PARTING WITH MY PRICELESS COLLECTION

PARTING WITH MY PRICELESS COLLECTIONS

It all started when a middle-aged woman from Mindanao applied as housemaid. Since we have been scouting for one for quite sometime she was immediately hired under observation. She was assigned a room but the following morning she complained that she wasn’t able to sleep as she felt uneasy and was hearing some muffled laughter. We explained to her that the laughter was coming from our neighbors.

The following day, before midnight she complained of severe abdominal pain and I saw her doubling up. Fearing that she could be suffering from Acute Pancreatitis I brought her to the hospital. When she was relieved of her complaints, she was allowed to go home the following morning to rest with her relatives in Tagaytay.

My wife casually told the incident that happened to one of my daughters and her husband who happened to have a Priest friend who is allowed to perform exorcism. With the intention of cleansing the house of possible negative spirits, he invited the priest who very willingly agreed.

I was caught flat-footed as all of a sudden the exorcist priest was there to perform cleansing rituals and prayers. He first blessed the water, the salt and the incense then offered especial prayers while sprinkling salt, water and accompanied by the incense at every nook and corner of the house. After the house he proceeded to the garden continuing the ritual. After a while he requested if he could sit down as he got so tired and week driving away bad elementals, who, according to him got mad when I cut several trees. Those trees were cut to prevent them from damaging our house in preparation for the coming of typhoons.

The priest explained afterwards that he was successful in driving away the many bad spirits but I must remove and throw away all elephant and dragon figurines in the house. I was stunned for a while because I have about fifty elephant figurines that I have been collecting since around 50 years ago. He instructed me to break the figurines into small pieces then throw them away under running water at the nearby brook. The brass figurines must be burned first before burying them.

Looking around I realized that all four sets of electric candle stands were decorated with dragon so they were broken and thrown to the brook too. A two-foot collector’s item, porcelain jar which was embossed with dragon all around was also broken into pieces before being thrown to the live brook.

It is not easy to describe the feeling of one who just thrown away priceless collections. In fact I did it with a heavy heart but if it was the way to prevent harboring evil spirits in the house, so be it.

The following morning, my son-in-law asked if I was able to sleep well and if I was not bothered by disturbing noise. I said I have always been sleeping peacefully well and I was never really bothered by any devilish noise but that night I had severe chest pain that I had to take 'isodil' to relieve myself.