Can elemental creatures or nature spirits, such as dwarves, fairies or other enchanted beings, possess humans? And why?
One possible answer can be gleaned from the e-mail of reader Jeffrie Sahagun of Puerto Princesa, Palawan. He related how a group of young female and one male military trainees in a camp in Palawan was possessed by some unknown and unexplained beings during their training.
At first, Sahagun said, he was skeptical, until he began to piece together the details of the story told him by a credible eyewitness whom he knew.
“The training area was located near a big and old Sampaloc tree within the camp,” wrote Sahagun.
The possessed trainees conveyed the message “to leave the residents of the trees in peace, that they (the spirits) have been patiently ignoring the loud noise and shouting that goes with the training during the day, but for this shouting to continue even past midnight is allegedly unbearable to them.
“The most bizarre thing is that even the commanders of the training got the message of the entities through text messages. They also specifically mentioned that the tree should be fenced, never to be disturbed again. They mentioned how to show compliance by making offerings of special food.
“The female trainees were very strong and spoke in men’s voices and taunted their commanders. Among themselves they would converse in a language nobody understood. They were brought to a church but the possession persisted.
“The young man brought to the church even managed to lift and throw an entire church bench.”
Sahagun said that, although he has heard of such incidents in Palawan, this was the first time it came from a very credible witness—one of the trainees he knew.
He now believes there are nature spirits or elementals inhabiting and protecting Mother Earth. He was hoping that with his story, “there would be more respect for these unseen creatures who value the forests, river, streams and the oceans.”
I believe everything Sahagun related. These spirits or elementals were also created by the same God who created us. And, like human beings, there are good and bad elementals.
Mysterious
The military trainees were lucky to encounter elementals that did not take human lives. There are others who do otherwise.
I remember the case of a well-known car battery manufacturing company formerly located in Makati. Its general manager named Bobby, a graduate of the Asian Institute of Management, called up to tell me about a mysterious happening in their office.
“In October,” said Bobby, “one of our factory employees died outside the premises. Nothing unusual about that because people could die anytime. Then in November, another employee died. We didn’t suspect anything unusual or strange about that.
“In December, nobody died. But in January, a third employee from the same department died. That’s when I suspected something out of the ordinary was happening. These employees all belonged to the same department!”
I asked Bobby if there was anything new or different they did in the factory before the incidents. He paused and asked, “What do you mean?”
I told him, “Something as unusual as a series of deaths in a short period does not happen without a cause. Is there anything you did at the time which you did not do before?”
And he said, “The only thing I could remember was cleaning our old warehouse to give way to an executive parking area.”
I pointed out that it could be the cause of the incidents. Bobby then requested me to visit the place. Since I don’t really do exorcisms myself, I brought an exorcist, a blind healer.
He worked usually with a young female medium whom he would induce into a trance and who would then channel the elementals or spirits that could be causing the disturbances.
He found there were over 150 negative and angry engkanto living inside the old warehouse. They were angry with the people who died “because they were making so much noise.”
It turned out the employees usually went on night shift and, to keep themselves from falling asleep, they played their radios very loud in the evening. Their department was right next to the warehouse.
When the exorcist told the spirits to leave the warehouse, they refused. So, the exorcist had to “melt” them one by one until not one was left, not even their leader.
Because of the sheer number of engkanto that had to be “melted,” it took the exorcist the whole afternoon up to early evening to finish the job. The leader of the engkanto, however, proved to be stubborn and refused to leave. It took the exorcist a great effort before he was able to finally subdue it.
The whole process looked surreal, if not absurd, to the uninitiated onlooker. But it worked!
After that, no other incidents took place in the factory until the company had to move out of the place a few years later.
For more information on these creatures, please see my book “Dwarves and Other Nature Spirits, Their Importance to Man,” published by Rex Publishing Corp. and distributed by Rex Book Store. If the book is no longer available, try the Internet.