The day I was haunted by a ghost

I didn’t shout. I just slowly walked away, went back to my room, back to my bed, and pulled the sheets over my head

It was not a dark and stormy night. In fact, it was the middle of the afternoon. The sun was bright, the hall lights were on, and I can hear people walking and minding their own business from outside our second-floor window. All in all, it was a mundane weekday—just a normal, boring day for a 17-year-old.
But, as fate would have it, that was the day I was haunted by something I cannot explain. Let’s get it out of the way. I am not at all superstitious. Indeed, my family is a most logical and reasonable sort of people. My grandfather was the dean of Mechanical Engineering in Mapua, one of the first engineers out of University of the Philippines Diliman, and not particularly religious. My uncle became dean after my lolo, and my aunt is a professor at the Department of English in UP. My father, to the dismay of his dad and siblings, chose to go into business.
We think of ourselves as reasoned, logical—none of those multo hogwash. Even though our old house in Malabon had a sinister reputation among its neighbors as haunted, none of us were scared. “Leave those superstitious neighbors to their stories and chismis,” my grandparents would say to me.

It was a big house—two floors, seven rooms, a pool in the back, old wood, cold marble, with a balcony on the second floor overlooking the street. In its heyday, our house would play host to all my older cousins. Alas, I was the youngest, so by the time of our story, I am usually alone in that mansion.
I was not scared. It was my home during all my childhood days. And that house contained a lot of happy memories for me.

Time to move out
After 17 years of me living in that old mansion, we were about to move out. The family will be transferring to Quezon City, which is nearer to my school. I was excited—a new house, new school, new opportunities. My bedroom was in the second floor of the mansion. It was in the afternoon and I was watching television when I suddenly felt the need to use the bathroom.
I went out of my room and walked to the second floor hallway with the dark nara wood floorings. It was always dim in that hall, despite the lights in the ceiling. I opened the equally dark and heavy nara door in the toilet room, entered, and closed the door.
Immediately after closing it, I heard and felt four load banging, as if a very heavy hand knocked on the nara door a few inches from me. I immediately opened the door, annoyed, thinking it was my sister playing a joke on me. “Ano ba? (Hey, what gives?)” I spoke out loud. Expecting to see my older sister there with a grin and snickering.
No one was there. Just the dark, dusty, dim-litted hallway. Indeed, I realized then, that I was alone in the house. My parents were out, and it escaped me that my sister (seven years my senior) is already working in the family business. I slowly walked away thinking, “That was odd.”
Totally forgetting now to pee. I went back to my room. Got back in bed and pulled the sheets over my head. I tried to process everything until I fell asleep.
Until this day, 19 years after that strange afternoon, I cannot explain it. This is my go-to story to all my friends when we talk about the supernatural. I know it is real. It really happened to me. I can still feel the vibration and the sound—the physical manifestation of that four loud knocking on that heavy nara door.
What could it have been? Was it an auditory hallucination? As psychologists and psychiatrists would explain it.
Others in the field of psychology might explain that since I was experiencing and anticipating a lot of changes in my life that time (me moving out and going to college) was the reason why I encountered such a strange phenomenon. It could be so.
Despite my earlier statement of us not being superstitious, I now remember the stories of how my mother would always summon priests to our home due to various reasons—hearing doors slam and chairs moving on the second floor even when everyone is on the first floor.
Seeing me with sudden and unexplained bruises when I was just a toddler, and the neighbors always
saying that there’s a “white lady” standing on our second-floor balcony. Perhaps that house really was haunted. We’ll never know. If you visit that house now in Malabon, It’s now a sad romantic ruin. Walls covered with vines and windows smashed open. Natures has taken over that place. To this day, it’s just an empty ruin filled with memories. It’s sad to see it now, the place of my childhood, in ruin, and disarray. Just an uninhabited shell or is it really empty?

Featured image source: Unsplash.com