Regardless of who conducts a house blessing, and regardless of the religion, I don't believe it has any effect on benign spirits. A ghost, or some other spirit of some kind, has been in and out of my house since the day it was built. Before 2003, I didn't even believe in ghosts. Now I do and it's based on my own experiences and not some Filipino folklore. Whether a house blessing wards off evil spirits or not, I can't say because I've never been haunted by an evil spirit.

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There is nothing more amusing to me in Filipino folklore than duwende. These are supposed to be little creatures like goblins, hobgoblins, elves or dwarfs that can be found in houses, trees, underground, in ant-like mounds or hills and other rural areas. I guess trolls don't qualify because they usually live under bridges and can be found making their ways through Internet forums and starting fights. It's not the mythical creatures that amuse me, however, but how the Filipinos react to these superstitions.

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The wearing of amulets to ward off evil spirits and demons goes way back. How far back, no one really knows. Why would the Philippines be any different? In the Philippines, these pendants are called anting-anting, agimat or bertude, depending on the language.

I recently spotted one of the neighborhood children (a young girl) wearing an amulet and when I asked about it, she shied away and didn't want to talk about it. So… I decided to do a little research. A commenter mentioned anting-anting in response to an older article, but I didn't pay much attention to it.

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I'm a little late. The "Year of the Rat" started on February 7, 2008 and I'm just now getting around to writing about it. What significance does it have? I was born in 1960; I am a rat and this is my year!

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To the Filipinos, the aswang is a creature as real as any other creature on the face of the Earth. I live around these people and trust me when I tell you that you can't change their beliefs regarding this creature. I once asked my wife why we never heard of things like this in the US and she couldn't explain it rationally.

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When I talk about people that disappear in the Philippines, I'm talking about something different from what I was talking about when I wrote "How to Disappear or Vanish without a Trace in the Philippines". The words and phrases "disappear" and "in the Philippines" are the only things the articles have in common.

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I've written about my experiences with shadow people here in the Philippines on more than one occasion. I was officially weirded out in April of 2007 and wrote about an uninvited guest a mere two weeks ago.

I hesitate to continue writing about these shadow people, but the story didn't end two weeks ago. I don't know how many of these "entities" are involved, but the appearances are becoming more and more commonplace.

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While I was writing my previous two articles, I noticed I had an uninvited guest in my house. Perhaps he or she is welcome, but it's impossible to determine that when I can't see him or her.

You could say that I'm seeing things out of the corner of my eye, as is discussed on the Wikipedia page about shadow people. You could say it, but you'd be wrong.

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While I was scouring the web for new and interesting information, I went back to a site I hadn't been to for at least 2 years. I looked at "Fuelless Flight" and pondered as to why nothing more seems to have come of it. You'd think the aircraft industry would be all over something like this, what with the rising costs of jet fuel along with everything else. Imagine it. An aircraft that uses no fuel at all.

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Before I begin, this is a quick aside for the people who believe the gospels of the New Testament. When Jesus (Yeshua, Yashua, Joshua, and other names depending on the bible version) returned to the disciples after his resurrection, he told them he was not a ghost. If ghosts didn't exist, why would he be compelled to tell them that he wasn't one?

Before 2003, I didn't believe in ghosts. That changed after my father-in-law (whose name was Joshua, coincidentally) died as the result of a traffic accident in 2003. Between May of 2003 (when he died) and April of 2006 (when I left the US), I had random encounters with what I believe are ghosts. At least on one occasion, I thought it was my father-in-law. In the last couple of weeks, I've started seeing things again as I explained in my article, Okay, I Am Officially Weirded Out.

When I lived in Phoenix, after my father-in-law died, I worked at night (5 pm to 5 am to be exact), 4 days on and 4 days off. On one of the nights I was off, I was in the family room watching TV. I got up to get a drink and spotted the back of someone wearing a white t-shirt as the person exited the kitchen (which was between the family room and the dining room). I only saw the backside of the person, but it looked like my father-in-law! I rushed after the person, only to find nothing but air.

I thought I was the only one in my family seeing things. It turned out I was completely wrong about that. My wife and son both saw things during the period I saw things in the US. My wife described one night where she was up late playing mahjong with some friends in the family room. She saw a white t-shirt out of the corner of her eye walking in the living room, which was visible via the downstairs hallway. She yelled at our son, Jonathan, to go back to bed. The other players looked at her like she was crazy and told her he had been asleep for hours. She ran upstairs and he was indeed fast asleep.

Jonathan described to me an incident that was similar to the incident I had, except that the t-shirt color was red. Both my son and my father-in-law were fond of wearing white t-shirts around the house, usually undershirts.

After I published that article, and told my wife everything, she blabbed it to her brothers and sisters. Guess what? They've been having the same experiences that I have had, except that it has been going on since two of my brothers-in-law were murdered more than 5 years ago. In fact, the older victim was spotted next to a tree (that was removed to build my house) not more than two years ago, but only for a few seconds.

Before I started seeing things from 2003 onward, I just thought my in-laws were overly superstitious and prone to seeing things. I no longer think that way. The one thing I don't like about recent occurrences, and my wife's big mouth, is that now my in-laws are afraid to come into my house after dark.