The Pamela Quests: Pam

A Cyberspace Book by Tony Perez

This is Volume I. Volume II (The Pamela Quests: Ella) is accessible via http://www.tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook3.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Welcome to my second and third cyberspace books: The Pamela Quests: Pam (Volume I) and The Pamela Quests: Ella (Volume II)!

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Other Cyberspace Books By Tony Perez

The Pamela Quests: Ella (Volume II)
Magic For Squares
143 Gayuma
Ang Maluwalhating Orakulo Ni Chuko Kung Ming [Translation]
Cubao Midnight Express: Mga Pusong Nadiskaril Sa Mahabang Riles Ng Pag-ibig
Sample Fiction
Tony Perez Philippines

Go GREEN. Read from

THE SCREEN.

THE PAMELA QUESTS

A Cyberspace Book by Tony Perez

The last, previously unpublished, and unexpurgated recorded narrative

of the Spirit Questors

and the twin volumes containing the author’s training exercises in psychism.

The release of this book, written in the narrative format that the author finally deemed

most appropriate for Spirit Quest reports, was withheld pending the author’s attainment

of his M.A. in Religious Studies at Maryhill School of Theology,

and after he desisted from university teaching in 2000.

Ironically, after the text was released, there was a demand for the elective courses

described herein, but the author was no longer interested in classroom teaching.

Important Note:

The author no longer engages in classroom teaching

and may not be contacted at any of the universities mentioned in this volume.

Authored 2000

Posted in cyberspace April 2013.

Classification: General Public

Category: Spiritism

IPR of Tony Perez and Pamela D.

Students’ Passages IPR of the Students

Photo of Tony Perez IPR of Hedwig de Leon

Photo Illustration IPR of Katie Kat

Important Notes:

This is the only legitimate, electronic version of this cyberspace book.

This cyberspace book does not exist in any other format.

This cyberspace book may not be reproduced or adapted in part or in whole without the written or electronic permission of the author.

2000 and 2013

To the Original Spirit Questors

CONTENTS:

Book I:

THE PAMELA QUESTS: PAM

Special Thanks

Foreword

The Pamela Quests: Pam

Book II:

THE PAMELA QUESTS: ELLA

at http://www.tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook3.blogspot.com

Special Thanks

Foreword

The Pamela Quests: Ella

BOOK I:

THE PAMELA QUESTS:

PAM

Special Thanks

To Pamela D. and family; the Spirit Questors; Leni Garcia of De La Salle University’s (DLSU’s) Philosophy Department; Telly Gruenberg and Mabel Barraca of DLSU’s College of Liberal Arts; Cherry Escañan, Manny Ortencio, George Marasigan, and Matthew Santamaria of DLSU’s International Studies Department; Ruby Rosales of DLSU’s Communications Department; the students of my second-term, school year 1999-2000 DLSU class in SHAMANS: North American Indian Shamanism; and most especially Luke D.

Photo courtesy of Katie Kat

Book I:

The Pamela Quests: Pam

FOREWORD

The idea for this double volume developed out of the synchronistic arrival of two young women named Pamela in my life in the third quarter of 1999: Pamela D. of De La Salle University and Pamela R. of Ateneo de Manila University. They were my trainees in the development of psychic abilities and magic. These two volumes are parallel records of their progress. These are also the volumes about the Spirit Questors in which I describe or refer to actual training exercises I conducted through the turn of the decade.

One story begins with a death, the other ends with another.

I wrote this segment, however, not in celebration of death but in celebration of life.

I constantly remind the Spirit Questors, a group of young, psychic volunteers, that physical death is neither to be feared nor dreaded , since it is merely a transition to a higher form of life. In the words of Sister Kathleen Coyle, a theological anthropologist and my Religious Studies professor at Maryhill School of Theology, “in death we simply move from temporal time to eternal time.”

I first met Pamela D. 6:00 PM Friday, September 17, 1999, the first meeting of the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) elective SHAMANS: North American Indian Shamanism at De La Salle University (DLSU) in the school year 1999 – 2000. That was the only course I was teaching as adjunct lecturer at DLSU that second term. I had taught the same course—which was created by Professor Leni Garcia of the university’s Department of Philosophy in 1996—the previous trimester. For some reason, the CLA appointed a special class the following term to accommodate 12 senior students who needed to cover three elective units for graduation.

I have kidded Pamela D. ever since that my life would have been a lot less complicated had I not agreed to take on that special class.

Pamela D., in fact, did not enroll in SHAMANS for credit. She was one of the five audit students who, on the first day of class, I encouraged to drop for the purpose of reducing the number of bodies inside the classroom. She defensively explained that audit students take their courses more seriously than credit students, since they are there of their own volition. I recall that she was, indeed, one of the few students who were always present, who proactively participated in the class exercises, and who faithfully submitted their papers. Perhaps, because of her, I will never harbor that attitude toward audit students again.

The first time I took note of Pamela D. was the night of Friday, November 26—SHAMANS’s 11^th of a total of 13 meetings, or 11 weeks long after the beginning of the trimester. Pamela D. had been a quiet, inconspicuous student thus far, preferring to remain in the background. She never spoke up in class except during our closing, message rounds. The night of November 16, she walked up to me after class—an unusual act on her part—and asked me about, of all things, Enochian magick. Looking back now, that was the moment in which I realized that she was taking my teaching very seriously, and that I would continue to be her teacher long after SHAMANS. I invited her to attend a training session for the Questors the following evening, though thinking she would not come—but she did. And that is when this story really begins.

Like Pamela R. (Ella), Pamela D. (Pam) represented the new wave of Questors. Her participation here underscored the first major change in the Questors’ training after three years. From February 13, 1996, through February 13, 1999, all quests centered on only a handful of senior channels. This arrangement gave rise to an internal “star system”, which the group eventually demolished by putting together a standardized training program that all Questors were then required to go through. Thus, every Questor underwent training with the objectives of functioning successfully as facilitators and channels, whether alone on in a group, and of being capable of substituting satisfactorily for one another.

Tony Perez

Cubao, Quezon City

January 2000

THE PAMELA QUESTS:

PAM

People come to the Spirit Questors for a variety of reasons. One is to have a spirit quest scheduled at their residence or workplace. Another is to be psychically scanned and cleansed. Another, to obtain a psychic snapshot of themselves by having cards spread or stones cast or any method of sortilege used for them. Still another, to be administered alternative forms of healing. And, yet another, to receive psychospiritual counseling.

There are two foremost reasons, on the other hand, why people come to me. The first is to be trained in the development of psychic abilities.

The second is to be taught how to perform magic, specifically for the manifestation of their wishes.

Like magic, wishing, to me, is a form of prayer.

You begin with an intention—usually one that is meant for the good of all.

You then translate this intention into visual symbols.

You manipulate these symbols within a physical space, as a child would manipulate a toy family in a doll house or toy soldiers on a mock battlefield, or as a director would block actors and actresses on a stage or movie or TV set, or as a shaman would generate power from his implements, or as a priest would move liturgical objects on his altar.

As you do so, you articulate the intention—in prose, in verse, or in musical sounds—thereby vibrating it, and releasing it to ether.

To all this, you add an appropriate emotion—its gasoline or fuel.

The visual message and the verbal message, propelled by the emotion, travel through the cosmos.

Then the cosmos amplifies your wish—composed of your intention, your visual message, your verbal message, and your emotion—and bounces it back to you in some form of manifestation. Usually, in a form and proportion you deserve.

I am often asked what people wish for most when they come to me for magic.

Is it to wield power over others, including revenge? Is it to be successful at home, at work, or in some profession or field of interest? Is it to amass, inherit, discover, or possess great wealth? Is it o be endowed with perfect health and strength and beauty? Is it to satisfy one’s lust or passion, or experience loving and being loved? Is it to come upon, in general, good fortune, and to have, in general, good luck?

Looking through the slew of magical intentions of all the students and participants I have ever had in all of my classes and workshops over all of these years, I say no.

What people wish for most is the most impossible wish of all.

It is the wish to turn back time.

It is the wish that someone who has died be alive again, or that someone who one loved and lost is back in his or her embrace, or that an opportunity that one let slip by be recaptured, or that one undo something that they did, or not do something that they had, or that one say something that they didn’t, or not say something that they had.

It is a wish that I myself have wished for, and more than once.

Such as, for instance, why I agreed to teach the elective course SHAMANS: North American Indian Shamanism, an elective course created by Professor Leni Garcia of De La Salle University’s (DLSU’s) Philosophy Department in 1996, for the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) the second term in the school year 1999-2000, after already having taught two sections of it the first exhausting term.

There is, of course, one answer: you wish not only for yourself, other people also wish for you.

And, I believe that, since there is a superior force that governs the world and sets everything in order according to a grand design, there is no such thing as an accident. Everything has a reason for being, for having been, for becoming,

I usually reserve weekday evenings to pursue my master’s degree in Religious Studies at Maryhill School of Theology and teach either at De La Salle University or at Saint Scholastica’s College. On Saturdays I teach at Ateneo de Manila University. At 7:30 PM each Saturday, the Questors meet me at Ateneo’s Department of Communication either to be dispatched in teams or to attend two hours of training. Sundays I usually reserve for Questors’ workshops or whole-day training.

I had planned one trimester off the DLSU this school year. Towards the end of that first term, however, the CLA asked me if I could teach SHAMANS again the following term to accommodate 12 senior students who needed to cover three elective units for graduation. That special class would be held Fridays, 6:00 -9:00 PM.

I said yes to the CLA because I do enjoy teaching SHAMANS, and 12 is a good, intimate, class number. I was promised that, at the most, I would have a class of 20.

September 17, 1999, was our first day of class. It was held in M-206, a medium-sized classroom on the second floor of Miguel Building, which for some reason the CLA always assigns me.

