Ghostbusters

So apparently my office building is haunted . . . well . . . was . . . haunted by ghosts. That is until an ace team of exorcists . . . er . . . exorcisors . . . let’s just say ghostbusters came and expelled the ghosts from our office. Now these ghosts, it was explained to me, were not necessarily evil ghosts or had anything particularly spooky about them other than being . . . well ghosts. Instead, these ghosts or spirits would probably be more accurate, were simply lost, trapped in between this world and the next. As a result they simply hung around my building from day to day and would make their presence known in many ways. Perhaps every cool unexplained breeze, flicker of light, or creaking of the floors had some more ghostly explanation. Well that is at least what the owner of the building thought when he commissioned the services of the exorcism squad. He apparently thought that the spirits were bad for his business and ordered all of his tenants, my office included, to allow the exorcism squad into our office.

The reason why there are so many lost spirits in my office building has a little bit of history behind it. It turns out the general region of Manila where my office is located was a disposal ground for many of the bodies of Marcos’ political enemies. (For those of you not familiar with Philippines history, Ferdinand Marcos was the president of the Philippines from 1965-1986 and was generally considered a bad dude . . . and information about him can be found here. His wife was named Imelda, think lots and lots of shoes). So given that he had many many enemies we can assume that A LOT of people were killed and buried in the general vicinity. Another main factor which contributes to the general spookiness of my office building is that a few years ago there was a major fire in a hotel down the road which killed over a hundred people. From what I have been able to gather for some reason or another it was decided that the dead bodies from the hotel fire would be brought to and stored in my office building until they figured out what to do with them. The floor where the bodies were actually stored (at least according to rumor) is actually pretty creepy. The floor is completely undeveloped and looks like something straight out of the movie Being John Malkovich. Basically it is a large dank dark floor with lots of space and a freakishly shallow roof. I have actually visited the floor and confirmed that it is REALLY creepy. So perhaps there is something to the rumors.

So the exorcism team showed up at our office one morning, met with senior leadership, and set out rid our office of spirits. The team consisted of a few priests specially trained in rituals and ceremonies geared towards getting rid of unwanted spirits. Armed only with holy water and their prayers, the team wandered around each section of our office (which is quite expansive) and began the complicated task of finding spirits. When a spirit was detected, the priests began to cough and sneeze. The closer or more powerful the spirit; the louder and stronger the coughing and sneezing. When one was detected (and there were many) the team would begin a series of prayers, sprinkle a little holy water in the vicinity, and pray some more. They continued this process over and over again throughout the office until convinced that the spirits had departed. I unfortunately was not able to see the priests work in my own office, but apparently there were several ghosts and they mostly were found near our computers. Don’t ask me why, perhaps the ghosts were a bit tech savvy. So as of now I believe our office has a clean spiritual bill of health, though we were warned that some might return so we should remain vigilant. Some of my colleagues even have holy water on their desks for just such an occasion. Good to know that we are also covered if next we are invaded by vampires.

I am actually surprised over the prevalence of exorcisms in the Philippines. There is even a person who works for my company that apparently is an on call exorcist, and goes around Manila performing the procedure for a nominal fee. Now that is quite the moonlighting gig. Apparently exorcisms are quite a common practice because many people still blame demons, evil dwarves, and trolls (I am not making this up) for several maladies which afflict them and look to higher spiritual powers for a cure. Now I have never seen an evil dwarf (I think it would be fun just once), nor a troll for that matter, though I have not really been looking that hard.