The Little House

These stories are 100% true and I want to share them here. It's long because you'll be reading more than one story.

I reside in Cebu, Philippines and we moved a couple of times within the city. My parents don't want to live far from friends and relatives so we stay in the same area. Now this story is about the events that had taken place in and outside the first house, where I lived the first fifteen years of my life. It was within a compound but since it was located at the back area, there was a fence behind and at the left side of the house that separated the compound from the banana plantation. But it's not all bananas. There were also houses and mango trees within that lot. One of the mango trees was planted just behind the little one-story house where we lived in and its branches loomed over the roof. My parents didn't own it, nor was it rented. They are a friendly couple so the old landlady let us live there for free.

I always had a bad feeling every time I was left alone. There have been several experiences but when I tried to convince my parents that there's something eerie about the house, they believe none of it. But the thing is, even if they don't believe any of my stories, they have theirs to share. My mom said that when she was pregnant with me, the firstborn, the neighboring couple was also expecting a baby. Every evening they could hear the sound coming from a tik-tik. It's a monster with the body of a human, wings of a bat, and an insanely long tongue to suck out the baby from a sleeping pregnant woman's belly through a hole in the roof. "Kik-kik-kik-kik-kik!" "Kik-kik-kik-kik-kik!" is the sound it makes. So my dad put garlic on the sides of the house that had holes. Gladly, the roof didn't have holes or else me and my mom would have died.

Another experience my mom had with the tik-tik while still pregnant with me was when she walked home at 1AM from her sister's house a few blocks away, she could hear the tik-tik flying above her. She was so scared that she brisk walked and didn't dare to look up because it might pounce on her or drag her up the air. Even the bystanders didn't dare to look at it and kept their heads down. It followed her until she reached home. She didn't stay out at night from then on. The haunting stopped after she gave birth. I don't know what happened to the neighbor but they're still alive. And it didn't come back when my mom was pregnant with a second baby. That's it about my parents' experiences. Now let's start with mine.

Just imagine being a cowardly little girl who is afraid of ghosts and the dark struggling to live everyday in a creepy house for fifteen years. There are more than one stories that happened when I was alone and I am going to list them all in detail...

1.) Location: Bedroom. My whole family slept together in a small room but since I was little, we would fit in a single bed. It's always around 10PM and my parents were already asleep by that time. But as much as I try to, I can't sleep early like them. I really hate being insomniac because I get to hear the strange sound on the roof. There's a low THUD on the roof just above the bed. I was so scared, I didn't dare move a muscle and slowed down my breathing because it might know that I'm awake. Sometimes I wake my mom who slept beside me and she'll always tell me that it's just a cat since there are several cats in the area. But there's no way that cats can jump from the neighbor's roof to the roof directly above our bedroom and land on two feet. NOPE. I'm sure it's not a cat. Every night I can hear those human-like footsteps walking above the bedroom roof and it never went to other parts of the house. It's as if it was observing us, feeling our presence. That was it's routine every night. If it were really a cat, it's probably high on drugs. It was really hard to sleep and I stay awake in fear of it for an hour until I eventually fall asleep. I never saw what it looked like and I don't want to, ever.

2.) Location: Living Room. I smelled a burning candle in the living room but there were no candles in the house and it was daytime, and there's absolutely no reason to light one. I freaked out so I ran to the bedroom.

3.) Location: Bedroom. I was sitting on the edge of the bed and suddenly I felt someone sitting beside me. The impact on the foam was so real but when I looked at the spot, there were no physical marks. There was nothing I could do and nowhere to run so I stayed.

4.) Location: Hallway. The little house's living room door was facing the entrance and you had to turn left into the hallway outside to reach the kitchen and bedroom. The kitchen was at the end of the hall and that's where my father would go straight after coming home. When I waited for my dad to come home from work, I would stay in the living room and the lights in the kitchen and bedroom were turned off so the rest of the house was dark. I forgot where my mom was at that time of the day but dad always got home first. On some nights at 6PM, through the door screen I can see my dad walking from outside the living room to the kitchen. But when I peek outside, he's not there and the lights were still off. I wasn't scared because it didn't look at me and I'm relieved that it didn't go in the living room. Then my real dad would be home around 7.

5.) Location: Outside. This is the scariest of all I thought I was going to die. One day a big old lady who lived in one of the houses in the banana plantation died so people set a vigil for her at her home. It was for a week, I think. Then one of those nights, I was lying awake on the bed and my family was already asleep. This is worse than the footsteps on the roof. I felt my heart sink when I heard human-size wings flapping accompanied by a sound, "Kik-kik-kik-kik-kik!". I heard it circling around the neighborhood in the banana plantation. I held my breath because it stopped a longer time at our place before proceeding to other houses. Even if myth says that the louder the noise coming from a tik-tik means that it's farther from where you are and the fainter the sound means it's close by, I really felt that it was after me. I don't know how I fell asleep. But I was so happy to wake up in the morning. After a day, they said those in the vigil threw stones at a "large bird" to ward it off. I knew what they meant and I told them that about the "large bird" the other night. But they wouldn't believe me. I don't know why they make me sound like a fool but I know that they know what I was talking about.

After a year from my experience with the tik-tik, we moved out to my grandma's place because nobody else can take care of her other than my mom. I felt bad about leaving the little house because it felt so cool under the shade of the large mango tree even though the weather in the Philippines is very hot. After we moved out, one of the old lady's sons decided to demolish it and built an apartment. But the tree is still there because it's not their property. Maybe the tree is why there are strange beings in the house because there are lots of creepy stories about mango trees.