as promised, here’s part two of the shake, rattle and roll, true horror stories and this time they all happened in japan while i was a student there. fyi, the japanese word for ghosts is obake.

episode one: the school girl obake

our friend bong, raj and i were walking on our way home from one of those karaoke parties we always had with our fellow filipino friends at school. the distance from the karaoke to our host family’s place was about 20 minutes by foot. it was past midnight then and as we were passing by a small park, raj suddenly asked bong and me ‘do you see it?’ but instead of looking to where raj’s eyes were, bong and i started running as fast as we could (me in high-heeled boots) and raj followed us instantly. needless to say, we were home in about 5 minutes. when mommy rose, our host mom opened the door, she was surprised to see us out of breath. we then asked raj what he saw. he said that he saw a vision of a small girl dressed in a school uniform, holding a balloon by the park’s mini playground. he tried to rationalize it by saying that the girl could have been waiting for her parents to pick her up. yes, in the middle of the night (insert sarcasm). but mommy rose knew better. she said that a month ago, a girl was hit by a car while crossing the street. she was on her way home from school. and almost everday, the parents brought fresh flowers to the site where she was killed which was across the park. since then, we avoided walking by the park at night, even if we had to use the longer alternate route.

episode two: the old TV

in japan, it is a common practice to give away your old stuff including furniture and appliance instead of throwing them away. this is because you have to pay a considerable sum of money for the garbage disposal truck, and each item costs differently. as we just moved from the dorm to an apartment and we were in need of stuff for our place, we accepted hand-me-down items from mommy rose’s japanese friend. we got a worn-out sofa made of rattan for our living room, a bunk bed for bong’s room and an old TV set which raj and i decided to put in our room. a few days later, father dave, the filipino priest who was the parish priest in town, came to our house and said nonchalantly that bong seemed to like his radio very loud. he said that he came to our apartment the previous day and while waiting for michelle, our other housemate, the radio from his room began to blast in full volume. bong was taken aback with father dave’s story because he said was already at school that time. michelle even saw him leaving the house. no one else was in the house except for michelle who was in her room prepping up. that same night as i was setting our dining table for dinner (we lived in a typical japanese apartment where rooms are close next to each other such that you can see our rooms from the kitchen), i saw our old TV turned on by itself. there was no picture in the tube; just static lines very similar to how it was in the ring. i started screaming and when my housemates saw why i was screaming, we just bolted out of the house ( i only had one pair of slippers on) and ran to our next door neighbors who were fellow filipinos and friends. after cooling down, we decided to go back to the apartment. when we got in, the TV was already turned off so we started screaming and ran back outside again. we decided then to call father dave who came soon enough to perform a house blessing. that night, all four of us slept in michelle’s room and even locked the door as if that would prevent the obake from appearing inside the room. but luckily, nothing more happened at least until a year later or so.

episode three: child’s play

ning, bong’s ex- who stayed with us in the apartment when michelle left us, brought home two small dolls. it was one of those dolls which plays a song when pressed, in this case the song was ‘it’s a small world’. she gave me and bong each a doll. i told ning that it would be downright scary if the doll started singing in the middle of the night but we just laughed about it as we didn’t expect it to happen anyway. but it did one night just when raj and i were about to sleep. after raj made the bed and smoothed the creases in our blankets and sheets, we turned off the light and lied down. raj and i were still chatting and goofing around when we heard ‘it’s a small world’ playing. our first reaction was to laugh at it, thinking that it could have been a battery malfunction and so i got up to check and to silence it. i knew exactly where the doll was in our room. as it had always been, it was atop our bookself which was several inches away from our bed. i even saw it when before we went to bed. i switched on the light, went to the bookshelf but the doll was missing from where i saw it last. i started to get frightened but kept looking for it by the bookshelf. raj was about to get up and help me when he found the doll in our bed under the blanket and tossed it to my direction in shock. i screamed so loud and ran out of our room. bong who just got out of the shower was curious naturally what the fuss was all about so i told him the whole story. very calmly, he got the two dolls, cut them into pieces and threw them away. and that was the end of the story. no child’s play 2. fortunately

What she came to was that even if someone wasn’t perfect or even especially good, you couldn’t dismiss the love they felt. Love was always love; it had a rightness all its own, even if the person feeling the love was full of wrongness. - from ‘Love Walked In’

i am so moved by the quote above even if this realization came from an 11-year old girl in the book. i personally believe that no 11-year old is too clever to have this clear understanding of love.

love was always love. i love the simplicity of this thought, notwithstanding all the complications that arise from the pure act of loving another person. there’s always a holiness in varying proportions that comes with it despite the flaws and shortcomings of the person in love.