I very soon learned that a total of 36 students had signed up for SHAMANS. I tried to encourage at least a third of the class to drop, especially the audit students, but I was not successful in doing so.

Jasper C., an International Studies and Business Management major, and Janice S., a Humanities and Marketing Management major, volunteered to be the class beadles after I explained what a beadle was. (acoording to Judy Sibayan, professor at DLSU’s Communication Department, the beadle is an Ateneo invention and does not exist at DLSU.)

I had five audit students in that class. One of them was 18-year-old Pamela D. (Pam), an Organizational Communication major. Her father, Brent, and her elder brother, Jason, had enrolled in my workshop “Introduction to Divination” at a New Age center in Quezon City some years ago. Pam was a high school senior at the time. She was now a DLSU college sophomore; Jason an Ateneo college senior majoring in Economics and a member of the Aegis, the Ateneo college yearbook, board.

Writing this portion of this book, I find that I must cast my mind back to the many incidents that involved Pam, since she was a quiet, inconspicuous student who preferred to remain the background. The earliest memory I have of her is my giving her a psychic message regarding one of her cousins during our first message round. I also remember that, in an early psychic vision exercise, she and her classmate Edie A., a Psychology and Business Management major, obtained the highest scores on a color-sensing test in which we used regular playing cards.

The first session of SHAMANS always begins with my adaptation and interpolation of Denning and Phillips’s Tower of Light, a protective exercise; the chakras, their alignment, and their use in casting spells; the different forms of alternative healing; and five, additional, protective exercises. This is followed, over the succeeding weeks, by the progressive activation of four psychic senses: psychic vision (clairvoyance), psychic hearing (clairaudience), psychic feeling (clairsentience), and psychic intuition (prophecy).

I find that I must also look through my files of SHAMANS papers and go over Pam’s work. Unfortunately, the earliest written report of my SHAMANS students that remain in my files are based on an exercise that we held the evening of Friday, October 8, 1999.

That night I conducted a series of exercises designed to activate the students’ psychic hearing: listening to faraway sounds through the psychic hearing areas on one’s head; accessing memory; using the Tibetan singing bowl; the static exercise, which I adapted from Harold Sherman’s tape and telephone exercises using the AM band of a radio brought by Ibba B., a Literature major; and listening to the voices of spirits.

This series of exercises was conducted with the class seated in a circle and holding hands, and with the room lights off. I asked Jasper and Oscar T., a Psychology and Business Management major, to douse the lights in the corridor outside and request the maintenance staff to keep them that way until the end of class.

That same night one of the students, Mayet F., an AB Behavioral Science major, inadvertently channeled a transient, human spirit.

In an earlier message round, Mayet shared with the class how she had experience being “possessed” by a spirit in their former home and how she had been traumatized by it. I knew, at the time, that her third eye was open, and that all of her other psychic senses were functional, most especially her psychic feeling. Mayet is the type of channel who first merges with a spirit’s dominant emotion before she is even aware that she is already channeling it.

Actually there were two human spirits that had been attracted to the sound of the Tibetan singing bowl and that were walking around the room—a middle-aged, male, DLSU teacher who ahd somehow attached himself to the classroom we were in, and a transient, female spirit.

Having descended to alpha, the Silva term referring to a consciousness similar to the hypnogogic and hypnopompic states, Mayet subconsciously connected with the female spirit and vented out its intense emotion of grief. The students on her left and on her right were petrified; according to them, Mayet had turned as cold as ice and had tightened her grip on their hands with extraordinary strength.

Unfazed by the knowledge of her traumatic experience, I instructed Mayet to expend her emotion rather than suppress it, thus expending it also from the spirit, and to extend her love, rather than her fear. I also asked the rest of the class to project the feeling of love towards Mayet and towards the spirit.

After the final exercise I took advantage of the dark by projecting to the students six of my spirit guides. At least seven students were able to see three of my guides appear as white, variously-shaped clouds around my head and body.

I made the students work overtime for half an hour, after which I assigned them to do the static exercise at home and write up reports on it.

Mayet came to me as I was leaving the room and asked, “Sir, will it follow me?”

I said to her, “It won‘t as long as you tell it not to.”

Little did we know that she would once again channel the very same spirit—whose name is Nida—during a quest on the night of Friday, November 19, more than a month later.

That was the last time I spoke to Mayet for the next three weeks. She was unable to turn in her report on the static exercise, and so I have no record of it.

Mayet absented herself from class for three successive sessions, and I worried that she would be unable to handle her openness to spirits. None of the other students had seen her on campus, and none of them knew whether she was coming back to class.

The following is Pam’s report:

I replicated the static exercise inside my room on two consecutive nights. I tuned the radio to AM mode and spun the dial as far as it would go to the right. I lay in bed in the alpha state. The lights were off, the radio located at the back of my head.

Day 1

I heard low murmuring on the radio. It was the same murmuring that I heard last Friday during our class exercise. Somehow I could tell that the murmuring signified a conversation between two people—a guy and a girl. Their voices could not have been carried over from the nearest station because I knew that that station was playing the cut of a song.

I visualized myself going back in time to World War II but continued to hear the same murmuring.

I then imagined myself going back to the year 1500 and heard the dull sound of Middle Eastern instrument. I don’t remember what this instrument is called. I recognized its sound because when I was a child I saw and heard such an instrument, more than once, on the children’s TV program Batibot.

I noticed that I was getting sleepy. My concentration started drifting and so I stopped the exercise.

Day 2

I finished reading the recently-released Beings (Anvil Publishing Inc., 1999), and I was hesitant to do this activity all over again. Nevertheless I managed to conquer my fear and proceeded with the exercise. I heard the murmuring (WWII) and the sound of the 1500s instrument again. This time the sound of the instrument segued to music and a man’s voice.

In my mind I saw the man flying left to right above some trees. He wore a white barong Tagalog, had clean-cut hair, and his complexion was so white that he looked like he had stepped out of a komiks strip.

The man reminded me of my father, although he didn’t look a bit like him. I can’t think of any logical explanation as to why he reminded me of my father. I felt, at that moment, love for my father.

I also heard, repeatedly, what sounded like a stomach growling. This came simultaneously with the eerie feeling that an entity was floating left to right behind my head, I pictured it as a young, black entity with slits for eyes.

I have always felt an accompanying physical sensation in my stomach whenever it growls. That time, however, I didn’t feel anything. I don’t even know if the sound came from my stomach—it seemed to come from above my chest.

Note:

These two nights gave me the biggest scare in my life, but I am very proud of myself for having been able to conquer my fear and step into the unknown. I am stifling a giggle deep inside me right now. It is probably a result of having conquered my fear, having stepped into the unknown, and having promised myself that I will never do the static exercise again.

The Day 2 activity still doesn’t make sense to me. The barong tagalong worn by the man was Spanish-influence, the musical instrument, Middle Eastern. As far as I know the Spaniards were not yet interacting with the Moslems in the Philippines in the year 1500.

The evening of the following week, Friday, October 15, the class made their first attempt to communicate with entities on the astral plane via mirror-gazing, an exercise that had been especially successful in other classes I had taught at Ateneo, DLSU, Saint Scholastica’s College, and workshops I had conducted at Saint Louis University (SLU) in Baguio City, University of Saint La Salle in Bacolod City, Bicol University in Legazpi City, and Divine Word College of Laoag City.

I had instructed each student the previous meeting to bring to the classroom a new or unused pocket mirror, a small bottle of oil that I had taught them to charge with their personal energy in an earlier session, a white candle, a saucer or a small candle holder, and a lighter or a box or booklet of matches.

The air-conditioning system broke down, for a reason unknown to me, in M-206, and so all of us had to move to another classroom. The class was further delayed by the arrival of three DLSU students who requested a panel of Questors to address the topic of communicating with spirits for their Filipino class.

Only 32 students reported for class that evening. Still, we could not form a comfortable circle inside the room and had to sit with our chairs backed up against the walls.

I doused the lights.

I asked the students to turn their chairs and face the wall, set up but light their candles in saucers or candle holders on top of their arm rests, dress the surfaces of their pocket mirrors liberally with charged oil, set up the mirrors in such a way that they were angled to reflect only a neutral part of the room such as a blank portion of the ceiling or a blank portion of another wall, do a progressive relaxation exercise, and light the candle. The students then accessed their psychic senses in rotation.

Of the 32 students who did this exercise, six succeeded in conversing with, seeing, hearing, or sensing the presence of spirits in the room, most of whom were able to communicate with deceased relatives, the other three with transients. Another 12 contacted elementals, accessed memory, or received precognitive images in flashes.

Pam was not among the 18, which is probably why, at the time, I did not even think of her as exceptional. I will admit, however that she and the rest of the class tried to make the most of this exercise.

It was not a smooth night for me. Everyone’s nerves were still frayed as a result of last week’s exercises, Mayet’s emotional outburst, and the manifestation of my spirit guides and, added to that series this evening, the mirror-gazing exercise.

As a result, immediately after the mirror-gazing exercise, as we moved on to the topic of pranic healing, there was a lot of clowning and nervous laughter.

I realized, in retrospect, that I had programmed a set of intensive, nerve-wracking, and unfamiliar exercises too close to one another.

I have adjusted my syllabus ever since.

The next week, Friday, October 22, I asked the class to write their reflections on the mirror-gazing exercise.

The idea of bringing a portable mirror to class excited me. I thought that the mirror-gazing exercise would give me an out-of-this-world experience. I was hoping that that experience would change my life forever.

During the activity I noticed that fear was never among my emotions. This is probably because I was joyously anticipating that I would see a being on the astral plane. The other possible reason is that there were more than 30 of us inside the classroom.

