Supernatural - Is it real?

The creature outside Grandma Tildi's window!

I don't want to believe in ghosts, spirits, witches, or any kind of supernatural phenomenon, but there are things that sometimes we can't explain with science and common sense alone.

Just like the story my father told me that happened when I was only three years old.

I come from a simple farming family, and we lived in a barangay far from civilization. The population in our barangay at that time was only about 100 families, so the houses were not close to each other. The nearest neighbor was 100 meters away, very few had electricity, and the water came from pumps and wells. The trees around were still large, the roads were not paved, and the only transportation out of the city was a jeep owned by our grandfather.

My father was a jeepney driver, but when he wasn't driving, he tended to our farm. Since I was the eldest and there were only two of us children then, he always took me to the farm.

On our farm stood the ancestral house of my grandparents. When they moved from Ilo-ilo, the land they bought was in the countryside, so their family lived there until their children got married.

According to my father, it was a Saturday when he took me to the farm, and I was only three years old then. He would leave me with Grandma Tildi when he worked on the farm.

Grandma Tildi was unmarried and raised our mother, so we were close to her. Since she was the only unmarried sibling of my grandfather, she stayed to take care of their ancestral house.

Since I was not a mischievous child, Grandma Tildi would leave me in the large living room to play when she had chores to do. She wasn't worried about me falling because the door to the stairs was closed, and the old, large window, which an adult could fit through, was out of my reach. So Grandma was always confident.

My father finished his work in the field by five in the afternoon, and the sun was setting. He was in the kitchen with Grandma, chatting while he had coffee. Suddenly, they were startled by my screams from the living room and my intense crying.

When my father and Grandma found me, I was running away from the window, pale and trembling with fear, but I couldn't get away because I had gotten tangled in the hammock I was wearing. So whenever I ran away from the window, I would come back.

My father picked me up and held me. Since I could already speak, though stutteringly, he asked me what had happened when I had calmed down.

I told my father, stuttering, that there was someone at the window who wanted to take me. My father wondered how I could see someone at the window when the house was so high?

If an adult were outside the house, they couldn't peek into the living room, and with my small stature, I couldn't even climb the window to peek outside. How could anyone want to take me from outside?

My father and Grandma believed I wasn't lying because I was only three years old, and what would I know about creatures we can't see?

From that day on, Grandma and my father never left me alone, worried that something might happen to me. My father would be in trouble with my mother!

My father and Grandma suspected that what I saw was a kapre (1), because that was the only huge creature they knew. Grandma said there were indeed many strange things in the old house, and my aunt had also once seen a large person in the house.

As I grew up, my father always told the story of the person I saw, but I couldn't remember it because I was too young when it happened. It's likely that there really are creatures we can't see, but they live among us!

1. In Philippine mythology, the kapre is a creature that may be described as a tree giant, being a tall (7–9 ft (2.1–2.7 m)), dark-coloured, hairy, and muscular creature. Kapres are also said to have a very strong body odour and to sit in tree branches to smoke.