This year, I unfortunately had a pretty paranormal-free life that I have no stories to share. Either that or I have been too dense and preoccupied to notice. Though I did have my fortune read by two different card readers plus a palm reader in Vietnam, all of which were consistent and came true...which is amazingly out of the ordinary.
Courting with an Elemental Mistress
Have you ever heard of a case wherein there's a spirit attached to a person? Or an elemental falling in love with a human? I've heard this story before, many times in documentaries and other times from people I know. I've been told three accounts of this so far: one from my nanny, one from my uncle, and another from a friend.
The story I'm narrating this year is the one that my friend told me about what happened to her years back. I'll use her alias, Marie, for this story. When she was in college, there was this a guy who courted her, and it turned her world upside down...more of...from the right side down. Her days became out of the ordinary that moment a guy she met in school started pursuing her romantically. It was three months of torture when it seemed as though another entity was trying to scare her. She'd see a lot of shadows moving in her peripheral vision, and many nights my friend would experience sleep paralysis where she'd see a shadow of a woman watching her sleep.
The first of her three major-traumatic experiences happened in her house wherein she woke up one night and heard a loud bang on her window. She woke up and saw the shadow of a dog outside her window. It didn't make sense how she could see the dog because, one, they didn't have a dog; two, her room was on the second floor with no ledges where the dog could stand outside the window. It was more than a fourteen-foot drop from the ground with no possible way for a dog's shadow to be seen from where she was sleeping because her room was located far from the street as well. That night Marie covered herself with a blanket as she slept.
The second time something paranormal happened to her was another random night when she asked a friend to drive her to one of the bars far from the city. On their drive to the bar, right along the highway where the infamous Tres Marias trees stand, she saw a jeepney stop on the side of the road where a person got out of the jeep while a woman got on. Marie described her as a girl dressed in a period white patadyong and saya, having long straight hair that reached down her butt, barefoot, and a blank pitch-black face. The weird part was that the woman rode the jeep without stepping up the platform. She just walked straight through the middle aisle of the jeepney and stopped right behind the driver. My friend squirmed to the driver, grasping his arm and exclaiming, "Did you just see what I saw!?" She asked for confirmation of what she just saw, but the guy dismissed her story as contrary to what he saw as nothing out of the ordinary. A little further out the dark highway she saw what seemed like a large-black-wing-like shadow hit the windshield, one so big that it covered half of her car's front hood. We don't have black birds that size. She screamed, asking if he had seen it that time, but he denied seeing anything. She then ordered the driver to turn around and call it a night even if it meant cancelling their party plans that night.
That evening, Marie had sleep paralysis that was unlike her usual paralysis experiences. She woke up seeing a shadow of a woman standing at the foot of her bed, and with every blink of her eyes, the shadow crept closer and closer until it was hovering above her, their faces just a few inches apart. She described the face like seeing an unframed a static TV screen wherein the details of face were smudged out, no distinct feature could be seen save for her long black hair. Her recounting a smudged-static like face made me believe her since her description was exactly the same as what I saw when a full-bodied apparition glided less than two feet from where I stood. It was like a glitch in the 3D world, and I couldn't explain what I saw other than it was something that veered more to the paranormal realm than the physical.
Marie couldn't scream or move, so she closed her eyes and repeatedly prayed all the prayers she could think of. When she was finally able to take hold of herself she ran to her brother's room and slept there for the night.
The final straw was right after she went home one night after partying with the cursed guy and she saw the same figure of the woman waiting for her by a tree outside their gate. The woman this time was dressed in red, her claws dug deep into the trunk of the tree as her limbs twisted like a creature crouched in preparation for an attack. My friend could see the creature-woman staring her down, this sent chills to her core. Luckily, she was with a chaperone as she was driving that time.
She flinched the arm of the girl seated right next to her. "LOOK! That's the girl that's been haunting me!" she exclaimed, pointing at the spot where the tree stood.
Her chaperone peered from inside the car scouring the darkness she was directed to stare at. "Ma'am there's nothing there. I can't see anything!"
"That can't be, she's right there!" Marie insisted.
"Ma'am seriously, I don't see anyone," the girl reassured.
My friend honked frantically for the gate to be opened. The thing remained motionless but followed her with its stare until the car entered the garage. Marie must've said all the curses she could mutter until she was able to safely enter her house. She asked her chaperone to accompany her in her room that night as she slept in fear that something might strangle her in her sleep.
Immediately the next morning my friend told the guy not to pursue her any longer since it wasn't a good idea to compete with a creepy-stalker-ghastly-woman for his affection. The horror she had to endure wasn't not worth the flirty exchanges. With that, the hauntings stopped.
She learned soon after that all the women he tried to court turned him down. It's probably because of the jealous spirit attached to him. The woman must be willing to put up with a cursed life to be with him. This year a common friend of ours tried to see if the guy was married or with someone out of curiosity, but there was no trace of any relationship with a woman based on his profile for years. Perhaps the irony of having a "guardian" following you 24/7 is when it's overly possessive of you that it'll make you belong to no one but him/her/it for the rest of your life.
