The ghosts that follow me

It's back! Midnight Stories will be posted every evening of October to celebrate the month of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. Here's our sixth story. Enjoy!


Manuel, a co-worker of mine, sees dead people.

When he was working as a stay-in warehouse man at a company that manufactured steel section bars and building and home improvement supplies in Las Piñas in the early 1990s, he would see a bunch of them after the plant ceased operation for the day.

One time, he was preparing dinner for himself and his brother who also worked there as plant operations manager when he decided to play a joke and yell out “kakain na!” even if it was just the two of them dining at the time.

As soon as the words left his mouth, Manuel saw shadowy grey figures in tattered work clothes rising from the stacks of steel bars and machinery in the warehouse. Then they started moving towards him with their arms outstretched.

It was a scene straight from "The Walking Dead"! Manuel fled the scene with the apparitions close behind him. He ran into his brother and told him what just happened, but his brother couldn’t see the ghost factory workers.

His brother—who had already been with the company years before Manuel was hired—surmised that they could be the restless spirits of workers who died in accidents on the job. He remembered someone who fell from the roof and broke his neck. There were also human remains unearthed when the company's two warehouses were being built.

But for Manuel, there was no more going back to the darkness of the warehouse that night. He and his brother ate their dinner in one of the offices where the lights were bright, after which he went straight to bed.

Manuel said the company owner later had the warehouses and the grounds blessed by a Buddhist monk, who hung up charms made of yellow paper with words written in red ink, to lay the restless dead to rest.

That wasn’t the first time Manuel saw dead people.

When he was in his teens, he was living with his brothers in the compound of a saw mill in Nueva Ecija.

One day, while he was sick and alone watching television in the living room at around three in the afternoon, he saw a couple in their wedding finery walking in the upstairs hallway—and towards him.

Manuel ran to the farthest corner of the house, but the couple kept advancing in the slow, measured pace that the bridal party usually takes down the aisle to the altar. When he changed direction, so did they.

They disappeared only when one of his brothers got home and asked him why he was running back and forth when he should be resting. He told him it was because the couple was chasing him.

"What couple?" his brother asked, unable to see the woman with the high lace collar and her groom.

Years later, in 2001, Manuel was transferred to Valenzuela to take care of the firm’s warehouse that had been shut down in Malanday.

At first he didn’t understand why he kept on waking up at three in the morning, until one such awakening, when he chanced to look out the window—and saw the same bride and groom floating over the compound’s gates, looking like holograms. Manuel's only companion in the place, the night guard, was asleep nearby.

One night, after returning to the staff house from roving the grounds to check for prowlers from the nearby squatter colony who had the habit of breaking into the warehouse to steal steel bars, Manuel heard sounds of a party emanating from one of the rooms.

He opened the door—and saw several people in traditional Chinese garb inside.

One of them started talking to him in Chinese, but Manuel could not understand a word of it.
He was certain he was not drunk because he only had one bottle of beer with the guard before checking the grounds.

The only thought that crossed his mind was that they were the same people who switched on the gas in the kitchen every morning, and left the dining table and chairs in disarray and dirty plates for him to clean up.

Unable to do anything about the ghostly revelers, he left them to it and went to bed. The next morning, they were gone except for the remains of the party the night before.

With a sigh, he began stacking the dirty plates and glasses and fetched the broom to clean up after them. — BM, GMA News