I tried to call on my spirit guide for more than five minutes and patiently waited for the throbbing of my right ear and lower back area. [Tony’s note: The students are taught how to associate body signals with the arrival of or messaging from their spirit guides. Pam’s body signals included the throbbing of her right ear and lower back area.] To my disappointment my spirit guide did not come.

I then went over the activity from the very beginning by going out of and back to alpha. I did this three times, but all three attempts failed. I cannot, up to this time, think of any wrong action I had taken, or of any lapse on my part, or of any misinterpretation I may have made of the given instructions.

I continued the activity by gazing into the oil-dressed, portable mirror. No being from the astral plane manifested. However, to my temporary delight, I heard a young man’s voice singing. I could not make out the song or comprehend the lyrics. I continued gazing into the mirror but saw nothing until the lights were turned on, signifying the end of the exercise.

I was very disappointed with myself. No being had manifested itself to me. I experienced no change in feeling. I experienced no change in emotion.

At the end of the activity I asked Tony if the singing I had heard had actually come from another plane. He said, no. I was dejected.

[Tony’s note: A male student had actually been singing in the men’s rest room beyond the north wall of the classroom. Yet, what jumps out at me in both Pam’s static exercise and this one was the synchronistic recurrence of “music and a young man’s voice”.]

My disappointment in myself did not turn to anger, nor did it make me want to start cutting SHAMANS. Still, I have been wondering, since the start of the term, when all of my powers will fully activate. I still am.

That night TV journalist Ces Drilon and her crew popped in to take shots of SHAMANS for the October-November special of Channel 2’s Pipol. I led the class through exercises in shamanic diagnosis using rattles, candle-gazing, divination with stones, and pranic healing, using Ces herself as a subject. Pipol followed me to Cubao later that night to interview my sister Alice in her apartment and my younger adopted son Chito in our apartment and take shots of our living room, our prayer room where the urns of my mother and my elder adopted son Nelson are kept, and my bedroom.

I gave SHAMANS a syllabus break the following Friday, October 29, which was the weekend of Halloween. We discussed, instead of our regular lessons, the Freudian concepts of eros and thanatos, how we fluctuate from one to the other, how they can lead to maladjustment, andn how they manifest in our day-to-day life. We played two group games in class that evening: H.G. de Beer’s Foreplay as an exercise in eros, and Games People Play’s An Evening with Bram Stoker’s Dracula as an exercise in thanatos.

After All Souls Day and All Saints Day, as SHAMANS drew near to a close at DLSU, classes for the second semester opened in other universities. I had enrolled at Maryhill School of Theology for Liturgical Theology on Monday evenings and Theological Anthropology on Saturday mornings. At the same time I would be covering six units of thesis advising for eight groups of senior undergraduate students at Ateneo’s Department of Communication, and teaching Design and Management of Training Games for graduate students, also at Ateneo’s Department of Communication, on Saturday evenings.

Pam was able to activate her psychic senses during the individual yuwipi exercises we held on the evening of Friday, November 12.

The yuwipi exercise is adapted from a Sioux (Lakota) sacred ceremony. The word means “small, translucent stones found on anthills and put into a sacred gourd”, “a ceremony in which the medicine man is tied and wrapped up like a mummy”, “man bound up in sinews” and “the tied-one, the man who uses the power of the rawhides and the stones to find and to cure” (John [Fire] Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, New York: Washington Square Press, 1994). The actual ceremony involves binding a medicine man or a sensitive in the center of a dark room, his fingers laced together with rawhide, hid body tied and wrapped in a blanket, and waiting for the spirits to talk through him. I adapted this shamanic rite as a final exercise for my Magic class at Ateneo years ago, and for the SHAMANS course at DLSU two years ago. Each student was instructed to bring three scarves and two blankets to the classroom. The first scarf would be used to blindfold them, the second to bind their hands, the third their feet. Each student was then taken into a darkened room, where they were made to lie on one blanket, blindfolded and bound, then covered with the other blanket. The student was then left alone inside the room for 30 minutes.

Not everyone who goes through the yuwipi exercise survives it. The first time we performed it at Ateneo’s Department of Communication building, four students refused to participate in it, and three were unable to complete it. We stationed, at the time, Franco F. and Ariel V., then sophomores at Ateneo High School, to stand outside the doors and immediately go in and unbind anyone who shouted Franco’s name.

Successful initiates of this exercise, on the other hand, are visited by spirits that linger in the room and converse with them. Others report the common experience of hearing entities moving about the classroom, bumping into furniture, zipping and unzipping their bags, pushing their books and other objects from desks onto the floor, and writing or scratching on the blackboard. Still others hear sounds such as weeping, sniffling, coughing, laughing, throat-clearing, heavy breathing, and footsteps. Physical contact is also reported, including the sensations of heat and cold, blanket-pulling, body-poking, tickling,k scratching, hair stroking, even caressing.

The class members were led out of M-206 six at a time and brought into individual classrooms on the third and fourth floors of Miguel Building. In the meantime the rest of the class gave group presentations on pre-assigned topics. Three students were absent from class that night; nevertheless, they were required to do the yuwipi exercise the evening of the following Friday, November 19.

Of the total of 36 students, five shouted “Franco!” within the first 15 minutes of their exercise. They were unbound and taken out of the classrooms and were allowed to not complete the exercise. (We have continued the tradition of instructing students to shout “Franco!” when they wish to be let out, even if Franco himself is not there.) Mayet had come back to class by this time.

Mayet’s paper:

“I have always been fascinated with and intrigued by the paranormal. I have always loved, ever since I was a child, watching TV programs with themes about the supernatural world.

“I used to ask myself how this interest developed in me, because I was raised by parents with strict, Catholic convictions. They often told me that, yes, there are spirits that roam about, but that they should be left pretty much alone. Otherwise, they would get disturbed, they would retaliate, and they would do ‘bad things’. With this kind of thinking, I grew up being afraid of spirits, even if, deep within me, I really wanted to experience being able to converse with them or just being able to ‘feel’ their presence. I guess, the conditioning I went through since I was a child led me to believe that I am a ‘scaredy cat’, or, worse, a ‘weakling’.

There came a time in my life, however during which I not only felt the presence of a ‘spirit’ but even sensed that it was inside my body. During those moments, I felt that I was being completely, emotionally drained.

“Our family was about to pray the rosary that evening. As the initial words of the opening prayer tumbled out of my mouth I felt a sudden, tingling sensation inside me. It came quickly, and it was strong.

“I started shouting and crying, at the same time I was howling, and I can’t remember what it was exactly that I said. My dad tried to hold me down but I was much stronger than he was. He forced me down with all his strength but I kicked him and bit him. I learned that I had done all of these things much later, and my dad showed me the marks of my teeth on his arms and hands.

“The family continued reciting the rosary while my dad struggled with me. I calmed down for w while. During the lull, my mom called up their Couples-for-Christ (CFC) brothers and sisters. They came and prayed over me, and I fell asleep.

“The next day, though, there was another struggle. This time my body was already weak, my voice almost gone, my eyes completely swollen.

“I just wanted whatever it was that I was experiencing to stop. Just when I was about to say this aloud, I felt it come again. It felt as though a strong wind were passing through my skin. And there I was again, shouting and screaming, crying, and struggling within.

“The other members of the CFC group came with their rosaries and prayer books, ready to ‘fight’ whatever it was that they were supposed to be ‘fighting’. I could hear their prayers and their chants, but I kept getting stronger and stronger, even if I knew that my body was already weak.

“They placed a rosary round my neck and rubbed holy oil on my arms and legs. These gestures made me quiet down a bit, but only temporarily.

“When I was in a calm state, the CFC members arranged for a priest to come and bless me, and bless our house as well.

“I thought that it was over. Yet, it came again. This time I did not scream out any longer. I merely cried and cried until there were no more tears for me to shed.

“They moved me out of our house. I stayed at my grandmother’s until my parents found a new house for us. My parents also scheduled healing sessions for me with the late Father A. in Quezon City. There I felt spiritually healed, and I felt peace enveloping my whole being.

“We eventually found a new house. My parents did not allow me to step inside our old house again, even for the packing.

“I have always tried to forget that incident. I can’t. I tried rationalizing that experience but I just couldn’t find the right explanations.

“I am telling you this story to show you the transition from my fear of doing the yuwipi exercise to my conquest of it after.

“As I was walking to the exercise venue, all of the things in my past that I mentioned came flashing through my mind. I felt my heart beating faster. Still, I assured myself that this was what I had wanted for a very long time now, and only in this class would I be able to experience it. My heart still pounding, I put on a brave front and went through with the exercise.

“The Questors made us choose rooms. I chose M-317, the very first room on the left side. The Questor I was assigned to gave me an account of what I would most likely experience in the room and, believe me, it didn’t help slow my heartbeat a bit.

“But, I really wanted to experience something extraordinary. I did not utter a word of objection.

“As soon as the Questor finished tying me up and then blindfolding me, I began feeling excited.

“Then the Questor asked me to lie down. He covered me with the blanket. I heard his footsteps going towards the door. I heard him switch off the lights. Then, I was alone.

“The first few minutes inside the room, I felt very uncomfortable. It took a while before I was able to go to alpha.

“The moment I opened my third eye, I felt a cold, tingling sensation on my feet. It felt like the blanket was being lifted up from my feet.

“I lost my focus there for a while, and heart began pounding. I tried to convince myself to be brave. I went to alpha again.

“I immediately felt the same cold feeling on my feet, but, this time, I allowed it to happen.

“I also experienced a heaviness above my chest, as though something were on top of me. I breathed heavily through my nose, then through my mouth.

“I heard footsteps inside the room, as though someone—an entity—were walking back and forth. I heard it bump into a chair.

