Don't Look At The Mango Tree

Ever believe in a "Kapre"? #Not sure of the spelling# A Kapre is a large and hairy man who is often found sitting on huge trees while smoking a Tabacco cigar. When disturbed, they are said to bury you alive. I'm not sure if my description is accurate, but I do know they come in different sizes and are sometimes red-eyed. You know a Kapre is present because when one is around, you easily smell the strong odor of their cigars. Here are some encounters of Kapres in my grandmother's house at Paranaque City. It was usually my relatives or our helpers who have experienced seeing one.

My first encounter was when I was about 7 years old and we were all about to sleep. I know I wasn't dreaming since me, my grandmother, and the nanny along with my little sister all sleep in one room and we all heard it. It was late at night when we all heard something heavy walking fast on our roof! We all thought that maybe the mangoes from our tall mango tree were just falling and hitting the roof, but the sound sounded like heavy footsteps. Heavy like someone was jumping. We were all startled so my grandmother decided to take a peek from the window and saw a big man jump to our mango tree!

At night, my grandmother and everyone else in the house would not be roaming beyond 9pm. Our helpers know that very well. This is because when you go to our hallway, you'll notice it's a bit foggy and smelly due to the presence of a Kapre sitting in our living room smoking his cigars. We knew that he enetered the house sometimes because of our maids who do the laundry. One night, our maids decided to bring the newly ironed laundry at around 10pm. Definitely not a good idea because the laundry would be left near our living room so we can just go outside and get it ourselves the next day. As soon as they entered our hallway, there was the darkness, foggyness, and the foul smell.

While our maids were walking towards the rooms, they saw a large man sitting on one of our sofas. He was so huge that he fit the entire sofa. You can easily see his lit up cigar. Our maids then were so scared that they just decided to run back downstairs to their quarters. After that incident our maids learned the hard way to never bring up laundry at that time of the day.

Another encounter was the one of my uncle's. His room was next to ours and his window was right next to one of our mango trees. The favorite spot of the Kapres. My uncle was sleeping when he woke up at around midnight because he felt like he was being watched. And he was... When he was going to the bathroom, he checked his window and saw the Kapre sitting on the mango tree right outside his window smoking and looking straight at him. Scary! He had the hardest time trying to sleep that night.

The worst story about a kapre in our house was the one that came from our house boy and one of my grandmother's relatives from the province. Being from the province, both were used to waking up early in the morning everyday about 3-4am when it was still dark just to cut grass or tend to the plants in our big garden. During one of their walks in the garden early in the morning, they spotted the Kapre again sitting on that big mango tree of ours. He was just staring at them from up above! My house boy and relative just froze because they have never experienced anything like that. They got even more terrified when this Kapre finished his cigar and threw the cigar butt at them! They both ran into the house and decided not to do that early morning habit from then on. When they told that story to my mother ang grandmother, my mother said that they should've taken the cigar butt because it symbolizes something and it has a meaning. Lol. After seeing that thing I don't think you'd even want to stay a second longer just to pick up something from the ground.

But for anyone out there who knows, does the cigar or cigarette of a Kapre mean something when it is thrown to you or someone? Thank you for reading another one of my stories. Comments are appreciated.