i thought so much about snape in relation to the quote. (caution: harry potter nerd on the loose now.) he’s loved lily so much until his last breath that it’s become easier for the readers to forgive his past misdoings and arrogance. all throughout the series, we are led to believed that he is someone incapable of compassion and loyalty, only to be revealed in the very end that whatever he’s done, he did for his love of lily the only way he knows how. yes, he is contemptuous and self-serving but he redeems himself somehow when we learn that underneath the hard exterior is a man who tried to better himself in the name of love. even his act of mercy toward dumbledore is a manifestation of a love to the man who showed faith on him when no else did.

we are all snapes in this world in one way or another, whether or not you have read harry potter and you know the character i was talking about. at some point in our lives, we makes mistakes, consciously or otherwise, because of loving another person too much. and even if we fall in love under the wrong circumstances, a part of us says that what we feel is right. because love in itself, in its simplest and purest form is always right, i believe.

we err because we are humans. we are humans because we love.

it’s almost halloween, time for true spooky stories and i’ve had my own share of them.

***

my very first recollection of a ghost story happened when i was in sixth grade. they say that only one of our faculties can sense the presence of a ghost, an elemental being or what-have-you, and in my case it was the olfaction or faculty of smell. it was halloween, or the eve of all saints day as it was more popularly known in the philippines. my sister and i were watching the now-defunct ‘that’s entertainment’ in the living room. ha! so ‘jologs’, i know but we didn’t want to watch the halloween special of ‘magandang gabi, bayan’ with our dad in his room because we were scaredy-cats. while in the middle of the show, my sister and i both smelled candles burning and after confirming with each other that the smell wasn’t a product of each’s imagination, we ran to our dad’s room and told him what happened. he said that my mom could have lit some candles outside of the house, a tradition common in the philippines during the halloween to commemorate the departed loved ones. we went outside the house to check but saw no traces of candles burning or being lit.

***

our house in valenzuela is not haunted but once in a while, i feel the presence of some passers-by from another realm. there was one week when i was in my second year in college that all of us in the house felt these unearthly visitors. while preparing to school very early in the morning (i was the only person up in the house at that time), our old radio, unequipped with a timer, turned on by itself with full-blast volume. under normal circumstances, i would have been spooked but instead, i calmly turned off the radio and said in a cheery tone that i was running late for school and that i had no time for such silliness. when i got home that night, i told my sister and our house helper manang analyn what happened to me. manang analyn said that a couple of nights before, she woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. on her way to the bathroom, she thought she saw me in the living room, my back to her, holding the phone as if i was talking to someone. but she said she got chills right there and then that she decided to go back to her room immediately without using the bathroom. i swore to her that it wasn’t me because for one, i didn’t use the phone that night when she supposedly saw me in the living room. also, there was a phone extension in the room which my sister and i shared so i wouldn’t have gone out to use the phone in the living room. i wonder if it was a doppelganger, or a shape-shifter maybe if i want my story to be more into sci-fi than horror genre. anyway, going back to these unwelcome house guests ghosts, the next day while my sister was taking a shower she said that the bathroom light was turned off. i told her that the light bulb was probably acting up but she said she checked the switch and it was definitely off. so then we not only had a music lover, shape shifter visitor, we also had a voyeur in the house. funny but scary nonetheless.

***

this third story i remembered only some weeks ago. in my senior year in high school, my whole class went to a retreat in a seminary. i had read or heard stories about many lost souls hovering in retreat houses, perhaps seeking absolution or mercy from the faithful living. we only stayed in the seminary for a night. i shared a room with three friends and we decided to pull the twin beds next to each other because we wanted to be all together, plus we were all scared of ghosts and as they say, there is strength in numbers. nothing really happened that night, even when we woke up each other to go to the bathroom together. no traces of lost, haunting souls in the hallway. the morning after though, we woke up with our bed being shaken so violently. at first, we thought there was an earthquake but shortly after, we realized that only our bed was moving. i don’t remember now what we have done to make it stop. perhaps a prayer or two. perhaps it stopped by itself. or perhaps these lost souls only woke us up, never wanting to miss their chance of being forgiven through the intercession of our prayers.