“I didn’t feel alarmed by the presence of this ‘being’. Somehow I knew that it was a ‘good’ one.

“I felt more relaxed and comfortable. The more I felt at ease, the more the entity tried to communicate with me, but its way of trying to communicate was not verbal. I think it was trying to assure me that I had nothing to be afraid of. It even touched my hair. I felt it playing with my hair. I also sensed from it a great deal of friendliness. I think that it was trying to befriend me first prior to actually conversing with me.

“Unfortunately the Questor came back inside the room and turned on the lights.

“I felt quite disappointed. Half an hour was not enough for me to successfully establish contact. Nonetheless I had an experience I will neither forget nor regret for the rest of my life, and UI congratulate myself for being able to conquer my fear.

“I can’t wait for my next encounter.”

I didn’t really have any idea what the yuwipi exercise was all about. All I know was that I was required to bring two blankets and three scarves: one scarf I would use as a blindfold, the other two scarves would be used to tie my hands and feet. That requirement, for me, was enough to make me feel that something big was about to happen.

Before the exercise a classmate told me that a friend of his had gone through this exercise before. He said that his friends ended up being kicked in the feet by an unknown being. Normally, hearing something like that would send shivers up the spine of an average student. That story did give me a little scare, but it also made more eager to experience the yuwipi exercise.

I was brought into a room on the third floor of Miguel Building. A Questor named Leo was assigned to by my “savior”. He tied my hands and feet, blindfolded me, lay me down on the floor, and covered my whole body with a blanket. Then he left me alone inside the room.

I promised myself that, whatever events might take place, I would never shout for help. I guess I was waiting for the experience I had been longing for since the start of the trimester.

After a few minutes some things did take place. I first heard footsteps behind me. In my mind I automatically pictured an old man who looks exactly like my Microeconomics teacher. He had a big belly. He was wearing a gray barong tagalong, dark slacks, and leather shoes. I heard the footsteps four times, each time a few seconds at a time.

Then I sensed that the man was no longer in my mind but was actually standing at the back of my head.

I heard a lot of whispering around me. Not from merely one being but from about five. I couldn’t make out what they were saying because the whispers were too soft. I can, however, remember that there also was a lot of laughing and giggling.

I also heard and felt three chairs being moved. However, the movements were small.

I should mention that the events that took place were quite dull to me. The sounds and feelings may have come from my mind or from the noises the students outside the classrooms were making. Not that I am an excessively rational person, but I crave strong, solid experience. Still, I am open to new things. I have had some premonitions come true in the past, and so, I believe that there exist things beyond the physical senses.

I hope that the spirit quest this Friday will finally give me that experience.

On the evening of the following Friday, November 19, Oscar came late for class wearing a red-and-white jacket and sunglasses, and looking as though he had just stepped out of a production of Grease. While the class was screening four videos on native American tribes that I had brought with me, I went out of the classroom and sat on the fire exit staircase. Oscar followed me there. Looking closely at him, I saw that he had two shiners and bruises all over his face and body. He disclosed to me that he had gotten into a nasty fight with another young man over his girlfriend. Ibba and I helped him work out his emotions while the rest of the class were screening the videos.

The Questors, this time with senior Questor Bambi G. (a DLSU Organizational Communication graduate), one of the first DLSU graduates who joined the Questors, came back to SHAMANS that evening to administer the yuwipi exercise to last week’s absentees and lead the class through separate, simultaneous spirit quests.

After finishing up with the group presentations scheduled that night, I divided up the Questors into five teams. Each teach would consist of several Questors and approximately seven students. The class members counted off by fives and joined up with their respective teams. Each team assigned themselves a primary channel, a facilitator, a secondary channel, and a secondary facilitator. All five teams were able to converse with spirits that night.

Mayet’s report:

“I am reluctant to come closer. I don’t know whether or not I will be able to understand all of what has happened to me. I never thought that what I experienced in our house before would happen to me all over again.

“Friday nights have always been exciting for me. Every week is a new revelation of what I can do—or experience. True enough, the night of Friday, November 19, was an experience I would never forget.

“I arrived in class just in time for the group presentations, and all seemed normal to me. I listened to the reports and was very fascinated by them.

“About an hour and a half later, Mr. Perez instructed the Questors and the class to split into groups for the much-awaited spirit quests. Due to my previous experiences I was apprehensive, but I chose not to show it. I wanted to know how a spirit quest goes. Only in this class would I ever find out.

“We formed a group, we were six, I think, plus two Questors.

“While we were searching for a room to hold our quest in, I felt my heart pounding real fast and hard. I wasn’t nervous, but I couldn’t stop it from beating wildly. I couldn’t figure out if I was just being overexcited. As we were walking up the stairs to the fourth floor, my feet suddenly became heavy with every step. Finally, we chose M-410.

“The room felt very cold from the moment we stepped in. We had to open some windows because some of us were shivering.

“We all decided to use the rest rooms before commencing the quest, mainly to relieve ourselves of the tension that I could tell we were feeling.

“The Questors wanted us to choose, amongst ourselves, our primary channel for the quest. No one wanted to volunteer. We conceded that whoever felt whatever, would be the primary channels.

“The Questors positioned us round in a circle and made sure that all of us were comfortable. I was placed between Eleanor [G., a Political Science major] and a guy classmate whose name I forget.

“At that instant I felt the hairs on my skin rise and my flesh begin to tingle, but I managed to relax as we were about to start.

“Eleanor led us through the Tower of Light. I immediately went to the alpha state.

“We held hands. One of the Questors, our facilitator, started to call on the spirits. The minute she spoke out and stated our purpose, I felt my hands become heavy. As she went on talking, I sensed that my body was dropping and slipping through the floor, as though a huge stone were tied round my neck. I tried to lift myself up with much effort. Then, I felt sadness enveloping my whole being. I heard myself crying but it seemed as if I was so far away. I heard a terrifying scream come from my mouth, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying even if I wanted to. I wanted to let go and make everything stop, but I couldn’t.

“Then I heard voices in my mind. The voices sounded so near that I could almost feel the breath of their speakers on my face.

“I saw a white figure coming my way as though it wanted to merge with me. I heard a name being called. Nida was the name of the spirit.

“Nida was betrayed by her best friend. I heard the anger in her voice. She learned that her boyfriend and her best friend were having an affair. She was hurt very deeply. She promised herself that she would seek revenge. She would not rest until this happened, but the waiting only brought her more pain.

“Nida was determined to exact her revenge. She would not listen to us and ‘go to the light’ as we suggested. She resisted our please many times before she finally became convinced that everyone in the circle loved her. Then, she ‘went to the light’. As Nida went, everyone in the circle felt peace. We said a prayer for her after.

“We also thanked two other entities, two gnomes who were inside the room with us. We thanked them for helping us show Nida to ‘the light’. I personally thanked them and all my companions for not letting go of me.

“Before we ended, we discussed what happened. I could tell that everyone was still ‘in shock’.

“I apologized to Eleanor for gripping her hand too tight.

“We made sure that everyone felt happy and OK before we left.

“There was also one, last message for everyone from Nida: ‘Don’t give up!’

“Looking back to that Friday, I indeed got what I asked for. But, I still can’t find the answers as to why I experienced what I did.

“After that night, though, I felt a change in me, a change that is for the better. There is peace within me now and a different kind of understanding—a wider understanding of things around me.

“I also realized how important one’s life is. We must live life to the fullest and never give up, even if things don’t go the way we want them to. Indeed, since that night, I don’t ever want to give up on anything.”

Pam was in a team led by two other Questors. With them were Oscar, Analie A. a Psychology and Marketing major; Kate A., an International Studies-European Studies major; Izel G., an Education and Guidance Counseling and Psychology major; and Tess M., a Psychology and Legal Management major.

Every time it is 9:00 in the evening on Friday, after class, I find myself wondering what other enchanted event will take place in our forthcoming session of SHAMANS.

I also find myself mustering all of the patience I have so that I can survive the passing of each day with a calm mind and body.

The SHAMANS class is probably the most exciting subject I have ever taken. The trimester is going by so quickly because of it. With all this excitement, every day seems to be Friday.

Prior to the formation of our circle I volunteered to be the channel for our group. I received no response from either the Questors or my classmates. This is probably because they perceived that I didn’t have any psychic powers. (Even I did have some, they were definitely not developed enough.) I nevertheless hoped that I would also be able to experience whoever our chosen channel would sense that night.

Our group was able to contact three astral beings. There were two human spirits and one elemental. Due to time constraints the Questors decided that we would go with the being that had the strongest emotion.

We apologized, aloud, to the other two beings because we would not be able to converse with them. The spirit that our group chose to converse with was named Marco. I was not able to sense anything of him. The information that I received and that I write of here was based only on the feedback of my fellow students.

Marco was a confused spirit. He was angry, afraid, and depressed. He once “saw the light” but didn’t know what it signified. He informed our group that “the light” felt warm but that it didn’t “beckon” to him. This somewhat baffled our facilitator because he believed that spirits instinctively know what the light connects to.

Marco informed our group why he was feeling depressed. He was unable to obtain his mother’s forgiveness for his many shortcomings. This guilt accompanied him to his present state. Based on Marco’s fear and the consistency of his answers, I could tell that he still didn’t know where he was. He was afraid of the other spirits in the vicinity and didn’t know what to do about it.

The second spirit’s name was Jeremiah. As with Marco, I was unable to sense anything of him.

The being that I was able to connect with, though, was an elemental.

I heard his laughter. It was a Dracula-type of laugh—exactly what I hear in the movies. This, however, didn’t scare me. Our group pointed out his location, in front of the window and at my back. I tried to see him through my third-eye area, with no success.

