Here in the Philippines one persistent belief is that within a few days after burying a dead loved one, you go to the mall or the park or some other crowded area where there’s lots of loud noise and you can easily blend in. If your loved one's ghost is following you around, you can lose them in a crowded, noisy place. When my grandmother died in Bohol the entire clan went to the beach to party the following day.
Another belief (picked up from the Chinese, I was told) is that if you’re coming home from a place that had a dead body in it — a hospital, a funeral, a site of a fatal accident — you either light a small candle in the yard or build a small fire. You step over the flame, and any ghost following you won’t be able to cross over.
That being said...my experience was different as I did neither of the two. I had a particularly bad scrape with the netherworld while I was motorcycling back to Manila from a road trip to Baler.
Baler is a beautiful little community on Luzon's eastern shoreline, famous for beaches, surfing and seafood among regular tourists. In recent years Baler has seen the rise of a different kind of tourist, people who travel not so much to go to an amazing destination -- which Baler is -- as to experience the thrill of the road and getting there: motorcycle tourists.
I had fun with the sights and the food on my way to Baler. Unfortunately, the road had been tough on my China-branded second-hand clunker, so I had extensive tune-up and repair work done as soon as I got there. There weren't that many roads you can take to get to Baler; ironically, the road I took was the newer, more modern one, which at that time was dusty and patched with construction activity. Determined not to put myself through the same mill again, on the return journey I took my chances with a different route, Bongabon-Baler road.
***
Bongabon-Baler road (henceforth BBR) is an 80-kilometer mountain pass than spanned the width of the Sierra Madre de Luzon. I avoided this road on my way to Baler for more banal reasons: it was monsoon season at that time, landslides and algae growth on the road were common. BBR had endless curves and unguarded drops, and an unlucky overshoot could send you flying over the side of the mountain. There was very little in the way of streetlights and reflective road signs. I would dread going through this road at night.
The area surrounding BBR is also a known hotbed of bandits and communist rebels. In 1949 Aurora Quezon, widow of President Manuel Quezon, was murdered here along with her daughter, son in law, and nine others in their convoy. In 2006 a military camp along the road was attacked and several soldiers and rebels killed. I guess this also makes BBR a hotbed for angry spirits that were forcefully ejected out of their bodies.
Besides dead people ghosts, otherworldly elements were also known to prey upon unsuspecting motorists. However, one look at Google Maps gave me a plausible explanation for all the creepy stories the more supernaturally inclined say about BRR. I was one of those people who try to explain away such phenomena by citing BBR's constant uphills, downhills, and hairpin turns causing disorientation and mental fatigue.
***
I set off from Baler at around 9 in the morning. The first 10 kilometers of my trip was uneventful enough. I liked how my motorcycle was tuned and how somehow everything about it looked shiny and new. The shop that handled the tune-up and repair work did an excellent job with my bike, I thought to myself.
My troubles began as soon as I started climbing uphill. I mentioned that I had my motorcycle serviced in Baler. The shop replaced the battery and the engine oil, cleaned the carb, and checked and repaired for leaks, stiff lines, and loose screws. Yes, my cheap China bike wasn’t FI, and that should be an issue when air density gets a little thin with altitude, but BBR wasn’t so high that carb tuning would be an issue. But none of these would prevent me from suffering completely random breakdowns once I hit the mountain pass. At one point, my two-week-old throttle cable snapped. Luckily, I had spares. I repaired the damage and carried on.
On several downhill turns I would feel a massive wiggle behind me, as if someone on my back seat – and I was riding alone – did a sudden jerk. I would struggle with the handlebar, sometimes violently, and once it almost sent me over the side of the mountain. There was no strong wind and the road was even. I compensated by driving really slowly, 40 km/h tops.
Then I had a blowout when, as I was going at my miserable speed for about an hour on a mostly empty road, my rear wheel found a nail. It took me another hour using my rudimentary toolkit, but I was able to fix my tire. I carried on.