(part two, coming up soon…)

robert fulghum in one of his books said that people should go to reunions at least once to ’see who you were or else you will never fully understand who you are and who you yet may become.’

it’s fascinating though that in this age, there may be no need for us to attend reunions as fulghum advises us to do. with the advent of facebook and other social networking sites, it’s so much easier now to gain this self perspective. facebook does not only allow us to reconnect with our old friends and mere acquaintances, even those we considered rivals, back in high school and college and to rekindle the ties that were broken by distance and time, but it also enables us to peek into their lives unobtrusively and see how much or how little have changed over the past years, or decades perhaps. we see glimpses of what the present has become for people who were once part of our lives, however trivial their roles were. and through this, we get a better grasp of our own progression, or the lack of it.

going to facebook is probably even more better than attending an actual reunion and seeing in person the people who were former friends, classmates or acquaintances. for one, we never have to worry about our image and the transformation we have had and what-not, in between then and now. for most of us, leaving school, whether high school or college, became a venue to mature and to better ourselves as individuals. we went to college to pursue higher learning but moreso, we went our separate ways to find our own unique selves fronting the conformity and striking homogeneity in high school. when we graduated from college, we hoped to carve our niche in this world. some succeeded big time, others failed miserably and there are those that continue to float in between. still whichever path we have taken, we all want to look good and we want everyone to think that we have done well. in reunions, we take the time to dress nicely, we bring our spouses or partners and then we try to brag what we have become. but one night is not enough to encapsulate a decade worth of achievements or failures, whichever the case may be.

in contrast, facebook allows us more and better opportunities to present ourselves to other people. there is no pressure to measure up to other people’s expectations of us. there is no need to be a pretentious romy or michelle to get everyone else’s attention. in facebook, we can create our own profile and we can even hide our own failures and insecurities by fabricating lies although the world is very small now for anyone not to notice. we can update our status every minute of the day and speak our minds out without hesitations. we can upload pictures of both past and present to show how we have evolved over time or simply to confirm to others that we have become better people. and as if these are not enough, we have family, friends and colleagues to affirm who we are in relation to the present world we lived in. our wall posts, information, photos and whatever else we have on our facebook account are a reflection of us. we can be seen and followed constantly if we choose to be conspicuous. and so, we are judged based on our current lives and the changes that continuously transpire, and not in mere fugacious moments or distant memories that a reunion brings.

second, we never have to worry if our old pals, those that we lost in touch with after graduation, and us would still click the way we used to; or, if the cliques, stereotypical as they were in high school (and sometimes even in college) but nonetheless true, continue to exist even with the passage of time. we do not have to pretend to like anyone out of courtesy and they wouldn’t have to know or feel it. we never have to meet the people who once broke our young hearts and worry if we would feel a pang of remorse or bitterness upon seeing them. we don’t have to endure the twinge of guilt if we do not remember the face or even the name of a supposedly member of the same class. we never have to think about how to fill in those dreadful and awkward silences that may come and go, or how to escape the obnoxious and loquacious braggarts.

with facebook, people can be on each other’s friend’s list without actually being one in the truest sense of the word. after all, facebook is more of a networking site. real friends, those that have withstood the test of time, do not need such medium to preserve their friendship. also, we can filter information and ignore the people we don’t like to be a part of our world, virtual or otherwise. and, we  can indulge ourselves in schadenfreude without anyone knowing.  but on a more positive note, facebook gives us more time to bridge the gap and to catch up with the lives of our former friends. sometimes, even a simple gesture as liking one’s status is an acknowledgement per se of being present in one’s world at a given time. facebook gives us many chances to disclose stories from bygone years to beyond at our own liking. there is no rush just because the night is coming to an end like an organized reunion does. it’s an everyday event and everyone is welcome to experience the simple pleasures that it brings to us.

i have a tendency to be laziness personified and i was just that for the past 6 months or so. moving here in hawaii and working from the comforts of home made me become so lethargic. gone were the long daily walks from our apartment in astoria to the subway station and no more climbing up and down the subway stairs. i never appreciated these activities that New York forced me to do until i realized i no longer fit in my size two clothes. the horror, the horror!

last week, i finally decided to go to the gym (24 hour fitness) and start a work-out that would help me lose a bit of weight and increase my metabolism again. i started with running the treadmill on a maximum speed of 4. i knew it wasn’t that much, especially for raj’s standards but it was a start.  i always had problems with running or walking fast because my legs itched for some reasons but i fought that off too. mind over matter. 24 hour fitness also offers various group classes which members can choose from.

on tuesday, i decided to try yoga. i even bought a pink mat to motivate me. i was a little worried that the people in the room with me would all be yoga experts with flexible body parts and all i had tucked under my belt was the wii fit yoga positions that i did so well on as confirmed by my virtual personal trainer. but my wii experience proved to be useful as i recognized some of the positions that my yoga instructor said from those that wii fit offered (e.g. warrior, triangle, sun). soon enough, i found myself enjoying yoga, even more than when i did it with wii fit. i liked how our instructor said that we should only do what we can do at the moment because after all, it’s our own journey that we make when we do yoga. i still have a lot more to work on which is good because it means i’ll be pushing myself further to explore my limits.

