Haunted November 1, 2006

I'VE caught some of the usual Halloween stuff on TV over the last couple of days, shows where people tell about their sightings of otherworldly apparitions. I myself am tempted to say the only ethereal apparition I've seen of late is Dawn Zulueta as unraveled or unwrapped in her ad for Marie France, but that's another story. And it's not entirely true: I have seen a huge amount of ghostly and ghastly apparitions of late and am confident I have much to contribute to the literature about the phenomenon.

I can say with reasonable certainty there are ghosts. Indeed, I can say with reasonable certainty this country is crawling, or flitting (flirting?), with them. Indeed, I can say with unreasonable certainty this country is positively haunted. Among our spawns, legions, or permutations of ghosts are:

1. Ghost employees. This phenomenon was sighted recently in Makati City. Many of the ghosts were said to materialize not at the onset of the full moon but at the approach of the 15th and 30th of the month. The rest had no definable appearance; only their presence could be detected. The palpability of their presence manifested in the absence of a substantial amount of payroll money. Some sighters claimed to have tracked down these ghosts' provenance to the Makati jail, others claimed to have done so to the Makati cemetery.

There was only one problem about the sightings. Which was that the sighters seemed largely possessed of ghostly eyes. For some reason, they could see the phenomenon only in Makati and not in the places where the ghost employees flocked more abundantly in nocturnal or even diurnal revelry. Notably in the Palace by the fetid river and the House by what used to be a garbage and/or "salvaging" dump (the construction of the House seemed not to have improved it, the place remains a garbage and/or "salvaging" dump). The ghost of the cadaver known as the impeachment bid still wails there.

2. Ghost signatories, ghost voices. The first was spotted by the mayor of Makati, Jejomar Binay, who reported that many of the signatories of Sigaw ng Bayan, the group that wanted the Charter changed, originated from the same place his detractors claimed many of his employees did, which was the Makati cemetery. Their credentials were insubstantial and fleeting, the telltale characteristics of plasma entities, or however Harold Ramis called them in "Ghostbusters." Some had absolutely no substance at all, living or dead, corporal or ethereal, apparently never having existed at any time, place, or dimension.

The ghost voices were spotted by eight of the justices of the Supreme Court, after hearing the people themselves complain of them. The sigaw or cry wasn't coming from the pit of the land, the justices said, it was coming from the bowels of the garbage-cum-"salvaging" dump. Indeed, it wasn't Sigaw ng Bayan, it was Sigaw ng Bayad. Or it wasn't Sigaw ng Bayan, it was Atungal ni Joe. The ghostly and ghastly hearing of the Sigaw ng Bayan proponents, who mistook their hollow cries for the angry shouts of a nation in pain, was a perfect complement to their ghostly and ghastly eyesight. For some reason, they couldn't tell ghostly from corporeal, gaseous from solid. The Constitution is genuine, the President is fake: They wanted to change the Charter and keep the President.

3. Ghost votes, ghost voters. They're to be found plentifully in the southernmost province of Tawi-Tawi and neighboring vicinities, those places now having stolen (not entirely figuratively) Siquijor's claim to being this country's witch or voodoo capital. Those voters and votes have a particularly interesting aspect to contribute to the phenomenon of ghosts, which is that they tend to have the same handwriting. The ballot boxes that were opened at the provincial level in Muslim Mindanao in 2004 were written, if not by one ghost at most, by only a few of them. Indeed, the thumbprints on some of them were positively ghostly and ghastly, resembling neither human hand nor animal paw. They were counted as votes anyway for what soon became the ghost President.

Quite interestingly as well, in the astoundingly supernatural event called the 2004 elections, some people who preferred to remain solid were forcibly turned gaseous. Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, who wanted to keep elections clean in those ghostly areas, was promptly ordered to disappear and play golf instead. Later, when he tried to tell the Senate what he had seen, or not seen, he was ordered to dematerialize and take on an insubstantial aspect. He remains in that state to this day, seen but not seen, heard but not heard.

4. "Ghostong makabawi." There's a ghost who walks in Malacañang, and he is not Lee Falk's The Phantom. Now you see him, now you don't. Now you know him as Jose Pidal, now you see him as Mike Arroyo. Now you see him by his wife's side, now you see him being exiled by his wife to Las Vegas, which is not unlike punishing a turtle (in the story of "matsing" and "pagong") by throwing him into the sea.

This insubstantial entity has taken substantial interest in his ego and is currently suing everybody who has had cause to disparage it. His charges remain largely insubstantial and unsubstantiated, but who knows? One of the accused is my good friend Billy Esposo who can never be accused of having an insubstantial presence. He laughs off the charge and says the ghastly thing hasn't a ghost of a chance to prosper. (Tomorrow: More ghosts)

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Tomorrow, the Stop the Killings Bar Tour moves on to Manila at Unplugged, Adriatico Street (beside Café Adriatico), 9:30 p.m. Chikoy Pura, Calla Lily, Imago and Six Cycle Mind are playing. Tomorrow is still an extension of the Day of the Dead, so feel free to wear Halloween masks. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's, Norberto Gonzales's and Jovito Palparan's faces will do very nicely. You can also wear a mask of Raul Gonzalez for no other reason than that his face is a Halloween mask all by itself.

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