Have you ever had experience a phenomenon that cannot be explained no matter how you tried to understand it? Are you familiar with the phrase ‘beyond one’s imagination or understanding’? If you have this some sort of experience that makes you feel that hair-raising/eerie or déjà vu feeling, please share through email message to merlinagp@gmail.com. It is my pleasure to post your experience in this Blog. Let the circle of sharing begins.
Experience No. 27:
“Si Apo Bantay (The Guardian)”
(Shared by Jesus jr Israel <alamatngpuyat@gmail.com>)
Every house has its own “guardian” ranging from benevolent, mischievous, and malevolent “creature”. Have you ever felt some eerie presence when you are alone? Or you just suddenly lost something like a key for example and even if you have already torn up the place you cannot find it? At the end, when you already gave up searching you will find it in the most unexpected place? If you have felt this, you have an unseen housemate or roommate(s). As I have mentioned above these guardian/housemate could be benign or malevolent depending on certain factors. First is your personal outlook in life, second is the way you treat others, and lastly but most importantly is your faith. Anyway, this my story.
As a child, I have an imaginary friend just like other toddlers. However, I was too young that this imaginary friend was also visible to the eyes of others and have existed even before the house was built. Ok, Moving on… The house of my grandparents is one of the oldest lots in the area. They built that house sometime in 1980’s. The area was then full of Talahib (a kind of grass that is about the height of a man). The neighborhood is typically 100 meters away from one another and to make the long story short, that house existed even before Makati was declared a City.
As the story continues, I forgot the name of my imaginary friend but in that house that apparition (the imaginary friend) was called “Apo” a word coined for an elderly Ilocano. He/she is quite small, about 4 feet in height, hunchback but moves very fast (really fast). Almost everyone who saw it said that it was a very fast shadow, well in my vague memories it was a shadow (rarely to show his/her face). It always shows up and then disappears near the coconut tree on our backyard (where I usually catch spiders). My grandmother warned me to stay away from that tree because someone/something live in it. “Baka mabati kayo at magkasakit pa kayo” my grandmother said. Guess what, as very kind grandsons, we didn’t heed what our grandmother told us.
One night, my brother suddenly chilled and had a convulsion. My grandmother poured ice cold water to stabilize his temperature and brought him to the nearest hospital. “Anong nangyari kay Jayson Nay?” I asked my grandmother. “Ayon kinukumbulsyon, pupunta muna kami nila mama mo sa ospital”. Hearing that, I remembered that we played hide and seek and Jayson hid behind the tree. My brother was confined that day but the doctors cannot diagnose his sickness. When my grandmother went home to get some things needed in the hospital, I confessed to her that we played near that tree a day before Jayson had a convulsion. After hearing my confession she went to Nanay Auring, an albularyo that could perform a ritual called “tawas”.
On the said ritual, the mangagagamot found out that my brother peed at the coconut tree where Apo was standing, that made the spirit angry and cast something at him that made him sick. After that and a week of recovery, my younger brother returned to his normal annoying self again and we never played near that tree again until it was cut down when I was 9 years old but its presence is still there. Honestly, the house spirit was not purely malevolent at all, it just guarded our house most of the time. We would always forget to lock the gate and the doors but no one dares to rob us. Also most of our neighbors today still see the apparition up to this day.
Anyway, maybe the robbers know that we don’t have any valuables or the house just looks like a haunted one. However, believe it or not, Impossible but it happened to me!.