Filipinos’ mythological monsters for Halloween
According to tradition, it is on Halloween that the souls of the dead, along with all sorts of monsters, ghouls and spirits, return to earth to haunt the living. This gave rise to the Halloween...
View ArticleFSL
THREE STORIES today: Halloween, FSL and... FSL. Friends suggested I do a column on how Halloween has been adopted in the Philippines but it is a topic that deserves only a few words: Why, oh, why, must...
View ArticleThe ghost of Balete Drive
My very first assignment when I joined the Manila Chronicle in the mid-1950s was to write an article on the “white lady of Balete Drive” then driving the country crazy. Decades have since passed but...
View ArticleGruesome deaths
“Halloween” may be the title of a series of gruesome slash-and-kill films; it may be associated with pumpkins with a carved face, or wearing costumes, or children knocking on doors yelling “Trick or...
View ArticleFrightening ourselves
Tomorrow, we mark an annual ritual, trooping to cemeteries to pay homage to the dead, laying flowers and candles at their graves and saying prayers for the “eternal repose of their souls.”
View ArticleBirth of Frankenstein
Young people today associate Frankenstein and Dracula with the monsters created for them in film and TV, not the originals in print that are a bother to read. I read an abridged version of Bram...
View ArticleBeyond our mortal dust
Here, All Souls’ Day is “two-pronged, bifurcated,” the wife said after we finished an early check of family tombs for this coming holiday.
View ArticleThe Halloween loot bag
One Halloween many years ago, expecting my nieces and nephews to drop by the house for our All Saints’ Day observance which falls a day after this scary feast, I decided to prepare “healthy” treats for...
View ArticleRemembering … and the present
“Undas” seems to be the term often used these days for the annual trek to cemeteries, when the living take the day off to visit the dead. In the past, Nov. 1 was known as the Feast of All Saints or...
View ArticleModern ghosts
Why did you vanish into thin air? Time flies, and October is already bidding us goodbye. Pumpkin baskets are already on display in shopping windows, along with Halloween-themed decor in malls. Free...
View ArticleThe rise of the ‘Frankenstatute’
The once gray gravel stone roads now burst red, yellow, brown, and orange. Autumn leaves have taken over the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. A stroll about my neighborhood block would, however,...
View ArticleRizal and poltergeists?
Searching for a Halloween column topic led me to “Rizal and Poltergeists in Dapitan” by Jesuit historian Jose Arcilla that appeared in the scholarly journal Philippine Studies in 2001. While many...
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