Hometown Experience

I was born and raised in a family that doesn't really believe in the paranormal. We are quiet religious but was also brought up by my old folks telling stories that consist of the explainable and much to say (for me) "impossible" ghost stories. I do live near the famous White House in Baguio in which itself shares a whole bunch of scary and ghostly history.

Here's how my story started, my Grandmothers cousin in La Union died when I was 15 years old. We (my family including my uncle and my cousin) went there to formally say our condolences, and at the same time see our extended family. It was then that I knew that our clan originated in the said province. A lot of my cousins and uncles and aunts that I didn't know I have was introduced to us.

There was a lot of old sayings when attending a funeral in that place, like never walk around the coffin or, let's say, introduce yourself to the dead if it's your first time meeting him/her, in which I did only to respect what they believe was a must.

The night of the first day of the funeral, me and my cousin were playing with his new cellphone (I cannot really remember the model but I'm sure its a Nokia with a camera), we were so amused about it since we were really young and cellphone was a new thing for us, especially the camera. We were outside (about 10:30pm) and we tried the video capture feature of the cellphone. We made sure that we were alone because we might look ignorant trying out the new cellphone. So when we were sure that everyone was inside and there was just the two of us, we started rolling the cameras. It was about 1:54 sec long, then we took pictures as well, the garden, the front of the house and the night sky.

Upon reviewing the video, we noticed an eerie voice on the background, goosebumps started appearing on my body as I try to interpret what the voice was saying, and it says "DAHIL SAYO, DAHIL SAYO, DAHIL SAYO NAMATAY AKO! (BECAUSE OF YOU, BECAUSE OF YOU, BECAUSE OF YOU I DIED! (after was a sound that looks like someone was being whipped real hard) that was the background sound for more than 45 seconds, those were really high pitched voices and was very clear. Me and my cousin were paralyzed and couldn't move. We checked the pictures and what we saw sent us running back inside the house. There was a lady wearing a traditional clothes staring directly at the camera.

We had our uncles check the video and the picture, they were actually not surprised and just advised us that we shouldn't have done that because it was said that there were dwendes (end evil ones as well) dwelling in the area where we took the video, and as for the lady in the window, they said that it was the lady that used to own the place back in the Spanish era. She was found dead in the area and no one has a clue on who did it. The elders advised us to say a prayer and apologize, and delete the pictures and video as well because the dwendes and the ghost might follow us back to Baguio and something bad might happen.

The next day we were supposed to go home but me and my cousin woke up feeling heavy and we both have high fever. The elders performed a ritual and offered a chicken as a sacrifice, at the same time we deleted the video and the pictures. To my surprise after about 20 minutes we felt better. We then departed and went back home. I don't know if the event from the other had to do something with it but still it was something I will never forget.