The mysterious boy in our apartment

When I was still a young kid, maybe 9 years old, we rented a two-storey apartment house in Quezon City, Philippines.

The first few weeks of our residence had been odd. Our new neighbors frequently ask my parents of why did we rent in that place. Some told us that we should just stay for a year and leave after. My grandpa too got mad with us of our decision to rent that apartment. He just said it's cursed.

The apartment is not that old, cemented at the bottom and made of wood materials at the upper floor. It is quite large and cheap, with windows of Capiz shells, with Spanish Era architecture. We also enjoy a largebackyard with a full-grown Muntingia tree, to store our junks. It is very relaxing overall and we enjoy our first year.

After our first year, that's when we experience the so told "curse" of that house. 

One afternoon, while my mother is drying and folding our clothes upstairs, she glimpsed a head who peeked at her through the door and heard footsteps going down the stairs. She look after it and saw a young boy entered the bathroom. At first she thought it was me, but then, she saw me sleeping safe and sound at the sofa downstairs.

There's also an incident where my uncle, who visited us, saw a boy running down the stairs, hurriedly to the bathroom. He always hear a kid's laughter at midnight before that happened. Me too, can't sleep properly almost every night and always felt that there was someone who's looking at me. I never felt that kind of fear before.



And the worst and strangest thing that happened during our occupancy on that apartment, is when we started to struggle financially. We are in a lot of debts, father's income dwindled and our expenses doubled. Mind you again that the rent is cheap to our standards. It didn't happen previously and my parents are very surprised of what happened. One of our neighbors told us that every family who rented that place got broke after a year of their stay. Our grandpa and other neighbors confirmed of that strange phenomena.

We managed to hold on for another year and left that freaking cursed apartment. Yes, we did try to bless it. yet, many unexplained things really happen in this world.

The next house we rented didn't produce that eerie and strange happenings. Our income also steadily came back to normal. I didn't go back to that house again, even just to visit it.

The Man on a Carabao

My grandfather had a best friend who died of drowning in the river. This friend was a fellow farmer and always taking his beloved carabao, who drowned too, to bathe in the river everyday. My grandpa had been greatly sad by the loss of his friend, his buddy since they were young.



One day, while fixing his fishnet on the river bank, he saw a man riding on a carabao, on the deep part of the river. It wasn't moving or trying to swim. He look closely then, recognized him as his dead friend, who has just buried that day. He is there, sitting on a carabao, waving his hand to grandpa like saying goodbye, while sinking slowly in the deep river. The carabao wasn't swimming, but gradually sinking deep, with my grandpa's friend. He doesn't stop swaying his arms to my grandfather, who didn't felt fear but happiness and tears of joy to see his old friend again, and giving a good goodbye. Grandpa waved his hand back to the man on the carabao, until it sank deep in the river.

The haunted bridge

There's a bridge inside the town in our province, which is rumored to be haunted by ghosts.

One night, my uncle is riding with his motorcycle for home. The moment he passed the bridge, he felt an added weight on his back-seat, like someone just sat there. He knew about the stories in the bridge, so he sped up his motorcycle past the end of the bridge. The weight is lifted after that. He then breathes easily and try to look back, but when he did, the headless woman is still there, riding with him.

The man in the Coconut tree

This happened while my aunt, my mother's sister is in province.

She has just woken up early morning, around 6 am, and decided to go out for a walk. There's a full-grown coconut tree just a meter away from the right side of the porch, when she suddenly saw a thin short man, without a t shirt, slowly sliding down the tree. Confused of who it is, she rub her eyes then. To her shock, the man just appeared in front of her. She doesn't know him, for the man has no face.

A Girl Smells Fishy

This story came from my father while he is having a lunch break on our house, from his work.

It had been several days when all of us, including me and some of our neighbours, started to smell very foul odour inside and outside our houses. We tried to look for dead animals, and we did found a dead mice, but the strong stink is still there. It smelled like a stinking fish or a very polluted river, and it comes out much frequently during midday. Somehow, my family and affected neighbours all concluded it came from a dead rotting animal somewhere we couldn't find.

Until one day, my father went outside our house to get back to work after having a lunch (he's work is just a walking distance away from our home), said that he again smelled the fishy stench, much stronger this time. Then he heard sobs, of a child, coming from one of our neighbour's stairway (There's no person there at noon, which my father is aware of). He decided to look for it and found out that the cries came from an unknown fat girl, sitting on the steps. The girl, my father described, is very dirty and dark from head to toe, hair curled and very matted, eyes are red maybe because of crying, and to my father's concern, her nose has blood flowing in one hole. Much creepier is that the fishy smell is much stronger in her, if not, came from her. 

My father asked her some questions, like if she's fine, what happened, and who is she? The dirty girl didn't answered any of the questions and just continue sobbing, even without looking to the person in front. Brave father then tried to console her by planning to offer a shoulder tap, when suddenly, to his astonishment, the girl just suddenly stopped crying and open her mouth wide, just staring at my father. My papa then backed away from the child, and just went straight to his work. 

That night, he did told what happened to my mother, who, in turn didn't tell us after several days. We then prayed and conducted a regular bible study in our house together with our neighbours. Since then, we can no more smell the foul stench. As for the girl, no one knew or recognize her. We also asked questions around our small community if they ever saw a dirty young fat girl who passed around that time, without telling the whole story, unfortunately they didn't, and we have no idea who can it be.