Ghost stories

WHEN one compares what we fear with what our parents and grandparents were afraid of, we realize that Halloween terror used to be so simple: one just needed a crucifix or a garland of Ilocos garlic and vinegar to keep the monsters at bay. Come to think of it, a bowl of chicken-pork adobo a day would keep the "aswang" [evil flesh-eating being] away.

The late E. Aguilar Cruz once related how he was kept prisoner in a room as a child. All the elders had to do was open a thick book from his grandfather's library to a page that had a picture of a man that, to Cruz's mind, resembled the devil himself. This book was left open by the door and Cruz would never think of crossing over it. Decades later he recognized this "devil" of his childhood in a book of European philosophy: the man in black was Rene Descartes.

My childhood also had its share of ghosts, ghouls and vampires, but then in my teen years the horror movies had less of supernatural beings and more of mentally deranged murderers who loved chopping up teenagers with too much hormones, using an assortment of knives, axes and even a chain-saw. These things were not frightened off by garlic or a crucifix; you either ran fast or used a cannon to get rid of them.

Campfire talk in my grade school days was filled with stories of headless women and floating skeletons. Parents then saw no problem in letting us sleep in school or in Boy Scout camp, but today they worry about rapists, murderers or kidnappers.

When folks in Kawit town, outside Manila, talk about the "kapre" [monstrous giant] that supposedly inhabits the tower of Emilio Aguinaldo's mansion, I wonder what kind of stories were being told in 1898. Aguinaldo's "kapre" isn't harmful at all. As a matter of fact, it is credited with warning Aguinaldo of impending danger or the approach of enemies. To this some folks attribute Aguinaldo's longevity. He did outlive all his enemies, but then with the new anti-smoking law, the friendly "kapre" will have to find somewhere else to smoke or give up those cigars.

What types of ghost stories were exchanged over the campfire during the revolution? Did our heroes believe in the supernatural? We can at least answer the second question affirmatively, based on the many "anting-anting"[talismans] taken from the corpses of dead Filipinos by the Spaniards and Americans during the war. Did belief in the creatures of midnight affect night operations during the revolution?

During the anti-insurgency campaign in the Ramon Magsaysay years, fear of the "aswang" was used to keep rural people indoors at night. They lay in wait for a Huk patrol and silently captured the last man in the line. The victim was then killed, two incisions made on his neck and he was hung upside down till he was drained of blood. When the corpse was found the next day, aswang rumors spread like wildfire and any stranger in the area was either lynched or reported to the authorities, thus cutting off support for the insurgents.

Yet the horror stories persist despite the admission of CIA operative Eddie Landsdale that the "aswang" scare was his handiwork. The legendary "White Lady of Balete Drive" in Quezon City is also a hoax that persists. Jose Rizal also records a story in a little-known treatise on the "mangkukulam" [witch] he wrote in 1892:

"In one town of Luzon, called B[iñan?] of the Province of Laguna, they tell the story of a woman who quarreled with a 'manggagaway' [sorcerer] on account of a bag of rice and two mangoes. The following day the woman got sick and in her abdomen there appeared a tumor that looked like a bag of rice and the two mangoes in question. Immediately they took hold of the 'manggagaway' and they tried to compel her to cure the sick woman.

"The latter died in a week amid atrocious pains and the 'manggagaway,' who escaped the ire of the relatives with great difficulty, was sentenced by the 'gobernadorcillo' [town chief] to 50 lashes daily. But on the second day of her sentence, they found her hanging from the grille of the jail with a rope that she had made with the lining of her skirt. In order to die, the unhappy woman had had to draw herself together a great deal and bend her legs, for the grille was low. 'The devil helped her to commit suicide,' said the devout."

Reading the above, I suspect the "witch" was murdered but the deed was made to appear like suicide. There must be some documentation on the above somewhere to complete the story.

Today we don't need to go to the archives for Halloween tales. The Internet is full of them and one of the most realistic I got from the e-mail reads:

"Happened to a friend's friend who is a doctor at the Makati Medical Center. One night while she was on her way [from the hospital basement] to the fifth floor to check on her patient, she took the elevator. There was a lady in it ... they were alone. When the door opened on the third floor, they saw a young girl running toward the elevator as if she was getting on it. The doctor closed the door immediately.

"The lady asked her, 'Doctor, why did you close the door? The girl looked like she was going to take the elevator.'

"The doctor replied, 'I know her, she was my patient and she died yesterday!'

"The lady asked, 'Doctor, how would you know that she's dead, when she was even running?'

"The doctor answered: 'Did you see the red tag on her wrist? That's for dead patients, a red tag put on the wrists of dead patients."

"The lady asked while raising her wrist to the doctor, 'Doctor, your mean like this one?"'

Happy Halloween.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu