UNEXPLAINABLE EVENTS

Victorio Costes

Our house in Asingan is already very old, built around 1920 and never had been completely rebuilt. About 2 generations have lived and died here, first my grandparents then followed by my parents 50 years later. I left it in 1975 when I came with my family to Toronto. It was 1n 1988 when I took my first holiday to Asingan together with my family to visit my parents who were still alive by then. In 1990, my wife and I came home together by ourselves. It was on our first night in Asingan in this trip that I encountered an eeire event.

We slept in the first floor ( silong ) of the house on this night. My sister Ester and family were in the adjoining room. At around the middle of the night, I was awaken by the sound of slippers walking around our bed. The lights were off, but a long string connected to a switch on the bulb's socket was hanging right beside me. The sound of the slippers going round the bed continued after I was completely awake. I wanted to see who it was, so I pulled the string to switch on the light. There was no one there. Not even were there slippers on the floor. When I asked my wife the next morning, she said "Yes I heard it too," but she is a sound sleeper, unlike me.

The very first sound ( or voice ) I heard in our property in Asingan took place when I was still in the Elementary grades. At that time, the Sampaga studio owned by my brother in law was not still there. It was a garden made up of wild plants or vegetables. Sometimes the saluyot plants there grow very high and you can hide there if you like. Plus there was this old acacia tree with a vine wrapped around its trunk. The vine looked like a big snake. I was inside the garden, starting to dig a plot for a vegetable garden..Then I heard a voice that said: "What are you doing?" It was a male voice, very deep and pleasant to hear, like a radio announcer's. When I turned around, there was nobody there. I stopped my digging and went back to the house. I told my family about it but they said I was just imagining things.

The same voice sounded to me a second time. This time it was the eve of the town fiesta. Everybody went to the plaza except me. I was in my bedroom browsing over some magazines. Again I heard a voice saying "What are you doing?". I looked around. I was the only one in the room. It was the same voice which I heard in the garden about a few months back. Needless to say, I left the room, put on my shoes and wentto look for my family in the plaza.

There is a term in our supernatural culture called MALUGANAN. In English, it means "taken over" particularly by another spirit or being. A few weeks before my Mom died, I was in Asingan for a few weeks. She was already bedridden and her mind is already senile. She was sleeping the living room where it is cooler. I woke up one night because I heard a man's voice talking loudly in the living room where my Mom was. I peered out from the door of my room. There was nobody there except my Mom who was lying down. There was a very dim light beside her and the whole living room looked like a scenery from some of the horror movies I have seen. Then I took control of myself and went out slowly approaching my Mother's bed. The man's voice was still talking. I looked around the room. I was relieved to find nobody there. Then I stepped right in front of my Mom. Her lips were moving, but her voice is still the same man's voice..Then I said.."Mother, what are you saying?"

Her eyes opened..'Ah?" she said. Her voice was already her normal one.She continued to talk softly but incoherently. The man's voice is gone.

How can one explain these events?..Nobody can. But they happen and people just dont talk about them openly so as not to become the object of ridicule. I think I am not the only one who had these experiences. And they still happen to me once in a while.----#