“Ghosts of Events, People and Things Past!” by Linggoy Alcuaz in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” in OpinYon Lite, Year # 2, Isyu # 22, Thus to Sat, Nov 4 – 5, 2011. Since I was born on October 12, 1948 (That makes me 63 years old today.), I have lived for about fifty-eight years of my life in a spooky house and garden. My parents bought the place in 1941 from an American– Italian family, the Franciscos. My paternal uncle Luis Tuason Alcuaz ended up marrying one of the daughters, Pomponette. The Franciscos were interned at the UST on Espana in Sampaloc, Manila during the Japanese Occupation. My uncle was a Chemical Engineer and a Professor at the UST. He had an office beside the gym where the American Citizens and/or Nationals were housed. Through a hole in the wall of his office, he would smuggle things into and out of the gym for the internees. That is how they met, fell in love and married after the war. Recognizing my uncle’s services, General Douglas MacArthur facilitated his migration to the USA. They settled in San Mateo on the Peninsula side of the San Francisco Bay area. Initially, they suffered some discrimination in housing and shelter. My uncle took judicial recourse and won. They bought a house in Hillsborough that is twenty years older than the 1926 house that we bought from Tita Pomponette’s parents. In the fifties, we did not have dogs, we did not lock our garden gate, day or night, and we did not have a gun in the house or a security guard. Our one and a half hectare garden occupied most of a block that was bounded and surrounded by Espana Extension, Ilang Ilang St., Sampaguita St., Balete Drive and Campanilla St. That was the time of the apparitions of the White Lady of Balete Drive. She was Maria Elena Recto Garchitorrena, the daughter of Maria Cristina Recto and Manito Garchitorrena of Tigaon, Partida, Camarines Sur. They lived in a house owned by Atty, Raffy Recto, the son of Senator Claro Mayo Recto and Dona Aurora, and situated in the same block as the houses of Don Vicente Madrigal and the mother of Ambassador Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco bounded by Balete Drive, Bouganvilla St., Hibiscus St, and Sampaguita St. Throughout my pre-school, grade school, high school and college years, nobody in our Araneta – Alcuaz family had seen the ghost. Our entire family was accustomed to the idea that the most famous ghost in the Philippines was our neighbour. We even had the feeling that the ghost or ghosts were friendly and even protected us from evil people.. When I was in college, my future wife came to my home with future 2010 Presidential Candidate Nicky Perlas. We had already met and were probably about to go steady, but she had not yet been to my home nor did she have any idea where and how I lived. They came to deliver a solicitation letter offering to sing Christmas carols to my family during the upcoming Christmas Season. It was dusk. The sun had set but there was enough remaining light to see. The street and house lights were not yet on. The gate was open. There was no doorbell. They left the car on the street and walked into the driveway. Right in front of the gate was a huge Balete tree that must have cast a shadow more than five hundred meters square. The wind blew. The fallen leaves rustled. They ran towards the house. They could not run away. They had to accomplish their mission. They wondered what kind of persons would live in such a spooky place. They knocked on a door. It opened. There was I – the future husband. It was just for a bit less than ten per cent of my life that I did not live at Balete Drive. In 1974, with my wife, Maria Fe “Baby” Ahorro and two young children, Jose Luis “Peep Peep” and Maria Teresa Margarita “Cuchie Pooh”, we transferred to my in – laws house at the J. M. Basa Compound on E. Rodriguez Ave., now C -5, in Libis, Quezon City. We stayed there for less than a year. Niether did we see nor feel any ghosts including that of my grandfather-in-law. My wife has five sisters, all of them with a “Maria” at the front end of their names. It seems that only the naughtiest of them was rewarded with an appearance by their grandfather. In addition she was also the beneficiary of a whack at the back of her head (As in “Binatukan.”) from an unseen hand. When I got a higher paying full time job in 1975, we transferred to an apartment on San Raphael St. in Barrio Kapitolyo, Pasig. By then, we had a third child, Manuel Hermilo “Mikko”. That was the same apartment occupied almost a decade earlier by my former Commandant at the Ateneo Air Force ROTC, 1st Lt. Len Lamug. He had retired early from the Philippine Air Force and was working as a helicopter pilot for Ayala Corporation. His Bell Jet Ranger crashed in Mindoro. However, we never felt or heard him during our brief stay in the apartment. We left the apartment and went back to my in-laws in Libis, because my new employer sent me to Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia in mid-1976. In 1977, I bought a 400 square meter corner lot in the Pardo de Tavera Compound which was bounded and surrounded by J. P. Rizal St., P. Tuason St. and the L shaped Pasaje de la Paz St. in Project 4, Q. C. Then old Metropolitan Broadcasting, Channel 11, studios were our diagonal neighbour. I took out a P 50,000.00 loan from the SSS and built a two storey concrete house with an area of 200 square meters. Our place was almost adjacent to the original site of the Pardo de Tavera residence. The place was not only supposed to be haunted. It had a coven of devils in residence. During our three year stay, we had to exorcise our home with the sacrifice of a chicken by an exorcist or “herbolario” at least once. We stayed there from 1978 – 1982. Our fourth child, Jose Maria “Lucky” joined us there in May 1980. Since 1982, we have stayed continuously at Balete. Since 1987, a year after my mother died, my wife and I have stayed in the master’s bedroom which used to be my parents’ bedroom since 1941. Nobody among my four children and us, have seen my parents after they were buried. However, some of our naughtier household help have claimed to have been appeared to by my mother. We have had a lot of specialists on ghosts as special visitors at our home. Among them were “Tonypet” R. Araneta, Rev. Fr. Jaime Bulatao, S. J., Jaime Licauco, Cory Quirino, the Spirit Questors and many others. Those with third eyes keep seeing multitudes of ghosts and spirits in both our garden and our house. However, the bad ones don’t interfere with us, while the good ones protect us. How I wish that everyone could have as good a relationship with, as well as, as pleasant experiences with Ghosts, as we have had!
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