the next class i took was zumba which was scheduled on wednesday. i was initially intrigued by it. according to the 24 hour fitness activity sheet, zumba ‘combines high energy and motivating music with synchronized dance movements designed for any fitness levels. The routines feature aerobic fitness interval training with a combination of fast and slow rhythms that tone and sculpt the body.’ i did more research and found out that zumba infuses latin dances such as salsa, samba and flamenco to international music in order to create a fun workout. i also watched a video on youtube the night before and i knew right there and then that zumba was the class for me. i couldn’t stop gushing about it and i was grinning from ear to ear in anticipation. i’ve always wanted to take a dance class so zumba was a dream come true, and it was indeed. it didn’t fail me. it was the coolest and hippest physical education class that i have had in my entire lifetime. the modern jazz class that i took in college paled in comparison. and i knew it was the same for many judging by the queue of people wanting to get into the dance area. it was like a party down there minus the booze. but i’m telling you, the workout was so fast; it wasn’t for the faint of heart, literally speaking. after 15 minutes, i found myself near exhaustion and in need of water supply but i thought i was the only one who felt that as the rest continued to dance as if it was the most natural thing to do next to breathing. despite that, i finished the one-hour class and vowed to myself that i shall return the following week armed with all the energy i could muster. next time, i will be more ready.

i’ve been constantly going to the gym for over a week now and i actually look forward to working out. later today, i’m going to try turbo kickbox and then do yoga. gone is the lazy devil in me; i have excorcised it. welcome the new ‘athletic’ me.

i was being my couch-potato-self when i saw these scenes on reruns and i was reminded of the good old college years many eons ago.

scene from an episode of felicity – two characters are talking about having a pager. oh, pager! i lived in the era when pager was THE technology. i was never a gadget person and the first pager i had was a hand-me-down from my sister who was then about to migrate to the US for good. it was a relatively big and bulky motorola pager and which i later on gave or sell (i can’t remember now) to my friend mel. the second and the last pager i had, i bought it from my allowance. it was a small, sleek and blue motorola pager. i loved the sound of my pager beeping and the anticipation that accommpanied it as to who took the time to call the pager company to send me a message. of course, it wasn’t as interactive as texting or chats that cell phones have. it didn’t have any of the features that we now enjoy with the new technology. needless to say, the influx of cell phones made pagers obsolete.

scene from an episode of grey’s anatomy – drs. cristina yang, lexie grey and meredith grey dancing inside the latter’s house without a particular reason. i remember when my college friends and i would dance the night away at jing’s apartment. i remember one particular night when her apartment was adorned with blinking christmas lights so it felt like we were in a club minus the crowd; the dance floor all to ourselves. we danced for fun and relaxation, to free ourselves from the rigors of academic life and the pains of unrequited love. it was so easy then for a dance to relieve stress and to cure a broken heart. but more importantly, it felt good to share this activity that i truly enjoyed with my closest friends. i miss them a lot.

it’s in quiet moments like today that i feel and yet miss your presence the most. i remember vividly the word of the doctor, ‘there is no heartbeat’, and yet here i am, ironically, listening to the sound of it, hearing it clearly as if you were breathing next to me.

i carried you in my womb for about eight weeks but i only learned about the pregnancy when you were 4 weeks old. i wish i had known earlier. i would have taken care of us better. i would have spent more time with you. i would have told you more stories. remember when i would talk to you in early mornings when you and i would wake up in the silence of dawn; at nights before we went to sleep; or at random times just because i felt the need to tell you what was going on outside your world. i thought it must be lonely for you to be alone in a secluded, dark place, and i wanted you to be comforted by my voice.

letting you go was one of the the most painful moments in my life. i knew that for others, it was very easy to dismiss the hurt when they considered you as just a tiny thing inside of me, not even a real human to begin with. in the field of medicine, i was merely a statistic in the common pregnancy mishap that is miscarriage. but you were to me a child who existed and touched my life in ways unimaginable to some.

you brought joy to my world. you showed me that i can be the mother that i hoped to be. you helped me be a better person. you proved that i was a person capable of loving without limits, without conditions. and i have come to realize that this is why i was to endure this pain. God knows that i have so much love to give in my heart that in spite of the misfortune on my first pregnancy, i would not be afraid to love another child just as much as i have loved you. you allowed me to perceive things in a different light. you taught me to see the beauty that thrives even in sadness.

i did not lose you. i prefer to believe that i gave birth to an angel. and you are that to me, my child, my angel. i will keep you in my heart. always.