My Ghost Story

When I was in my teens, my family was financially hard up. My dad was working as a government employee (which in the Philippines, doesn't earn much) and my mom was a housewife (although she did have a small business of her own).

There are three children in our family, and I was the youngest. My sister was the eldest and my brother the middle child.

When I was in grade school, my parents had to sell our house. Me and my siblings were going to private schools then and we needed the money. Needless to say, we had to transfer to a rented house.

I was in high school (I think I was a sophomore then, around 1994) when we were living in a rented house where most of my ghostly encounters occurred. It was a relatively old house, bungalow, but spacious. It is located in the corner of a block. It had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a spacious kitchen and dining area, garage, 2 living rooms, and an area for a store (my mom put up a sari-sari store, sort of like a small convenience store. This type of stores is famous in the Philippines). The rent was low so it was a steal.

That house has always given me the creeps. First, the layout of the house is bad. The owner of the house didn't plan the renovations well, so she just sort of added rooms to whatever area she can. As a result, the house sort of has a maze of hallways. Second, the house is always dim. And it was mostly cold. Also, the house just didn't feel right to me, like I'm not comfortable when I'm in it. Which is funny because you're supposed to be comfortable in your own home.

When we first moved in, the landlady's sister was there to assist us. We noticed in one of the windows that there was a small vial with oil in it. We asked her what it was for. She told us they leave if there to warn them if there are bad spirits nearby. According to her, the oil inside the vial bubbles when there are bad spirits in the area. I didn't believe in that kind of stuff, so I just brushed it off.

Fast forward, a few months after moving in, I started to have really bad dreams, always nightmarish. There was a recurring dream I had about a woman in the ceiling, near my sister's room. She has a witch-like face with disheveled hair and warts all over. Her limbs are deformed like a spider's. And she would just stay in the ceiling with a crazy smirk, just looking at me and doing nothing.

At one time also, I was alone in the house, I was just hanging out in my room. It was already around 6pm. My brother came home but since he forgot his keys, he was just at the gate and calling out for me. I went out of my room to go to the gate and by doing so, I had to pass through the maze of hallways. At that point I could hear my brother really loud, so I was running towards the gate. Suddenly, I saw a figure in the hallway (very near me as I was running). It was a black figure, like a silhouette of a man. Tall, around 6 feet, and it has red eyes. Its head wasn't shape like a human's, more of like the shape of an onion. I cannot see through it. It was just standing in the hallway doing nothing but block my way. At the blink of an eye, it disappeared.

My brother also experienced dream paralysis every night during the time we lived there. It became so bad that my dad had to stay with him in his room. In these encounters, my brother recalled seeing a woman with a rotting face standing at the foot of his bed. To avoid this, he would sometimes sleep on the couch in the living room, but he would still see this woman in his dreams. At times, the woman would try dragging him off the bed by his feet. At that point, he would wake up.

A lot of other unexplainable things happened in that house. Like things getting lost just to suddenly reappear a few days later in obvious places. My mom seeing a white cat walking in our living room and then suddenly disappeared. My sister's music box just going off in the middle of the night. My mom seeing my sister in the garage in the middle of the day when in fact my sister was in school.

It was also in that house that my dad's health deteriorated fast. In fact, he died at that time when we were still living there. We had his wake at the house, but during the first night the neighbors didn't know yet. Early the next morning, one of our neighbors saw my dad sitting in a bench outside the store. That neighbor didn't know then that my dad has already passed on. She said that dad was just sitting there with a faraway look and a sad face, and he was wearing his favorite brown pants and white shirt.

A year after my dad died, we transferred to another house. A few months ago, I had the chance to revisit the place. The house was now abandoned. I had no idea who lived there after us and whenever they also had bad experiences there.