The Shadow Of A Kapre

By Gerrilyn Cadiz

This happened a couple of years back, when I was just a child of eight. My family and I had just moved an old house in Bulacan.

It was a bungalow-type of dwelling, with two bedrooms, a garage and a big backyard. The house was ample for our compact family, as it was only my six-year-old sister, our parents and I.

For a young girl who grew up in the congested metropolis, this new house was a haven.

The place was surrounded by trees -- mange, camachile, star apple, macopa, jackfruit, aratilis, chesa. There were also santan and gumamela plants planted all around the backyard. It reminded me of my maternal grandmother's house in Sta. Cruz, Laguna, only smaller.

It was, in a word, idyllic.

Our first few weeks there were great. We moved in the summer so we were on vacation. We immediately made new friends with other kids in the neighborhood. My sister and our new friends had a blast climbing the trees and "shooting" the ripe star apples with our rubber slippers. We would spend the day hanging out in the bahay-kubo my parents installed in the backyard, beneath the giant star apple tree.


One day, I overheard my mother and her friends talking about the house. From what I overheard, I learned that no family had been able to stay in the house for more than a few months because of the strange things reportedly happening in that house.


One of my mom's friends related the story that happened to a friend of a friend's friend. According to her, the friend had been passing by the house when she saw a white lady standing in front of the gate, as if trying to get in.


Another related that weird noises could be heard in the backyard at night.


Oh great, I thought, of all the houses in this subdivision, trust my dad to buy the haunted one!


I suddenly remembered how I kept losing, or as my mother would say "misplacing," my things. How one minute my box of colored pencils would be there and the next minute, it would disappear, only to be found, after hours of frantic searching, right where it was originally.


At the time, I thought my sister was playing a prank on me. But then I remembered she was only six years old, and pretty scared of her big sister. So, I easily ruled her out as a suspect.


Then something my mother's friend said totally creeped me out.


One of them said that a kapre was living in the huge star apple tree at the back of the house!


The star apple tree! The tree which stood over our favorite hangout!


I had a pretty good idea what a kapre was. My cousins from the province had already told me stories of a huge, hairy man who is usually seen smoking a cigar.


They said the kapre would snatch sleeping children and eat them and that a kapre could enchant you and lead you astray.


I felt a chill run down my spine. Not only was our beloved bahay-kubo directly under that star apple tree, but its massive trunk was totally visible from the window of the bedroom my sister and I shared.

Silhouette

By Patricia S. Servano

My alma mater, St. Scholastica's College in Leon Guinto, Manila is one of the older schools in the country. As a former sanctuary for soldiers, it lay witness to the brutalities wreaked by the invading forces during World War Two.

Bombed, destroyed and eventually rebuilt, St. Scho has withstood the test of time and ravages of nature. The institution takes pride in its antiquity, and among its jewels is the home of the dramaric kulasas---the Little Theater, situated in the high school building.

During my senior year, my classmate was the director of the theater group. This gave our class an excuse to enjoy such perks as being excused from class to see the productions.

After a successful season, which culminated in a well-received play at the end of the semester, the theater group decided to celebrate their triumph backstage. Nearly everyone came to the party.

Needless to say there was lots of picture taking to record the occasion. Cameras popped everywhere to capture the high-spirited actors.

The moment was captured -- and so was the image of an uninvited guest.

When the film was developed, the pictures were passed around so that everyone could have a look-see.

One of the pictures of the group contained a headless silhouette in between two of the girls. The figure was very hazy, but one could clearly delineate a dress hanging without a head and feet on the ground. The dress was backlit and looked totally ethereal.

Almost half of the student population at St. Scho saw the picture. Everyone who saw it said it gave them creeps. We all tried to grope for an earthly explanation for the apparition.

We tried blowing up the picture to figure out what it was, whether it was just a trick of camera lighting. But enlarging the picture solved nothing except to make the image even more frightening. Although the figure looked harmless, everyone who saw it felt a profound sense of suffering.

More than a little spooked, the theater group had the Little Theater blessed.

That was the last play I watched in the Little Theater. After a while, the controversy died down and our batch graduated without much incidence.

After graduation, I took a vacation in the province. It was, I felt, a much needed break before I entered the world of the working class.

Back from my vacation, with no prospect yet of a job, I was spending a little more quality time at home alone.

One day, as I was taking a siesta, I had a weird dream. I dreamt of the image and she was warning me about something.

In my dream I was at the foot of an old wooden bridge. It was dark, and the evening sky was painted a solid, inky blue, like it was colored in with craypas (the Japanese crayons).

At the other end, lying in wait, was the image from the photograph. Unlike in the picture where the image did not have a head, this time I could see the face of the image cleary. It was the face of a young woman. I saw her serene, young face. She was wearing the same dress in the picture. She was surrounded by big pine trees and I can feel the mist on my skin. She just stood there, waiting.

