saw the dog.

Their niece is also showing a talent for this at such a young age. As they were leaving for the airport, everyone was waving to the people in the first floor, and yet she was waving at something in the second floor. Upon their return to California, she seemed to be reacting more to invisible things, most notably a tree in a nearby park, to which she refuses to go near.

I used to share a room with Cez and Nala. They both preferred to sleep with all the lights turned off, something I still cannot do to this day unless it’s 6 a.m. and the sky is lightening. Nala remembers a time when she woke up in the middle of the night and spotted a figure standing at the foot of Cez’s bed.

For a time after that happened, I had real trouble getting to sleep because I would open my eyes every two seconds to check my surroundings. That still happens to me every time I remember it, so it looks like I’ll be doing that again tonight.

I and my sisters Cez and Nala stayed up late one night watching Tatak Pilipino on TV; we were hanging out in the den. That episode was particularly interesting because it was about Philippine folktales and mythical creatures as well as some horror stories. A loud banging suddenly issued from the window. We never found out if it may have just been an animal or someone trying to scare us, but if the latter is correct, then who was it?

My mother seems to have a strange knack for otherworldly stuff, though thankfully nothing extremely pronounced. She hears the occasional disembodied voice, catches a glimpse of someone who shouldn’t be around from the corner of her eye.

An interesting thing happened to her when she was in third grade at what was then the Holy Ghost School. She and two of her friends were just hanging out in the garden during recess. The other two girls were catching a few winks, so only my mother heard something drop from the tree onto the grass with a faint exclamation. She turned to see that it was a duwende, or dwarf, clad in brown. The little fellow caught her looking at him, grinned, then disappeared.

In honor of Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, I figured it would be fun to write about some supposed-to-be-scary things I’ve heard in my life so far, or ones that have happened to me at least. I don’t have stories half as scary as those of other people’s, but you know, I’m happy about it. Otherwise, I’d be rendered insensible from fear.

When I was a child, I was pretty susceptible to usog. Who knows if usog is real or not, all I know is that it was pretty odd to develop some form of illness after being greeted by someone, which I did from time to time. When that happened, someone would be called to our house to perform some sort of ritual, which involved hilot and the use of a candle afterward. The man would drip wax from a lighted candle on a basin of water, and the shape that would appear would be the profile of whoever was responsible for inflicting usog on you (Digression: Really, Lynn? Inflicting usog? That’s awfully similar to “making kwento.”).

But before we met that man, I used to be taken to an old lady named Aling Juanita somewhere in Novaliches. One night when I was two years old–and I clearly remember being in the backseat of the car at night surrounded by my mother, one of our helpers, and Aling Juanita–I was taken to her because I was ill. I don’t remember exactly what happened, just that it was nighttime and it was spooky, and when you’re a kid, nighttime and darkness = spooky. But apparently, things were a lot stranger than that. My mother had spotted a tall dark figure concealed behind a nearby tree, a figure too large to be human. She asked our helper if he saw it as well and he nodded, telling her not to look directly at it under any circumstance. Whether it was just a freakishly tall person or something else entirely, they never attempted to find out.