The Dead Among Us

The story that follows is about my mom’s experiences regarding ghosts. I’ve had some of my own but her stories are scarier because she had actually seen some ghosts of dead people, which I have never experienced. My mom actually has a large mole inside the skin covering her eye. If you pull down her eyelid, you’d see it staring at you. Well, people believed that if you’ve got one right in your eye, you have the ability to see ghosts! Well, here goes her story.

When she was a little girl of about 7, she saw an old lady walk from their kitchen towards the living room and into her dad’s bedroom. Innocently, she asked her dad if he knew some old lady who was small, rounded and who looked like this and that. My mom had never seen her before because my mom’s grandparents lived in another city somewhere in the lowlands. He said yes and asked why my mom had asked. My mom said that she saw her come from the kitchen, walk towards the living room and go into his bedroom. My granddad got so upset at my mom (perhaps frightened?) because it was his mother that she just saw and that she had already died months ago.

Another ghost she has seen was during high school. At the campus building, on the third floor, was the library. One late afternoon, she was browsing some books from the shelves when she saw a black figure pass by. That time, she was alone in that alley. She got so scared that she decided to call it a day. After that she made sure that she wasn’t alone when she went to the library. The old people used to say that before the school was built, there was a hospital that stood on the same land. This was sometime after the Second World War. Some people had died in that hospital.
One unforgettable ghost she has seen was the one of a dead bank manager. This happened in the early 70’s when she was sent by her bank employer to be trained in another bank branch somewhere outside the city. On the third floor of this bank was the living quarters provided for the bank manager of the said bank. The first and second floors served the bank’s purposes.

My mom, dad and my two sisters (I wasn’t born yet) stayed together on that floor for the first duration of the training. During lunch, while they were at the table having lunch, my mom noticed a black shadow walk from the kitchen towards the balcony. It seemed that she was the only one who had seen it because nobody reacted to the incident. So she didn’t bother to talk about it, although it had happened more than twice already at the same time, during lunch. Then when the wife of the Executive Vice-president of the bank came for a visit at the branch, my mom discovered the whole truth. The lady casually asked my mom if she was comfortable living in the third floor, for which my mom said yes. Then she asked if she had seen any ghosts. Despite the facial expressions and efforts that the other bank officers were showing to signal her to hush, she kept on talking. She said that the previous bank manager had committed suicide in his room at the third floor. He shot himself to death.

She said he was some kind of schizophrenic. He couldn’t take intrigue and was always a paranoid, suspicious of bank employees if they were in a group talking. He always thought that he was the subject of their conversations. The lady showed my mom the actual bed where he died on. There were still stains of blood on it. It was in a room that always remained locked. After that revelation, my mom decided to shift to an apartment instead.

Another ghost she had seen was that of her mother’s cousin. This one was unforgettable because she summoned it and it came to her. She didn’t use an Ouija board though. She just called out her name and started talking. But when the ghost came to her, she got too scared that all she could do was scream at the top of her voice. During that time, the body of that dead relative was still in a wake at the funeral home. It was just days before when she had died. My mom wouldn’t talk about it because it is too frightening to remember.

Well, these are the ghosts that my mom can still recall. There might have been others. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading my story.

By: dargo_77@hotmail.com