I have been wondering why at my age, 85 years old, I always get to see and talk to dead persons. I do not know if they just want to say something about their lives after death. I am getting the feeling that such appearances are part of a usual phenomenon. But I think there must be something about them.
Here is a year-old incident. I met my compadre in a grocery in downtown Daet. I knew he was bedridden. We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. I told my son about the meeting, only to be told that my friend had died about an hour earlier. I was flabbergasted.
Several years ago, when I went to a newspaper stand to buy a copy of the Inquirer, I encountered a man I knew personally. I voted for him for board member of the province. After I got my Inquirer copy, I proceeded to the editorial office of the Bicol Post, a weekly local tabloid, to get my own copy of the paper for the week. To my horror, the former provincial board member was the subject of the banner story: He had died the night before.
In another incident, as I was going out of a bank, I met a godfather in marriage and kissed his hand after greeting him a very wonderful morning. We even talked about how his son died in a motorcycle accident. He said it was his son’s “time” and then went inside the bank. But when I was about to go up the stairs of our house, a housemaid of our neighbor called to tell me that a man, who identified himself as my ninong, was looking for me but he left upon being told there was no one in the house.
At another time, I was undergoing a training seminar on financial management in Manila when my mother-in-law appeared in front of me. I greeted her, and she asked about our children, and I answered that I would not let them go hungry. And when I winked she disappeared. The following day, I received a telegram telling me that my mother-in-law had died a day before.
This one is incredibly rare. I was told by my daughter Mary Ann that my brother in the Masonic Fraternity, Salvador Salvosa (may his soul rest in peace), former provincial treasurer of Camarines Norte, went to our house one Saturday looking for me. Not finding me in the house, he went to a common friend. This friend told me they had a drink—a couple of bottles of beer—after which he ushered Salvador to the bus terminal for the trip home to Naga City. But the following Monday, our chief of office told me that Salvador died the previous Friday.
I challenge science to explain this phenomenon.
—GODOFREDO O. PETEZA SR.,
Barangay Camambugan,
Daet, Camarines Norte 4600