Manila: Ghost Buster

Manila, Philipines:  Ghost Buster

Year in and year out, many people go to the city of Manila for one sole purpose – to hunt for ghosts. Not only undergrads and fresh graduates from local universities, but people from all walks of life and all ages come to Manila to look for phantoms of the night, eerie supernatural creatures, and all manner of disembodied marauders from the great beyond. Not only minors seek that peculiar kind of thrill of brushing with the unknown and the unseen, many adults also like frightening themselves with the thought that they are in the watchful presence of these denizens of obscurity, usually unseen by human eyes.

However, if you ask Mayor Alfredo S. Lim – a.k.a. Dirty Harry – if he believes in ghosts, he will look you straight in the eye, with a smile as discreet as it is mysterious, a knowing glance that you have to interpret by yourself. Dirty Harry might also laugh and ask you if you have indeed seen or perceived the presence of ghosts, as most psychics claim they do. Have you felt their spine-chilling vibes?

Understandably, there are several spots in Manila where people expect to see ghosts. Groups of students come to my office to ask permission to set up their ghost busting contraptions at the Army Navy club, for instance. Due to the antiquity of the place, the personages who have passed through or even spent a couple of nights there, or the tragedies that occurred within its walls during all the wars that have blighted our land, the ghost-busters are convinced that the Army Navy is indeed the ideal place for such close encounters with tortured souls.

Another likely spot is the Metropolitan Threater, that jewel of Art Deco that has also witnessed many painful vicissitudes. At the start, Kuya Germs (German Moreno, mentor of Vice Mayor Isko Moreno) chided me for allowing these ghost busters to invade his beloved Met, specially during All Souls day and Good Friday. However, I convinced him that it might make the public more aware of the Met’s plight and a cultured philanthropist might suddenly endow it with the millions it sorely needs.

To the disappointment of these persistent ghost busters, they have had no sightings yet and I believe it is because they are looking in the wrong places and for the wrong type of ghosts. Naturally, for obvious reasons, I am not about to reveal that the only ghosts in Manila are not found in its cemeteries nor in its significant heritage buildings like the Army Navy and the Met; these vaporous beings are found only in the City Hall itself, according to an unimpeachable source who has of late turned into a ghostbuster – no other than Dirty Harry himself ! (to be continued) gemma601@yahoo.com