WARNING: READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

      Do you believe in superstitions, or in Filipino, mga kasabihan at pamahiin ng mga matatanda? Well, I will not judge you if you do but I always thought to myself that it was just a part of our culture and it is quite gibberish but there is one incident that made me follow the old wives’ tale…

      I was around nine years old back then and my tita, a family friend of ours, invited me to join her children in a Jollibee day camp. It was all going well until the end of the program, where we had to take a group photo and my tita saw something bizarre. She saw that I had no head and all the other kids looked normal. She showed the photo to my mom and they immediately bought me new clothes and everything I wore that day was buried under the ground. We quickly stopped at my tita’s house and her lola told me that she saw that my eyelids had red lines on it which totally scared the hell out of me.

     It is believed superstitiously, when that incident happens to you, you should not go out of your house for three days because you would be fetched by a person wearing white, a car used for transporting people who already perished to their grave, and for short, die. My mom said that we would not lose anything if we would follow the superstitious belief. Better safe than sorry, so we did. I did not go out for three days and I wore a cap the entire time, even while I am sleeping. I was not allowed to basically do anything because something might happen to me. I avoided mirrors as much as possible because I wanna see all of my body parts and I was completely paranoid.

     Wanna read something even creepier? On one those three days that I was at home, which felt like a house arrest, my mom’s sister, went for a visit and she told my mom that she dreamt of me. In her dreams, I was bidding my goodbyes and I was wearing the exact same clothes when the incident happened. I was petrified to the point that I did not even have the appetite to eat.

Whenever I got scared, my mom would always tell me to just pray and believe in Him. She also told me that the superstition was somehow true because she knew a person who had the same experience as mine but unfortunately, died. Apparently, I also knew a person, someone close to me, had the same experience, but also passed away. Both of them did not actually know because no one told them about it.

     During the first few months, or even years, I was not comfortable sharing this story. I would always get goosebumps, even as I am writing this, and my voice would always tremble but now I am pretty okay with it. It has been long time but I can still clearly recall everything that has happened. 

       Now, you are probably wondering what is the connection of the pendant to this story so… On the day after it happened, my mom contacted a friend of hers to offer a mass for me because she is a part or a member of a monastery, which was run by nuns. They also offered prayers for me and she was the one who gave me the pendant. She attached it to a pardible and it was always pinned on whatever clothes I was wearing.

    I chose it as the most valuable thing that I own because not only that it reminds me of one of the most terrifying incident of my life but also because I felt like it saved me, in a way. It has been with me for about eight years now. To be honest, It always gets lost or misplaced but it somehow always find a way to return to me.

I personally do not think that there is anything wrong with following superstitions, most importantly between a life and death situation. I think that this experience strengthened my faith even more.

 I am fortunate enough to still be here, to be writing this blog post, and for that, I am beyond grateful.