Riding the Bus with Ghosts

bahawman25899 (54)in #philippines • 3 years ago (edited)

I'm not sure how relevant this would be, but this happened to my father.

He used to work as a security officer at the Philippine Plaza Hotel, a swank government-run hotel on the CPP Complex in Manila. His hours were often crazy. In 1980s Philippines where people were on strict 8 AM to 5 PM workdays, with a one-hour lunch break at 12 noon, he was doing graveyard (8 PM to 5 AM, 12 AM to 9 AM) or mid-shifts (12 PM to 9PM, 3 PM to 12 AM) as well as the obligatory 8 AM to 5 AM -- schedules unheard of until the rise of the call center industry in the early 2000s.

One day, coming home about an hour later than usual from a mid-shift, my father sat quietly and ate his dinner with a haunted look. Seven year old me was already asleep by that time, and he told his unusual story to my mother and grandmother.

He said that when work ended, he and his buddies stepped out for a little snack at a street vendor close to the hotel. Over coffee, one of them brought out a pack of cigarettes which he said he'd bought in Quiapo, one of Manila's old districts. It was one of those specialty brands that were usually homemade and had hand-drawn labels. Some of them go back several decades from when the country had a robust tobacco industry, but remained niche and small, unable to compete with the Phillip Morrises and the Winstons that were dumped from overseas. Anyway, my father said the cigarette was bitter but otherwise tasteless, like it was just shredded tobacco wrapped in paper. Shortly after smokes the small gathering broke up and went home.

My father had to walk a few hundred meters to his bus stop and remembered being very alert and awake in spite of the hour. He was never a drinker. In fact, besides cigarettes to which we vehemently objected, he had no other habits his family frowned upon and called vices. At his peak, my father was a very sane, very healthy man.

When he awoke, my father had bumped his head rather messily at the snack he bought earlier, which to his confusion he still had in his hand. Peeling away at the pasty mess, he saw the entire bus had gone asleep. It wasn't my father's habit to snooze while on commute, especially in a bus, especially at that hour. Looking around, he wondered why the bus was going ever so slowly, why South Superhighway was empty (joy riders as well as semi trucks from the Port of Manila took to this road only after midnight to the southern Luzon provinces), why even the conductor was sleeping with his jaw open.

Sure, it was past midnight, but he regularly took this bus and there were always people chattering away over the heavy metal or classic rock playing on the radio, which the driver played loudly to keep himself awake. On this trip, not only was there no music but everyone was also hunched over asleep -- including himself until he felt rice cake squishing against his forehead. And now he felt he was drifting off again.

The disorientation peaked when the bus reached Alabang Exit. In my father's mind the passage through the town was brief and uneventful, until he remembered Alabang's Public Cemetery which was right at the side of the highway was being exhumed and relocated to make way for a new mall. He struggled to stay conscious as the bus rejoined the highway.

My father got off at the next exit and walked to the nearest cigarette seller for another smoke. Taking huge puffs, he shook off the lethargy and asked the vendor why everything looked different.

"What do you mean?" asked the vendor.

"Alabang looks different now."

"Yeah, I heard. They say they're going to relocate their cemetery."

"You heard? Don't you live here?"

"Of course I do," replied the vendor while eyeing my father with an oh-crap-another-drunk look. "I live here in Biñan. What do you mean?"

Eventually my father got home. He had missed his bus stop, Alabang, and had to ride back on another bus.

I was prepping for school the next morning. After breakfast Mother was doing the dishes when she dropped the plate she was working on in the sink. The news on the radio was that a few hours ago, a bus going along South Superhighway went out of control after being rear-ended by a semi truck. It traversed the center island and got hit by an oncoming bus from the opposite lane.

Several people were injured or killed, including the driver of the first bus, which witnesses say was going slowly on the innermost lane. Records showed that the driver had been on duty for 18 hours nonstop, and was probably feeling tired or sleepy. However, he would also be tested positive for shabu (crystal meth).

As for the offending truck, it had been going way above the speed limit. The authorities speculated that the driver, who was also killed, drove around like he was on a joyride, seeing the empty highway.

Most of the passengers who were killed or injured were from Alabang. Many of them were from the first bus, and said they were asleep when the tragedy happened. They were surprised they'd missed their stop somehow.

This happened in the early 1990s, before cellphones and the internet. Eventually Philippine Plaza Hotel would be privatized and sold to AccorHotels, and rebranded as Sofitel Philippine Plaza. In such acquisitions the security team are usually the first to go. My father took a generous severance offer and retired.

As I think about his strange adventure that night, I still have questions. Was it the same bus? Why were the passengers behaving strangely? Was it all just coincidence? Or did the spirits foresee what was about to happen to their resting grounds and exacted vengeance on the town before the fact for allowing it to happen?

The mall would be built by 1996, but the developers were said not to have done a great job at removing the bodies properly. Rumor was that they only relocated the graves on the surface. A lot more were torn apart by their backhoes and carted off in big dumper trucks as the foundations and the basement of the mall were built.

Some rare pictures of the cemetery:
Alabang 1.jpg
Alabang 3.jpg