I didn’t share this experience with our group during this quest because I was afraid that they would not affirm what I had heard. I initially felt that the being’s laughter was probably only in my imagination. But Jing [O., a DLSU Computer Science and Technology graduate and a Questor who sat and participated in SHAMANS all throughout the term] would later tell me that the elemental was indeed laughing and making fun of us. This was my only psychic experience during this quest.

Over the course of the exercise I became restless and uneasy. I did the progressive relaxation exercise more than three times because I had begun to have mixed emotions: envy, boredom, and anger. Envy of my classmates because my psychic abilities were not as powerful as theirs. Boredom with the activity because I was unable to do anything much. Anger with myself for feeling self-belittlement because I had weak psychic powers.

I can only hope that, towards our finals, my powers will grow strong enough for me to be able to see astral beings. In the meantime I’ll just buy New Age books to satisfy my cravings.

From Oscar:

“Spirit questing, for me, was a weird but unforgettable experience. Eight of us sat in a circle holding hands and trying to sense the presence of spirits around us. At first I thought that the exercise was not as scary as I thought it would be, but, I guess, I was wrong. There were three spirits inside the same room we were in, two human and one elemental.

“The Questors informed us that elementals are makulit (tenacious) and very hard to communicate with, so we opted to converse with one of the human spirits.

“The first one we contacted, I thought, was an unusual one. I thought that he was trying to make fools of us by not telling us his name. We didn’t know whether he really wanted our help or not.

“So, we proceeded to address the next human spirit, who gave us his name as Marco. He was 19. He told us that the cause of his physical death was ‘bad health’.

“The group asked Marco how we could help him. He did not respond. All we could sense was that he was afraid of us, either that or that he wouldn’t trust us, so that he was reluctant to tell us what he wanted us to do.

“We told Marco that he should not be afraid of us, that we were willing to help him as much as we could, but that first he should communicate with us. Marco informed us that he saw ‘the light’, but that he did not go to it because he didn’t want to leave his mom. We advised him that it would be best for him to ‘go to the light’. His mom, at least, would no longer be concerned that he was still wandering on the astral plane. We encouraged him to stop worrying about his mom.

“It was a long process convincing Marco, but we did accomplish it. Later, he thanked us for helping him. We also thanked him for allowing us to help him.

“It was a great experience that I will never forget. It changed my views on life, especially my view on life after death. I believe that we all learned a lesson there. We should not be afraid of spirits because they are not there to scare us but to await our compassion, and to help us.

“I’m glad I overcame my fears during the exercise. I was afraid that it would affect the outcome of our quest.”

From Analie:

“At first I was terrified of the exercise. After some time, though, I began to enjoy it. My classmates and the Questors chose M-418 as the venue for our quest. Before the actual activity the questors ‘balanced’ the energy in our circle by assigning us positions round it. Then they designated our primary channel. We first did the Tower of Light and expanded the light enveloping our bodies to include everyone in our circle, the entire school, and, finally, the world. Afterwards, the facilitators asked us to activate our third eye and look for spirits inside the room.

“There were actually three spirits inside the room. One of them was an elemental. The first spirit that our channel saw was a human whose name was Jeremiah. Then, one of us saw another spirit whose name was Marco. The Questors asked us to intuitively determine which of the two spirits had the more urgent issue, and most of us thought that Marco seemed to be the one. The group apologized to Jeremiah, thanked him, and bade him goodbye.

“Communicating with Marco was difficult. Personally, I sensed that he was not willing to talk to us. I was getting a bit scared because I began to sense that Marco was getting frustrated. Finally, the facilitators asked Marco if was read to talk to us. He said yes.

“The group asked Marco if he had already seen ‘the light’. Again, he said yes, although, according to him, he ‘avoided going to it’ because he still needed to ask his mother her forgiveness. I was amazed that he trusted us enough to tell us about his issue with his mother.

“Marco suffered from poor health when he was still alive. Because of this he was unable to personally take care of his mother, and now he felt guilty and unhappy. He was still looking for his mother to ask her for forgiveness. That was why he was avoiding ‘going to the light’.

“The Questors assured Marco that his mother understood everything, that he should no longer worry about her, and that he could no ‘go to the light’. It seemed, however, that Marco did not know how to do that. We activated our right-brain hemispheres, visualized ‘the light’, and guided him towards it. When we were certain that Marco had already ‘gone to the light’, we gave him our personal thanks, and we prayed for him.”

From Kate:

“Our class in SHAMANS seems to get creepier every meeting. First, we had the yuwipi exercise. Then, last Friday, we had a quest! It made a special difference that we were guided by Questors. I had always wondered what would happen with them around. I also thought that the experience would be less scarier than if only my classmates and I had done it alone.

“So, there we were, being asked of count off. Two Questors were to accompany each group. When we all had our respective leaders, we followed them to the rooms where we would perform the activity. The room that we chose was on the fourth floor.

“Before starting, the Questors identified our channels (primary and secondary) and facilitators (primary and secondary). When everything was settled, we said a short prayer.

“The room was dark, as in the previous week’s yuwipi exercise. This time, though, we were in a group and we sat in a circle. We were led to alpha and reminded to activate all our psychic senses and to be extra sensitive to whatever we would feel.

“The room was silent, except for the fluctuating sound of the air-conditioner, which we ignored. Everyone remained rapt in concentration until the silence was disrupted by the voice of one of our two channels, who said that she could see a spirit standing at the door. One of the Questors asked the channel if she could obtain the spirit’s name. It was Jeremiah. We tried to ask him if he was willing to converse with us, but it seemed that he felt nothing but hatred and anger. All of us in the circle picked up these feelings.

“Jeremiah was unwilling to cooperate with us. We became silent for a while. Then, not long after, our other channel sensed the presence of another being, a second, male, human spirit named Marco. We asked him the same question that we asked Jeremiah. At first he was reluctant to converse with us . He gave in after 15 minutes of persuasion. I thought that it was a good thing, since he seemed friendlier and more approachable than Jeremiah.

“We decided to take on Marco instead of Jeremiah. Before conversing with Marco, we apologized to ‘J’ for not continuing our attempt to converse with him. All throughout the rest of our quest he remained in the room watching us, but he did not come near.

“We started asking Marco questions—what caused his physical death, why he was still earth-bound, whether he had already seen the splendid, ‘bright light’ which was his astral bridge to eternal life. These questions were not immediately answered; I think that we waited for intervals of more than ten minutes before he gave a response to each question. I thought, at the time, that this was because we were neophytes and had not yet mastered the techniques of questing.

“Every time there was a pause after each question, a sudden feeling of coldness ran through ky spine, making me shiver, and covering my body with goosebumps. Nonetheless, my concentration was not affected by those queer sensations.

“When we asked Marco about the ‘bright light’, he said that he had already seen it, but that he chose to ignore it. The reason was that he felt sorry for his mom. According to him he wasted his life and took his health for granted, which eventually led to his end. No one but himself could be held responsible for his death.

“Marco was aware that he no longer belonged to the world of the living, but he could not let go. His regret was so great that it disabled him from detaching himself from the physical plane and letting his soul rest.

“We tried to convince Marco to ‘go to the bright light’. This constituted the longest part of our conversation. It was hard for him to do because other than the fact that he was afraid, he could not help thinking about his mom. He harbored so much guilt and it was painful for him to leave his mother.

“Our legs began to ache. We changed positions several times and yet there was no positive response from Marco. After 30 minutes of waiting, Marco finally succumbed to our request. He agreed to ‘go to the bright light’, but he asked that all of us, together, take him there.

“We guided him through. When we were certain that he had ‘entered the light’, we prayed for him and for his mother. After that we gave him one message round in which we expressed our gratitude and said to him that, wherever he was that moment, we were happy that he had accepted our help.

“This experience was less scary than the yuwipi exercise. It also made me feel lighter afterwards because of the feeling that we were able to help one restless soul who had so much love for his mother.

“We were unable to converse with the other entities due to lack of time.

“I must admit that it was fun, helping a spirit in our own, simple way, through prayer.”

From Izel:

“One of my goals as a student of SHAMANS was to be able to help at least one spirit move ‘towards the light’. Last week, with my classmates and two Questors, I had the opportunity to realize that goal. Here is how it happened.

“The evening of November 19 my classmates and I divided up into separate groups and joined the Questors in communicating with spirits. Our group selected one of the rooms on the fourth floor of Miguel Building. As we waited for the activity to start, we could not help but share with one another our excitement and expectations of our quest. We could not help but wonder, too, who would be our medium.

“During our preparation for the activity, the Questors asked us to sit in a circle and hold hands. We could not wait to get started, and so we quickly took our places, only to be informed by our guides that our circle was not ‘balanced.”

[Tony’s note: In every spirit quest a circle is formed with the primary channel seated between two quest agents at the end of a vortex, at the threshold of a portal, in a “hot spot”, in a “cold spot” or in a location that generates or expends the most psychic energy. The facilitator is then located opposite the channel. If a secondary channel and a secondary facilitator are assigned roles to validate the quest findings, they are seated at cross-directions.

The other members are then located round the circle in any manner that equally distributes, or ‘balances’, their personal energies: by gender, by psychic abilities, by quest experience, by seniority, by relationship, or by other factors.]

“The Questors proceeded to the next stage—the selection of our primary channel. We thought that the primary channel would actually be one of the Questors or Jing (since they had done this kind of activity before). To my classmates’ and my own surprise, I was chosen as the primary channel. The Questors were to be our facilitators only.

“The Questors gave us a few instructions before switching off the lights. We did a progressive relaxation exercises with our eyes closed. Jing and the Questors led us through the Tower of Light. As we went through the guided meditation and visualized the light surrounding our circle, I felt heat emanating from all of the bodies round the circle.

