Some odd things I remember; when I was thirteen, my first dance was with a young man who died a year after. My first kiss was with a lad who was first and my last. While my first love was a character from a book. It is strange that I dreamed about so many lives that maybe I have lived. Some are so vivid, that I end up feeling being in the same place in a different time (like dejavu). And it happens to me all the time – when crossing the street, when talking to a person, or being spell bound in familiar places that I swear I have never seen or been to, but I somehow have this eerie feeling that I have been there several times. Maybe all these came from books that I have read, or movies that I watched.
About two decades ago, I dreamed that the daughter of my Mom’s deceased best friend went to our house (she is based in Cagayan De Oro). So I told my Mom that Mikyo was coming home from CDO (which is in Mindanao). A few minutes after telling my Mom (we were sitting on the wooden stairs at our old ancestral house in Sumilang Pasig then), Mikyo went up the stairs and this was after a year or two when they left to live with her Mom’s aunt and uncle. I was like, wow, this can’t be real. I often have dreams that happen after I dream about them. Scary but real.
One night, my Mom was stitching some clothes using the old sewing machine, when I saw this thin smoke going up (like literally, in a straight line, seemingly coming from an unexplained source on the floor (but there was no hole, so it couldn’t have come from the room below it). The way it went up was really weird (it was a straight white smoke that came between me and my Mom while I watch her stitch clothes. So I asked my Mom, “did you see that? nakita mo ba yun, Ma?” And she said “yes, don’t mind it, wag mo pansinin”. Apparently, my Mom also (based on her stories) saw some eerie things like when she was younger, she swore to have seen an old “kapre” (a mythical creature with a pipe, like a sasquatch/yeti sort of being) whom she said “courted” her Lola. It was interesting to listen to folklore, but coming from my Mom who was, a no non-sense and serious person, I think that it was true (this story kept being told until I was in my teens). My story though is not based on a folklore, and in the years succeeding it I tried to suppress this by ignoring (like what my Mom asked me to do).
In 1985, I was at the porch of my aunt’s house in Montalban, Rodriguez, Rizal. It was almost 9 pm and, I was all alone. I was staring blankly into the subdivision streets when I noticed around three to five dogs howling and following what looks like an old lady in a white shawl. As the image got closer (about three blocks away), the image looked like flowing linen and I couldn’t see the old lady’s face. I just thought it could be the neighbor’s grandmother. A few minutes more and the image got closer to the gate of the house, and while I was expecting the old lady to open the gate, the image passed through it! I was in total shock and called my Mom to take a look. As expected, it disappeared. When the neighbor heard my story, they said that it was not the first time that the old woman “appeared” in that place and in fact, other people corroborated the same details. They even cut the “Balete Tree” near that gate to make the apparition disappear.
After this, my Mom strongly suggested that I exerted extra effort to “ignore” what I was seeing, not because she doesn’t believe me, but due to a danger that these “sightings” might intensify and manifest more like what happened to her. I am pretty sure that I am not a nutcase, and yes, I have a very strong faith in God. I believe that these things have no power over me or this “plane” where they shouldn’t exist.
Many similar experiences came after and years after I tried to “disengage” with these things, some milder form of “eerie” experience come at intervals like, feeling weird in a certain place, or recognizing people I think are familiar to me but have met for the first time. The life I live barely gives me time to think about these seemingly difficult to understand phenomenon. I can’t explain it either. And truly hope I wont feel them anymore (weirdness).
Lately, there were articles that discussed “alternate realities” as true things. They were discussions too about alternate universes. However, as a child raised in a Christian upbringing and one who grew up in a Catholic School, studied in a Catholic University, and have lived life with the Bible as my stronghold, I still feel responsible that my faith is grounded on what the scriptures say.
I started writing most of my dreams now, just to make sure that I am able to connect the things that happen and that will still transpire as I write this. I do hope that it goes away though. And hope that these are just part of my fertile imagination.