My Aunty Flora

My Dad's house is well over 60 years old. I grew up in this house and have fond memories of my childhood living here. The neighbourhood has changed a lot over the years, but the house still retained its old charms.

The house is haunted. While I do not like to describe it as such, there have been a lot of occurrences that says otherwise, occurrences that still happen to this day.

Recently my aunty visited Cebu. She comes from Leyte, a neighbouring island, and she was in the city to pick up her son. It's the beginning of summer in the Philippines and schools are closed for a couple of months. Her son studies here. They planned to do some shopping before taking a ferry back to their place. As the school dorms were also closed, they asked to stay with us for a couple of days. Dad and I readily agreed as there are more rooms than occupants in this house.

My aunty has heard some of the strange stories surrounding this house. I'm sure she was a bit unnerved about staying here but hey, what's a couple of days, right? She occupied the smallest room upstairs, the one directly above the front door. We suggested for her to take the one with the air-conditioning but she wouldn't hear any of it. She was more comfortable with small rooms, she said, and besides, the room was well lit, she reasoned.

The night before they were to leave Cebu, my aunty caught up with some of her friends and they had dinner out. She came back around 10:30pm, chatted with me for a while and retired to her room upstairs. Not long after, she came down and asked me if I have been trying to call her. I did not; I was watching TV downstairs the whole time. It was not even Dad because he was already asleep, besides he rarely goes upstairs because his weak knees couldn't take the steep stairs anymore. It was not even my cousin, her son; he was still out with his friends. This happened twice that night, she was a little more shaken the second time. She said the second time, the voice was insistent, more like demanding a response from her. There was also knocking on her door, something I did not hear at all. So I told her I'd continue watching TV in my bedroom and will keep my door open. It probably worked because she did not come out of the room again that night.

She came down for breakfast the next day pale and shaking. She told us that she decided to lie down a little longer in bed after she woke up that morning; her ferry wasn't scheduled to depart until later in the afternoon anyway so she wasn't in a particular hurry. She said for whatever reason she turned to look out the window and saw a lady pass by slowly. She thought nothing about it until she realized that she was upstairs! There was no way someone could have passed by her window eight or so feet above the pavement. The way she described the lady made me think that this could be the same ghost my brother saw on numerous occasions around the house. My aunty was so scared that she decided to while the remaining hours away in a mall rather than stay in our house.