As I walked toward her, I bacame aware of the chasm underneath the bridge. I refuse to look down. I kept my focus on my pace and joined her on the other side. I counldn't vividly remember what happened when we met. She was trying to explain to me a lot of things and telling me not to go to a Hindu seminar I was planning to attend.

All of a sudden, I woke yp, gasping for air. I was shaken, my heart was pounding a mile a minute.

When I managed to catch my breath I remembered that I saw an ad in the papers for a seminar on Hindu teaching and I was asking a friend to go with me. Why was she warning me about that?

I never did find out. A few days later I landed my first job and concentrated on my career.

I never went to that seminar. And she never appeared in my dreams.

Taken from True Philippine Ghost Stories

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A Summer Night's Tale

By Dino Ray V. Directo III

It was a scene straight out of an episode from the twilight zone. Or perhaps a chapter from one of Bram Stoker's spine chilling novels.

Before my eerie encounter with the supernatural, I was a skeptic, oftentimes shrugging off these stories as "make believe" or bedtime tales that grandmas sometimes tell their apos.

That was, until I experienced a ghostly tale of my own.

My encounter occurred during the mid-90s, when I was still a cub reporter for the Manila Bulletin.

My editor, who edited the features and lifestyle section, was given an invitation to the opening night of a play being staged at the ruins of Fort Santiago by a group of stage artists.

Although I don't remember the title of the play, I remember distinctly it topbilled sexy actress Tetchie Agbayani and was directed by comedian Soxy Topacio.

Because my editor had a previous engagement, she decided to give me the tickets so I could cover it for the paper.

The invitation was for Saturday, at 7:00 pm at the ruins of the Fort, directly across the building that housed Jose Rizal's memorabilia.

I decided to turn the assignment into a date and took my then-girlfriend to watch the play with me. It was a glamorous event, with tinseltown's best, not to mention top politicians and socialites, in attendance. The opening night alone was a story in itself!

At around 9:20 pm, during a lull in the play, my girlfriend whispered that she had to go to the comfort room. But there was a long queue at the comfort room behind the stage, so we opted to look for one outside.

After asking directions from the security guard, we finally found a comfort room, at the side of the Fort's main entrance. These restrooms were newly built, constructed in the area that used to showcase the cars of Emilio Aguinaldo.

Since everybody was at the play, the only person in the vicinity was the security guard at the main gate. Nobody else was around.

The chamber going inside the restroom was cold, damp and pitch dark. Apparently, nobody was expected to use the facilities at that time of the night, so the maintenance man probably turned off the lights. I had to grope for the light switches. The first door on the left was the ladies' room and the door down at the hallway was for men's room.

Out of habit, I peeked inside the cubicles to see if anyone was there. As expected, no one was in the restroom.

So I went about my business. As I was taking a leak, the air inside the restroom plummeted several degrees---like the airfrom a refrigerator when the door is opened. That's weird, I said to myself, but didn't think it was anything to worry about.

All of a sudden, I felt something caressing my neck. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. And then I felt something caressing both my shoulders, down to my feet. Goosebumps popped up all over my arms.

I didn't know what to do. I did not want to turn around, for fear of what I might see behind me. There I was in the middle of answering the call of Nature, and some invisible... entity... was giving me a back rub!

To keep from screaming my lungs out in panic, I began humming out some unintelligible song to break the heavy silence. It was like something was about to happen. After what seemed like an eternity, halfway through my act of nature, all five toilet bowls in the restroom flushed at the same time.

This was all I needed to hear. Galvanized by fear, I zipped up my pants, even though I was not yet through doing my thing, and fled to the corridor, trying hard not to scream.

When I got to the corridor, I heard my girlfriend scream from the inside of the ladies room. I rushed inside, grabbed her, and we both scampered out the door.

Later, when we'd both calmed down she told me that something weird happened to her too in the restroom.

As she was answering the call of nature, a person in military boots walked by her cubicle three times. At the same time, the tiles in front of her got hit by some inexplicable force and flew outside the cubicle. That was when she decided enough was enough, and she screamed her head off.

Hearing the commotion, the security guard came over to check on us. We told him about what we experienced and he immediately radioed for assistance.

The following day, I relayed my experience to the stage director. He merely laughed at what I told him. Apparently he and the other members of the play had gotten used to such bizarre happenings that hardly anything scares them anymore.

Once, he said, during a rehearsal, a spectre walked across the stage in one of the scenes. Those who saw him said he was Caucasian and dressed in colonial attire. The rehearsals were cancelled for the day.

More than a decade after that incident, I still find it hard to go inside Fort Santiago after dark.

Taken from True Philippine Ghost Stories

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