JUST for kicks during my halcyon days as a full-time working /full-time grad student at the University of the Philippines long ago, I had agreed to act as medium for a séance or a hypnotic session to conjure or call the spirit or spirits that were causing a disturbance.
I took over from another medium in a previous session weeks earlier conducted by a Jesuit priest from the Ateneo University, Fr. Bulatao. There were repeated paranormal disturbances at the old building where I worked, a stone’s throw from the Institute of Mass Communication (now called by another name) where I was a grad student at night while working during the day as a full time research associate of what was then the Institute of Environmental Planning, now called the School of Urban & Regional Planning. That haunted building has been razed and there stands a newer multi-story building.
At night, the custodian claimed that when all the rooms were locked up and no one was inside, there were eerie noises that would make the hair on the back of one’s neck stand on end. The occurrences were so frequent and so disruptive, ignoring them and pretending life was normal was no longer an option. Someone finally did something about it and called on Fr. Bulatao to help shed light on the mysterious goings-on at the institute. I simply avoided the rest rooms and steered away from isolated areas of the building and never stayed in the building past sundown.
Professor Cynthia Turingan was the first medium. Under hypnosis, she revealed that an American soldier, an enlisted man, by the name of Stephen Davies (his name was spelled with an e in the surname) was murdered at the location right smack dab where the building stood. Details of a murder story flowed out of her like a gusher. But then it came to an abrupt halt when the door to the room where the session was being held, for no apparent reason, suddenly burst open. The medium snapped out of the hypnotic trance feeling extremely limp and exhausted as though she had traveled many miles across a desert. I stood up and with a nonchalant shrug of my shoulders calmly closed the door.
Dissatisfied with the aborted session, the group decided to hold another. Professor Turingan was unavailable for the next session and I was drafted to act as medium, a role which I accepted on a lark and a dare.
There was a thunderstorm raging outside but I don’t remember much of what I said when I went on a trance. I do remember feeling very light, as though weightless, while someone gently whispered things to my ear. Later, I learned that under hypnotic suggestion, I was instructed to go back to 1945, the year that the medium revealed when the alleged murder of the American soldier occurred.
I described the place as I saw it — an open field, a moonless night, quonset huts and a heavy sense of foreboding in the air. During the session, the same Stephen Davies revealed the name of his murderer. He said he was hit on the head by a piece of wood while he was out on patrol one night and was robbed of his money. The ghost revealed details about his murderer: his assailant’s name, the exact address where he lived, describing him as an old man by that time, languishing in jail for other crimes he committed and that the house where the murderer used to live on J.P. Rizal Street in Makati was eventually destroyed by fire.
He was asked about the name of his wife and where she lived, questions upon questions which the ghost said were “not important” but pressed further, he said that his wife had remarried and pleaded not to bother his wife anymore. He said that he was not the only spirit hovering in the area and that there were many others. Asked about how he felt, he said that he was lonely and that he just wants to be remembered.
Over and over again, he said he wanted to be remembered. He ignored questions about his past brushing them aside for the one thing he wanted — that he be remembered. His bones, he said, lay scattered and mixed with the soil in the same area which was leveled years earlier by a bulldozer. The ghost of the dead soldier requested that a mass be said on a sunny day in his remembrance — a request the group readily granted him. Shortly after, the eerie occurrences seemed to stop.
(To be continued in next week’s issue …)
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The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
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Nota Bene: Monette Adeva Maglaya is SVP of Asian Journal Publications, Inc. To send comments, e-mail monette.maglaya@asianjournalinc.