“We ‘switched on’ our psychic senses. Looking through our third eye areas, we scanned the room and tried to locate the astral beings that were there with us. I immediately saw, in the corner to the left, near the blackboard, the dark figure of a man, the figure of a hairy, white creature near the window. I am not sure whether the creature was male or female. The room somehow seemed to get colder while we were scanning the room.

“Jon asked us whether we could see or feel the presence of any of the astral beings, and where we thought they were located. Since the male spirit felt much stronger than the white creature, I alerted the group to his presence. The Questors asked my classmates to affirm this, but no one did.

“The Questors then asked us to relax in order to be more receptive. As the primary channel I was asked to communicate with the man and ask for his name. It took me quite a while to do this. I could not ‘hear’ the spirit ‘speaking’ but could communicate with him through mental telepathy. I felt, at the same time, that a third being was behind me, and that it was trying to communicate with me. It was, therefore, difficult for me to focus on the male spirit.

“I finally received recurring flashes of the name ‘Jeremiah’ in my mind. I said aloud to the group that the spirit’s name was Jeremiah. The facilitators asked me to determine exactly what the spirit was doing and what he was feeling at that very moment. I told the group that he was simply standing there. After a long pause, I also told them that the spirit was angry about something.

“My next task was to find out why Jeremiah felt angry and why he remained earth-bound. The facilitators asked my classmates to follow suit. During this process, however, one of our female classmates pointed out that there was yet another spirit at the back of the door, and that he wanted his presence to be acknowledged. The Questors asked us to affirm this. Another classmate and I were able to do so. The Questors then asked our female classmate if she could determine the identity of this spirit while I continued to focus on Jeremiah.

“The other sprit’s name was Marco. (Apparently he was the same spirit whom I had earlier sensed at my back, and who was trying to communicate with me.) The Questors asked us to interpret both spirits’ main issues, after which we would decide which spirit we would converse with. I personally wanted to converse with Jeremiah and explore his anger. The majority of the group, however, seemed to be more sensitive to Marco’s presence. We conceded to converse with Marco, and we extended to Jeremiah our apologies.

“Jon tried to ‘disconnect’ me from Jeremiah. He asked me to visualize white light, open my eyes afterwards, and then close my eyes again. I was surprised that I could still see Jeremiah even with my eyes open. Jon had to snap his fingers in front of me and instruct me how to close my eyes in such a way that I would focus only on Marco.

“Conversing with Marco turned out to be difficult for our group. It took Marco a long time to answer each of our questions, and it was only our female classmate who could actually ‘hear’ him. We did learn that Marco was aware that he had already passed away. When we asked him why he remained earth-bound, he replied that the room we were in was his ‘territory’. Marco, in turn, asked us the purpose of all this questioning. Cathy explained to him what we were there for, and asked him if he wanted us to assist him to ‘go to the light’. I immediately sensed the spirit’s confusion (I felt this confusion within me but knew that it was coming from the spirit). We waited for Marco’s response. Finally, he agreed.

“We proceeded to ask Marco how he had died, but he seemed reluctant to answer. The Questors asked us to be more sensitive to his subtle responses. What I got was an image of him lying on the floor and looking as though he were holding his breath. I told the group what I was seeing.

“The Questors asked us to try to elicit from the spirit details of how he had died. Again, the image of him lying on the floor came into my mind. I was not sure how to interpret that image—there was no blood, no weapon, no signs of violence, no instrument of death. I assumed, to myself, that he had committed suicide, and I shared my thoughts with the group.

“One of my male classmates said that he, too, could see an image of Marco on the floor. He saw, in addition, the image of a woman looking at his dead body. The Questors asked us to intuitively determine, based on the images that we could see, whether Marco had indeed committed suicide. May male classmate suggested that Marco’s death could have been caused by a drug overdose or that it had something to do with a woman. I could not get anything of the sort, however, and neither could the rest of the group.

“Jon reminded us once more to focus on our psychic senses. Minutes passed. I still could not get anything. Another male classmate then spoke up and said that he could sense that Marco was reluctant to tell us how he died and that he seemed to be afraid of us. I affirmed this classmate’s observation after seeing Marco standing once again at the door, his head down, his body trembling.

“Cathy addressed Marco aloud, saying that he should give us some kind of response if he expected us to be of any help to him. After some time, one of my female classmates told us that she was getting a response from Marco, and that Marco indicated that he wanted to be helped. Through this classmate, Marco clarified that his death was due neither to suicide nor to an overdose of drugs and that it did not involve a woman. He said that he died because of poor health.

“We asked Marco whether had ‘seen the light’. It took Marco a long time to respond to this, but the Questors stressed that it was crucial to our conversation. That was when I heard Marco ask, ‘Ano ba iyon?’ (‘What do you mean by that?’), referring to ‘the light’. The Questors proceeded to describe it to him. He replied by saying that he had seen it, but that he had felt no attraction towards it.

“Jon would not believe him. He asked us to explore the real reason why Marco hadn’t ‘moved on’. The word ‘mother’ kept recurring in my head but I was hesitant to say this to the group since I did not know what to make of it. We pressed the female classmate who received Marco’s initial response for information but she could not get any.

“I finally blurted out that Marco remained earth-bound because, perhaps, of his mother. The secondary channels were asked to affirm this, and they did.

“The female classmate told us that Marco would not ‘go to the light’ because he didn’t want to leave his mother. He was born to a poor family and was the only person whom his mother relied on. He felt guilty for dying at such an early age and was worried that no one else would care for his mother.

“We advised Marco to alleviate his feeling of guilt, and encouraged him to ‘go to the light’. We told him that he would be more able to watch over his mother after he did that. We asked him if he was willing to ‘go to the light’. Like before, there was a long pause. I suddenly felt my heart swell with grief, and my eyes overflowed with tears. I don’t know why I felt that way. I was probably reflecting the spirit’s emotions. While my classmates waited for Marco’s response, I heard myself say, in a choked voice, ‘Paano iyong mother ko?’ (‘What will happen to my mother?’) The Questors had to articulate their assurance before he decided to ‘move on’.

“When it was all over, I felt an inexplicable sense of happiness. We gave Marco our parting words.”

From Tess:

“The group sat in a circle. There were eight of us. We held the session inside a classroom on the fourth floor of Miguel Building.

“At first, I had an uneasy feeling. It was dark. The only way I could tell I was not alone was that the persons to my left and to my right were holding my hands.

“We started the activity by doing the Tower of Light. After that I felt some assurance of being protected. I visualized the light and energy covering not only myself but all the members of our group.

“We tried to communicate with a spirit. One of my classmates sensed that a spirit was located in the front part of the room, near the blackboard. I asked my companions to affirm what I could sense, that there was a second spirit at the back of the room, near the door. I was receiving the message from this spirit that it wanted to communicate with us. Our facilitator chose to communicate with this spirit instead. Its name was Marco.

“The first thing we wanted to do was determine that the spirit was willing to cooperate with us. Our facilitator explained to it that we meant it no harm and that we wished to help it resolve whatever issue or problem it was facing. The group made an effort to retrieve its messages and relay them to us.

“Our quest was all about the story of Marco, who ‘saw the light’ but passed on it because he could not leave his mom behind. He had poor health, which caused his death and forced him to be separated from his mom. He remained earth-bound because he could not accept that he had to leave his mom behind. He wanted to ask her forgiveness for having died early and unexpectedly.

“Through our facilitator the group imparted to Marco that everything was all right. We comforted him with our words and voiced out our speculations of what lay ahead beyond ‘the light’. We assured him of the forgiveness he sought and that ‘going to the light’ would enable him to watch over his mom more effectively. He communicated to us how afraid he was, and that he needed our guidance to lead him ‘to the light’.

“The group prayed for him. We visualized him walking through a path of light until we could no longer see him. I saw that he was very thankful, and was all smiles.

“I am writing this paper as a reaction to the activity. First, I discovered that one has to BELIEVE. In order to participate we must suspend the reality of the physical world and open our senses to the other, spiritual, world that we are trying to explore. My psychic senses worked during our session. I was proactive in receiving messages, which I in turn communicated to the group. I succeeded because I believed that what I was doing was neither weird nor abnormal. I had a gift, and I used it to communicate with spirits.

“Second, I realized that the activity was actually an opportunity to help others. Before this, I had this notion that spirit questing was only an exercise in scanning spirits within the environment, and I was afraid then because I thought that I might disturb these spirits and cause irreparable damage to their kind of peace. Yet, after we extended help to Marco, I was overcome with a peaceful feeling and with the conviction that the activity was worth doing. It was most pronounced when I actually heard Marco say thank you, and actually saw him smile.

“Third, I realized that the activity requires group effort. One’s reception may be different from others’ thus, needs affirmation. There is usually more than one spirit around us, and they could give messages that are subject to misinterpretation by members of the group.”

The morning of Sunday, November 21, Ralph and Lotta picked me up at my apartment. We proceeded to Ateneo’s Communication Building, where we met up with Tommy, Neil, Pats, and Candice. Other Questors trickled in for a series of video screenings and an afternoon session in emotional truth.

That morning, while the Questors were screening videos in the studio, I began working on a portrait of Mae A., one of the senior Communication students in my thesis advising class. Mae arrived for her first sitting with her boyfriend Bill M., an Ateneo Development Studies major. I met Mae’s parents for the first time later that morning, when they arrived to see how their daughter’s portrait was taking shape.

The Questors trained through 6:00 PM that day.

