Not your mama

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

I'll preface this story by saying that I've outgrown religion and identify as an atheist.

Still, there's one memory from childhood that's a little spooky.

When I was little, my family lived in Bataan and I shared a room with my mom.

I was a scaredy-cat who could't sleep by herself even with the lights on, so it was sort of lucky that my father worked outside the country and my mother didn't force me to sleep on my own.

It was a great set-up. If I had a nightmare that woke me up in the middle of the night, my mom would be right there and I'd be fine.

One night though, I woke up and saw my mom kneeling in front of the dresser, her long black hair falling forward and covering her face. I squinted at her, wondering why she was praying at that hour.

I rolled over the bunched-up sheets next to me and called out, "Ma, anong ginagawa mo diyan?"

To my surprise, my mom poked her head out from under the sheets and asked, "Sinong kausap mo?"

To this day, I still don't know. I like chalking it up to poor vision. — BM, GMA News