The poltergeist mystery

Yahoo came up with a news a few days ago about a woman who claimed that her house was haunted by a poltergeist. The story goes that the poltergeist opened and slammed doors shut as well as moved objects.

The news story said that the woman, Liza Manning, a 34-year-old carer in Coventry, even claimed that the resident ghost had killed the family's pet dog. A veterinary post-mortem, the news story said, suggested that the dog was shoved down the stairs. The story carried a video of a plastic chair moving from one place to another.

Unless you have shared a similar experience as Ms. Manning's, your tendency is not to believe, especially at this time when science, neuroscience in particular, dismisses paranormal phenomena as mere illusions created in the brain. Many comments posted below the story believed that it was a hoax. I used to adopt such an attitude until I had a poltergeist experience in early 1980s.

I was then working as a reporter with the People's Journal tabloid in Manila when a boy was brought to the office. He came on a ship from Cebu south of Manila and was taken by a co-passenger to People's Journal at the Port Area because he had nowhere to go.

People's Journal published the boy's photograph and vital information about him so his kin in Manila could identify him. Meanwhile, my editor-in-chief, Gus Villanueva, asked me to bring the boy to my home for a temporary shelter. I was then living with a cousin and some nieces in a rented house on Constancia St., Sampaloc, Manila.

A week later, my cousin, an engineer, told us that there was something queer with the boy, named Cesar Cordova. He said that every time he sent the boy to buy cigarettes at the corner store he would come back with more cigarette sticks than the money given to him could buy.

We experimented. Hope cigarette then cost 25 centavo for two sticks. I gave the boy 25 and he came back with four sticks. The experiment was repeated several times with the same results. We confronted the boy if he was stealing and he swore that he did not.

A few days later, while I was sleeping on the sofa on the living room downstairs I felt a small stone hit me on one foot. It was a Sunday and my day off. It was also a holiday for my nieces who were either working or going to school

When the incident was repeated two more times, I called to my nieces who were upstairs to stop poking fun at me. They swore they were in the room trying to get some sleep. When two or three more pebbles hit me on the feet, I stood up and sat on the stairway leading to the second floor. Then a cascade of pebbles hit me, some on my thighs.

I called my nieces and told them about what happened. The general reaction was "Come on, don't scare us. it's not a good joke." I told them that it was true and that I was not trying to pull their legs. Nobody believed me.

In late afternoon, while almost all of us were in the living room downstairs, a small cut of marble (my cousin, who had a contract for marble tombstones with a memorial park, had cuts of marble tiles in the living room) flew and hit the wall. When another cut flew, they started to believe me.

That same afternoon a handful of pebbles appeared like they were strewn suddenly in the living room. We went to the door and ran along the small alley leading to the gate when a shower of pebbles followed us. We told the landlords (two elderlies who were sitting on their chairs on the roadside in front of their home) about it but they thought we were trying to pull a prank even after we showed them the pebbles.

At about 7 p.m. that night, we heard a knock on the door. I opened the door but saw nobody. It was impossible not to see anybody even if he walked away because the alley between the walls of the owner's house and the neighbor's was about 15 meters long.

A few days before that happened, Cesar told us that he was kidnapped by some kind of people when he was young and was held as a companion in a cave by a man whose hair was white on the other side and black on the other half. We dismissed his tales as just some sort of crazy talks. But after that phenomenon happened I asked him about what was happening. He said that the man had followed him and he was in our house.

My cousin, although an atheist, and I had read books on poltergeists and we understood each other that it was an actual case of a poltergeist. In the meantime, a woman called up on our home phone listed in the People's Journal story that she was a relative of the boy. But my cousin and I had decided to study the case and told her that we would keep the boy for a while.

When our nieces learned about our decision, they threatened to move out elsewhere if I did not bring the boy to his relatives. We gave in and I took the boy to her relatives in Pasig, east of Manila. At the office, I confided the case to Ester Dipasupil,the features editor of the Times Journal, a sister publication of People's Journal. She told me that the family of her aunt in Baguio City have had similar experiences.

Her aunt's family experienced not only pebble showers but furniture and dinning table moved to other places. There were times when the dinning table went missing from the dinning room and later found in a room upstairs. I can't remember if it was she who told me to see Father Bulatao of Ateneo de Manila University but I later went to the university with the boy in tow and met Father Bulatao, who told me that he was studying the phenomenon and had came up a small pamphlet in which he wrote local stories of similar occurrences.

He advised me to see Redentor Romero, whom I remember was conductor of the Manila Symphony orchestra. When I called up Mr. Romero by phone, he told me to look for a woman named Vivian Manila, who I understood was a medium, at the Saint Pope Pious Center in Manila. While I was about to look for Vivian Manila, the boy's kin called me up because they accused him of throwing stones in their home and at the neighbors' houses.

I went to Pasig and explained to the family and their neighbors that the boy was being followed by a ghost, or whatever it was, and told them about cases of poltergeist I had read in books. I also told them that I was looking for Vivian Manila who might be able to help us explain the phenomenon. At the Pope Pious, some staffers of a Catholic youth organization that held office there said they had heard of her name but did not know her personally.

A few days later, the relatives of Cesar called me up and told me that they had sent the boy on a ship back to Cebu as they could no longer stand the weird occurrences that were going on in their house. I stopped my quest for Vivian Manila because I had nothing to bring to her anymore but a tale.









Here's the Yahoo story.


By Gaby Leslie, Yahoo!
A woman who insists that her house is haunted by a poltergeist has released a video clip of eerie happenings in her family home.

The petrified Manning family from Coventry started witnessing out-of-the-ordinary events two weeks after settling into the council-rented home last year.

Lisa Manning, a 34-year-old carer, goes as far as to claim that the resident ghost killed the family's pet dog Phoenix. A vetinary post-mortem suggested it had been shoved down the stairs.

She has since had to resort to exorcism to get rid of the ghostly problem after noticing lights switching on and off, pots moving, drawers opening and doors slamming shut.

Shooting the footage herself, an empty cupboard door appears to open by itself and a pink chair gradually making its way across her 11-year-old daughter Ellie's bedroom in the 52-second home video.

Eager to prove its existence, the mother-of-two told the Coventry Telegraph: "The priest blessed the house but said himself that we shouldn't live here, we definitely shouldn't stay. He gave me a small crucifix. The problem is because we can't see it, we don't know where it's going to be or what it's going to do. This is a horror house. It's like living in a scary movie. The worst thing about it is, even I can't believe what's happening myself."