Spirits of the dead (more commonly called “ghosts”) manifest to the living in various ways.
Most commonly, ghosts are not actually seen, but their presence can be felt or sensed. Often people feel goosebumps or their hair stands up when in the presence of spirits of the dead.
Sometimes they are seen merely as shadows or silhouettes. Very rarely are they seen clearly as solid, as though they are alive.
The following are true stories of close encounters of the third kind, which was told by a Grab driver to my secretary recently.
Ghost passengers
About a month ago, a Grab driver picked up five young passengers from SM Megamall in Mandaluyong and brought them to Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City.
As each student alighted one by one from the vehicle, he counted four of them to have gotten out. He waited for the fifth passenger to get out of the car, but nobody was left sitting there anymore.
Puzzled, the driver tried to call the attention of the students to ask them what happened to the fifth passenger, but they had already gone inside the building. So the driver asked the school security guard how many ID cards of the students he had counted, and he replied, “four.”
The fifth student was a ghost!
More recently, the same Grab driver picked up a heavily built woman late at night from Makati and brought her to Town and Country in Antipolo.
When they reached their destination, the mother of this passenger got out of the house and paid the fare of P260. But he did not see the woman passenger get out of the car.
During the trip, the driver tried to start a conversation with her but she did not respond. She just sat silently in the car. The mother told the driver not to mind her daughter, because she does that all the time.
Every 12 midnight, she arrives home from work and the mother would be waiting for her with the payment. She said her daughter has been doing that every evening since she died a week before that. She would call her mother to tell her she would be arriving soon.
Stories of ghosts appearing as solid are not really so rare as commonly believed. I myself experienced this several years ago.
Elevator encounter
I had a meeting with an insurance company on the ninth floor of a building in Makati.
After the meeting, my host Ed accompanied me to the elevator and pressed the down button. When the elevator door opened, I saw three construction workers in gray overalls standing inside. One even nodded to me.
When the doors closed, the elevator went up instead of down. It stopped on the 11th floor and the three men stepped out.
The elevator then went down and stopped on the ninth floor where I came from. Nobody entered the elevator, so it proceeded straight down to the ground floor.
I was puzzled why the elevator went up to the 11th floor when it should have gone down. But I know such things can happen if somebody pressed the up button first.
Still, that made me wonder. So I called up Ed and asked him, “When you brought me to the elevator, did you see those three construction workers inside?”
He said, “What construction men? Jimmy, I was there and the elevator was empty. You were all alone there!”
The next Soulmates, Karma and Reincarnation Seminar is on Nov. 9, 1-7 p.m., Room 308 Prince Plaza 1, Legazpi St. Legazpi Village (in front of Greenbelt 5), Makati; tel. 88107245 or 0998-9886292