MISSING THE ‘HAUNTED HOUSE’

BY:  Macon Ramos-Araneta

            When  Nanay got sick, we left our family home in Lucena City for Manila. Checking  on it once in a while, we would nail the windows and the doors after every short visit.

            That was how the telltale about our sweet home being a haunted house began. Our neighbours tell of several occasions, they hear footsteps and unusual sounds coming from our house. Believing that there were indeed ghosts in our house, neighbourhood kids would swiftly run when they pass by.

            “Kawawa naman ang bahay naming, kinatatakutan,” my youngest sister Angie even commented when we last visited the place.

            But we can all attest to the fact that the deads—our deads, at least—do return. We have experienced how Papa and my sister Dona return and stay in our home on several instances. The most terrifying was the one on November 27, 1982.

            After watching Rod Stewart’s concert on TV, my sister Ody and I decided to sleep in the sala. Before retiring on the mat, I turned on the radio. But around 1:30 a.m., I was roused and unawarely turned it off, only to hear the water overflowing from the pail inside the bathroom.

            It was followed by several footsteps, which we all knew belonged to our Papa. Before his death, Papa had been dragging his left foot when walking due to stroke. He later succumbed to a heart failure.

            Moments later, I heard a chair being pulled and somebody sat on it. I believed it was Papa.

            When he was still alive, Papa would pull a chair in the kitchen and sit to dry his feet with a piece of cloth.

            Scared, I was about to run when Ody grabbed my panjamas and told me that Papa was there. All the while, I thought she was very much asleep as she was not moving. But Ody averred that she heard everything.

            Trembling, we lifted the mosquito net and flew upstairs to our sisters’ room and woke them up.

            From where we were, we clearly heard the footsteps and crackling sound of the chair being pulled. It lasted for several minutes until the sounds came tracking the stairs.

            Dona, the bravest among us and who was not aware that she too would someday bring horror in that house, peeped through the stairs and yelled, “Papa, huwag mo naman kaming takutin. Kami lang ang magkakasama rito. Wala  sina Nanay at Kuya.”

            To our surprise, the sounds of footsteps and the chair ceased.

            Then we remembered that before he died, Papa promised to keep watch over us.

            Five years later, Dona followed him, and there are now two deads making moves felt in our home.

         Sometimes, rare things still happen in our old house. But no matter how much it scares the neighbours and probably us, we’ll keep on going back. It is where we experienced the joy of childhood and the pangs of losing the two people closest to our hearts.  Years later, they became three after Nanay died  of lung cancer.

       At present, the once-haunted house still stand on its old location 45 years ago. Our Kuya and his wife and two teenage daughters, Third and Dona,  live in that house, where we sometimes  go home to take a respite from the mundane of our daily lives in the big city.(END)