Pam and Manoy M., A DLSU Development Studies and Business Management major, made their group presentation on the medicine wheel the night of Friday, November 26. That was the same night that Pam walked up to me after class—an unusual act on her part, I thought, since the only students who usually came up to me after class were Ibba, Jasper, Art, Oscar, Edie, Les C. (a Psychology and Business Management major), Ritzie P. (an Economics and Marketing major), Charleson H. (an Economics major), Eleanor, Sharon C. (an Organizational Communication and Business Management major), Pats S. (an International Studies and Marketing major), and Peter L. (a Psychology and Business Management major who, like Pam, was auditing the course). Eleanor and Sharon were students in Organizational Communication subjects that I had taught for the Communication Department.

Pam said that she had seen a book on Enochian magick at a Powerbooks branch and that she was thinking of buying it. I recommended another book instead.

It struck me that this quiet, inconspicuous student who preferred to remain in the background and never spoke up in class except during our closing, message rounds had been taking SHAMANS with such panache. I wondered how many other laid-back, reserved students had actually missed the attention and the special mentorship that they really wanted from me since I started teaching SHAMANS at DLSU two years ago.

I knew that I would continue to be her teacher. I invited her to attend a training session for the Questors at Ateneo’s Department of Communication the following evening. Her family had recently moved from a house in Antipolo to an aunt’s unit in Heroes Hills, Quezon City, and so the trip to Ateneo would be an easy one for her. I thought that she would not come, but she did. Later, she told me that she had always had the impression that I approached individual students and invited them to join the Questors, based on their performance during the trimester, on the last day of class. I clarified to her that I did no such thing. I do not recruit people, but they are welcome to come anyway.

Every Saturday morning I shift from my DLSU mode to my Maryhill mode, and in the afternoon shift from my Maryhill mode to my Ateneo mode. This Staurday, November 27, I forgot all about SHAMANS and Pam. At 7:30 PM, after my Design and Management of Training Programs class, I cancelled the Questors’ training session because one of my Ateneo students, Ella, was feeling badly and wanted to go home. At the time, Ella was still being trained to channel spirits.

I was surprised, therefore, when Pam came in through the door, and, for a spit second, I wondered whether I was in DLSU’s Miguel Building or in Ateneo’s Communication Building.

I informed Pam that I would not be training that evening but that I would place her, instead, in one of four teams that were doing a congregate quest in Tagaytay. She did not object. Later that evening, before the Questors were dispatched my nephew George Bregendahl, who is also a Questor and had just completed his academic requirements at Ateneo’s Interdisicplinary Studies Program (IS), drove Ella and me home. Pam rode with us, and then to Tagaytay with George.

Again , I forgot all about Pam. I left my cell phone on that night but its battery drained off while I was sleeping.

The following morning, Sunday, November 28, Mae and her parents picked me up at my apartment for Mae’s second sitting for her portrait in Ateneo’s Communication Building. Since I wanted to focus my attention on Mae’s portrait all of that morning I had scheduled the Questors to resume their training in the afternoon. I was, therefore, not expecting to see any of them until after lunch time.

While working on the portrait I suddenly remembered that I needed to recharge my cell battery. As soon as I plugged it in, the phone rang.

It was Pam. She was in tears. She had been trying to reach me since dawn. She came home from the congregate quest 2:00 AM and was informed by a distressed household that his younger brother, 16-year-old Luke, had met an accident and had been brought to the De Los Santos Medical Center. Luke was in a car with a male cousin and a female cousin, and the female cousin’s boyfriend at the wheel. The car was speeding. It swerved in order to avoid a second car that had suddenly stopped, smashed against a steel light post, and turned-turtle three times. Luke, who was sleeping on the right side of the back seat, was flung through the window and fell several meters away from the wreck.

Brent asked Pam to come to the hospital. Later that day she would tell me that, on the way to the hospital, she did the Tower of Light “to give him strength, to make him well.”

She asked me, again and again, why the Tower of Light was unable to save her brother. I did not have the heart to tell her that Luke had expired long before he was rushed to the hospital, and that he was already dead by the time she came home.

Pam informed me that Luke was lying in state at Loyola Memorial Chapels, on EDSA, and that Brent and Jason asked for me to come. I said that I would be there as soon as I could. I told Mae and Bill that I would have to discontinue work on the portrait that morning. I rang up Neil, who was still at home and had just risen from bed, to come and pick me up so that we could go to the chapel.

While waiting for Neil to arrive, Mae and Bill asked me about Pam and my DLSU SHAMANS class.

“Would that be Jason’s sister?” Mae asked herself, aloud.

I learned that, like Jason, Mae was on the Aegis board. Bill made a few calls on his cell phone and confirmed that Pam, indeed, was Jason’s sister, and that their brother Luke had died early that dawn in a car crash.

Neil, Pats, and Candice came by for me an hour later. We picked up Ella at her residence in Cubao. Tommy, who lives very near EDSA, met up with us at the chapel. Mae, Bill, and a group of Jason’s friends followed some time later.

Brent and his wife, Loida, were out at the entrance to the chapels when we arrived. Brent kept telling me how concerned he was that Luke “not be earth-bound” and that he “move on to the light”. I introduced the Questors to them and then went into the chapel where Luke’s body was interred.

Only Brent and three or four other people were inside the chapel, which was still devoid of flowers. Pam later informed me that, when she called me earlier that morning, she had been waiting on the steps to the basement, where Luke’s corpse was being embalmed. Brent said to me, aside, that Pam refused to go near or look at Luke’s body.

I walked up to the coffin and said a silent prayer for Luke. I noted that he looked exactly like Brent, except that the right side of his face had been smashed during the accident, restored with wax, and covered with flesh-colored cosmetic. As a result, his right eyebrow was missing. Brent explained that the mortician was purchasing a finer kind of wax and would finish up with work on Luke’s face later that day. He would be dressed in the new suit he had intended to wear to an aunt’s wedding in December. At the moment he was temporarily dressed in his Don Bosco High School gala uniform.

Brent asked me, again, to assure him that Luke had “moved on”. I felt, though, that something was wrong. I had scanned the chapel from the moment I stepped inside it, but it was “empty”. I could not locate Luke’s spirit anywhere around me, whether covered with blood (meaning that he was earth-bound) or with bright, shining light (meaning that he had moved on). I psychically accessed Brent, Loida, Jason, and Pam, but Luke was not with any one of them. I went through the process a second time, just to make sure.

I escorted Pam to the coffin, explaining to her the importance of viewing a loved one’s remains. I asked her to remember everything, rather than forget, and to say a prayer for Luke.

Mae, Bill, and some of Jason’s and Mae’s colleagues at Aegis arrived about half an hour after we did. Jason sat with them in the middle pews on the right side of the chapel. I had a long talk with Pam. During this time, visitors from Urdaneta, Pangasinan, Pam’s family’s hometown, dropped by. One of them was a former girlfriend of Luke. Pam grinned and said that she used to slam the phone on her whenever she called for Luke, rationalizing that it was “a sister thing”. Some of Luke’s classmates and teachers at Don Bosco High School also dropped by.

I had another long talk, this time with Pam’s parents, who articulated their approval of Pan’s remaining training under me. I learned that Pam and Luke had not exactly been on friendly terms with each other, that they quarreled often, and that Pam, who was a conservative elder sister, imposed many restrictions on free-spirited Luke. While I was conversing with Brent and Loida, Pam joined the Questors, who were loitering in the back of the chapel.

The Questors and I left at noon, but I promised Pam that I would be back.

I was on leave from work the following day, Monday, November 29. George dropped me off at Loyola en route to a late lunch date with Rita B. (a senior channel and an Ateneo Communication graduate student).

The front part of the chapel was now arrayed with sprays of flowers. Luke had been fully made up and dressed in a suit that had been cut out of pearl-white fabric. Two of his most recent photos were placed on top of his coffin.

I spent most of the afternoon with Brent and Loida. Jason was in school, Pam out looking for a black, nylon cord to string a crystal pendant I had given her. She came in much later and was surprised to see me there already. Unlike Jason, she had decided to cut her classes at DLSU that day. She showed me a small news clipping containing a report on the car accident.

George and Rita came to pick me up at 5:00 PM. I asked Rita to affirm that the chapel was still “empty”. She did. She mentioned that as soon as she walked through the lobby, two human spirits immediately approached her: a young man dressed in barong Tagalog and a woman in blue jeans. We both agreed that the spirit of the young man was not Luke.

George, Rita, and I stopped by for hot chocolate and coffee at a small shop on Morato before they took me to Maryhill, where I was to attend my evening class in Liturgical Theology. Later that night Ella, Sheila, Neil, Pats, Candice, and trainees Boom G. (a Miriam College Mass Communications sophomore), PJ D. (a University of Santo Tomas [UST] Biochemistry sophomore), Mike G. (an Ateneo Legal management junior), Kit E. (a University of the Philippines [UP] Tourism sophomore) and Bhonny C. (an Ateneo Math sophomore) picked me up at the school for a quest that had been scheduled in Dasmariñas Village, Makati.

The following day, Tuesday, November 30, was Bonifacio Day, a Philippine holiday. Jing passed by for me at my apartment after lunch, and we both went o visit Pam and her family at Loyola.

I asked Pam whether anyone, perhaps a member of their household staff, could take Jing and me to the accident site. Pam insisted that she go with us. Brent instructed their family driver to take Pam, Jing, and me in their family van to the corner of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue. As we crawled up the intersection, the driver explained to us how the accident occurred and how the car turned-turtle, even pointing out the steel light post it had hit and a portion of it that still bore flecks of paint that had been scraped off the vehicle.

I knew that Luke was still there, somewhere on the side of the street, to our right. I knew that he had been standing there, dazed and lost, since the night of the accident. The sun was blazing hot outside but I knew that he was in darkness. I could not see him, and this was frustrating to me. There was much traffic and there were too many pedestrians on both sides of the street, causing swift, continuous swirls in ether.