I fumed. I'll be on this road till nightfall...but then, I thought darkly, maybe that was "their" game. I dreaded the thought that "they" were real and that "they" decided to pick on me on this desolate road. When I tried to pick up speed, another jerk had me fighting the handlebar again. This time I braved a look at my rearview mirror and I swear I saw a shadow just over my shoulder. Almost as if on cue, I felt yet another wiggle and my focus snapped back to the road. I swore as I fought for control of the bike for the last time, and just then I heard it. The bray of an angry horse.
When I recovered, I'd had enough. I stopped at a bare flat overlook on the side of the road and got off my bike. I looked over the unguarded edge of the road and to my dismay, the edge was a near-vertical drop of several hundred feet as far as I could see. And I wasn't even at the highest point of the road yet. I glared angrily at the backseat. I told my invisible guest, as calmly as I could, that I knew what they were up to and that they'd better knock it off. I said I realized they were lost and everything but wherever their destination was, was not where I intended to be at that time. And that was final.
Taking in a cool midmorning breeze, I took a deep breath and sat down, calming down a bit. My overlook opened to a vast, beautiful virgin landscape, so different from the concrete human excrement that is Manila. I could easily imagine the forest in front of me having stood there for hundreds, even thousands of years. Our islands used to have way more of these forests, way more creatures and shadowy mystery to feed the imagination by the fireside. In our mythology certain breeds of aswang lived deep in these forests, sometimes melding with the rocks and tree trunks themselves. Then they'd emerge at nightfall to hunt. If a human saw them, all they'd see is whatever form the aswang took in disguise: a dog, a rooster, an old woman – or a horse.
I also thought about the tikbalang, masters of the forests who had the head and legs of a horse and the torso of a man. One of their most celebrated powers was causing you to lose your way through their domain. To counter the spell, you had to put your clothes inside-out. This distracts the tikbalang and he wouldn't recognize you, and hopefully you've bought yourself enough time to escape. Not all tikbalang were evil; stories abound of tikbalang who shared powerful amulets and knowledge of medicinal plants to local healers.
To ancient Filipinos, these beings were relegated as one-dimensional and opaque. The cannibalistic aswang was always evil; the fickle tikbalang always mischievous. The Christianity Filipinos received from the West did nothing to help with the understanding of that lore. Catholic priests dismissed them all by tearing down their shrines and branding their way of life as works of the devil. They rejected the Filipinos' capacity for culture and portrayed them as primitive and childlike. They called the Filipino ignorant and used this ignorance, this fear the mysteries of his local mythology, to keep him inside the pueblo, under the shadow of the church’s bells. Just as the Americans would do in 1898 when their imperialist government would refuse to acknowledge the Filipino revolutionary government, and their yellow press would paint Filipinos as tree-dwelling savages: unwashed, bloodthirsty, unfit for self-rule.
In many ways my mysterious guest was on the same journey as the culture that defined him. I did not pretend to understand his nature or motives, or why we who are alive demonize the spirits of the unknown. When I was in my teens then I've been called a Satan worshipper too, by "brothers in Christ" who didn't understand my video games and my heavy metal music. So all I could say was, if my guest was real, I completely sympathized.
"You're just going to have to stop pissing me off," I said. "You're already making me look silly talking to thin air."
It's been hours since breakfast so I decided to have lunch as I rested there. I took out a sandwich, broke it in two, and laid one half on a paper napkin. I told my guest that I was leaving it there for him – a peace offering. I also filled a paper cup with juice, spiked it with lambanog (coconut brandy), covered it in napkin and left it beside the sandwich.
After the modest meal I said a short prayer for my protection, and for my unseen guest to be at peace. I was never a believer in prayers for the dead or other such spirits – and in the Christian beliefs I grew up with, my guest would definitely be condemned as a demon. But at the same time, kindness and prayer for a troubled spirit's repose somehow felt like the better thing to do. It was just as well. I made it home without further incident.
Source: Expanded from my Quora answer to: What would you do if a ghost follows you when you are going back home?