I asked the driver to pull up at the corner, where a fast food store was still in the process of construction. I asked Jing to alight with me, and I instructed him to stand at the street corner, wait for us to park on the other side of the street, and build a bridge of pink light towards the van.

I then went back to the vehicle and requested the driver to turn left at the intersection and park in front of a bank, on the opposite side of the street. From where we were I could not see Jing, but I knew that he was diagonally across us.

I explained to Pam that we would try to contact Luke right then and there, with her as the channel. While she was evidently daunted by this, she was also reluctant, if not afraid, to disappoint me. She instructed the driver to leave us inside the van for at least half an hour and to leave the air-conditioner on.

As soon as we were by ourselves I initially opened Pam’s third eye with an Ace of Pentacles card. I told her to close her eyes and led her through a progressive relaxation exercise. I could already see and feel the bridge of pink light that Jing was building from the opposite side of the street. I had instructed Jing to guide Luke, should he see him on his side, to cross the bridge and to go to us.

When I was certain that Pam had shut off the distractions around us and had descended to the alpha state, I asked her to scan, in her mind, the opposite side of the street.

“How do you visualize it?” I asked. “What time of the day is it? What time of the night? What do you see?”

“Darkness. Just darkness.”

“Do you see Luke?”

“No.”

“Do you feel his presence?”

“Yes.”

“Call him. It doesn’t have to be out loud. Whisper his name. Ask him to come to us.”

And, for the next few minutes, she softly chanted: “Luke. Luke. Come here, Luke. It’s Pam. It’s your sister. Baby. Baby. Come here, baby.”

I gently rotated the tip of a crystal quartz generator on the middle of her forehead to amplify her psychic vision.

“Do you see him now?”

“Yes.”

I sensed that she was afraid, but I decided to push on.

“Does he see you?”

“No. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking all around him. He looks like he’s afraid.”

“Call him again.”

“Luke. Baby. It’s Pam. It’s your sister.”

“Does he hear you?”

“No. I feel like I’m just watching him through a thick, glass wall.”

“Describe him to me. What does he look like? Is he covered with blood or is he clean?”

A long pause.

“I can’t tell. I don’t see all of him, only parts of him. Now, I can only see one of his eyes. It keeps moving, it keeps looking around.”

She told me that she saw other figures as well. They were dark, and they didn’t look human. One of them was tall, and blue, and hairy.”

I sensed the fear mounting within her. I assured her that those creatures were merely elementals, and that she had nothing to be afraid of. Later, Jing informed me that he was unable to locate Luke, but that he saw three or four elementals that came and crossed the bridge.

The elementals continued to distract Pam from focusing, and so, I terminated our attempt to contact Luke after 45 minutes. I led Pam back to the conscious level. She asked me a stream of questions about channeling, about human spirits, about elementals, about the exercise she went through. She was particularly worried about Luke. She wanted to know how we could “take him to the chapel”. She especially wanted to know why she was unable to see his spirit completely.

I explained to Pam that her guilt feelings stood in the way of her channeling. I also told her that, while I was doing my own scanning, I partially accessed information that Luke and she had been lovers in a previous lifetime, and that some sexual tension had carried over to their present lifetime.

There were more questions, of course.

After making sure that Pam was appropriately grounded I stepped down from the vehicle and signaled Jing to cross the street and join us. The driver followed a few minutes after.

None of the other Questors knew of this session until much later. The incident was entered as Quest #1,412 in our records.

We rode back to Loyola. Pam informed me that a Mass was to be celebrated in the chapel that evening and the next, and that Luke’s body was to be brought to Urdaneta after Mass the following night, Wednesday, November 31, for a four-day wake before burial.

I told Pam that I would be unable to come back the following day because I had to report for work. She informed me that since she would be traveling to Urdaneta Friday, December 3, she would be skipping one session of SHAMANS. The funeral was scheduled the following day, Saturday, December 4.

Jing and I left 7:00 PM that evening as more and more guests, some of them hometown luminaries, poured into the chapel. I lent Pam my black star sapphire ring to keep with her through the time that I would see her again, in class, at DLSU.

I rang up Pam three times the following night. The first two times, no one answered the phone. The third time, 11:00 PM, someone at the other end informed me that Pam had decided to travel with the cortege to Urdaneta that very night.

The class missed Pam Friday, December 3. That evening, the Questors assisted once again in conducting subgroup sessions, this time on Ouija boards. Edie was able to communicate with his 17-year-old brother, who died of brain cancer last year. This was something he had been looking forward to since the day he enrolled in the course and, he later admitted, his primary reason for signing up.

The morning of Wednesday, December 8, I reported for work and overheard from some employees that an Asian Spirit aircraft, en route to Cauayan, Isabela, had crashed the previous morning somewhere in Pangasinan. According to news reports, Asian Spirit Flight No. 100, a 19-seater LET-410 made in Czechoslovakia, slammed into a mountain in Nueva Vizcaya and fell into a ravine in Mount Mamparang. There were no survivors.

A few of my coworkers urged me to do psychic scanning to obtain information about the plane crash. The incident was of interest to me, but I held back for two reasons. First, none of the relatives of the victims called me to assist. Second, the Questors and I are already, constantly, surrounded with death, and so we do not go out of our way to proactively offer our services.

I didn’t hear from Pam until she came back from Urdaneta. She was back in SHAMANS class the evening of Friday, December 10, 1999. I noted that she was pale and haggard, and that she had lost weight considerably.

That night I led the class through a spirit-boat exercise. Since none of them had actual spirit-boats, we made do, instead, with boats folded out of writing paper.

Afterwards I reviewed the shamanic concept of the world tree, which Annjo C., a Communication Arts major who, like Pam, was auditing the course, and Tess discussed in their group presentation last week.

I asked the members of the class to divide up into teams of three. Each team searched the campus for a tree with a hole in it. They then went back to the classroom and aligned their seats facing the direction of the tree.

I instructed each team to seat themselves “with the person whose psychic senses are strongest front and back, and the person whose psychic senses are weakest in the middle.” Pam teamed up with Edie and Peter. Pam sat up front, Peter behind her, followed by Edie.

I explained to the class that I would play a drumming tape, that it would take all of 30 minutes, and that there would be a callback.

The students blindfolded themselves. I doused the lights and played the drumming tape on the player that Maita K., an International Studies-European Studies and Business Management major, had brought for us that evening.

Shamanic journeying was the longest and the most painful exercise for me. My back hurt terribly. I was hoping that shamanic journeying would be one of my most memorable experiences in SHAMANS class. It will be. I will always treasure the pain it gave me.

The images that came to me were in two, opposite colors: white for power animals and black for animals that bared their sharp teeth. Aside from those, I saw a fairy that shape-shifted to an ermitanyo. I also saw two tiny mermaids. The appearance of the ermitanyo was affirmed by my co-rider Peter.

Of the animals that I saw, I remember Butterfly, Eagle, Phoenix, Wolf, Bear, and Dragon. I’m not sure whether Phoenix and Dragon can be included among power animals because they are both mythical creatures.

[Tony’s note: They can, and they are.]

I was given no power objects during the entire ride.

I spent most of the time wondering what would manifest next. I should also mention that the images from the shamanic journeying were nothing compared to the images I received when I was trying to contact the spirit of my brother Luke.

From Edie:

“At the start of our journey, while we were waiting for our canoe to take off, I was really excited to experience the fun, thrill, and, of course, the journey of a lifetime. The drum began to beat its rhythm.

“As usual, I had a hard time relaxing myself or putting myself in the state of alpha especially when I’m so tired. Well, that’s the irony there. The fact that I’m so tired, I should easily get myself to that state.

“When I felt that I was almost in alpha, we plunged into the tree hole, and our journey began.

“At the same instant I got carried away and wasn’t able to follow my companions because I lost concentration. So, I forced myself to stay calm, relax, and go once more to alpha. When I was finally able to do this I began to feel so sleepy. I hadn’t slept the previous night because I had to prepare for my thesis, papers, reports, and tests.

“I was fighting my way through my sleepiness. I was at least able to hold back the sleepy feeling and was able to visualize ourselves in the canoe with myself sitting behind Peter and with Pam up in front.

“We found ourselves riding through the tree’s trunk, or body, or one of its branches, and we were hurtling through it like a roller coaster.

“I saw something that greeted us, it looked like a turtle man or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

“Then, finally, we ended up in a swamp. I saw that the swamp was surrounded with mangrove trees and dense forests on the right side. I saw various animals like Snake, Crocodile, and, again, Turtle, this time as a real animal.

“Sleepiness disrupted these images again. I felt really sleepy and spent almost the rest of the drum tape fighting off my sleepiness.”

From Peter:

“The Tree: We had to choose a tree with a hole in it for our shamanic journey.

“We went to William Shaw Theatre, to Saint Joseph (SJ) Walk in front of the college canteen, between SJ Building and the basketball court. We finally found a tree to our liking behind Velasco Building, near the playing field. The hole in the tree was located in its trunk. It faced east (towards Velasco Building and away from the playing field).

“The Journey: We hovered outside the hole for some time. After this, we went inside the tree, and there was total darkness. I thought we had an early start. It did not take long before I saw figures. They were of people who seemed to be welcoming us. I would describe thei5r faces as looking very creased and old. Yet, it seemed to me that were all actually still young for the kind of race that they belonged to, and for the kind of beings that they were. All of them were smiling. I imagined that, since we would pass this way again on our way back, they would still be there, waiting for us, and might even be so pleased with us that they would give us power objects. They offered us food and other items. As we had been instructed, I took none of the food. I was not really sure whether they were offering us power objects or simply carrying items that they used as part of their daily routine.

“After a while we glided past them, and we were in darkness again. We were traveling through a place that I couldn’t fully visualize, but everything felt “icky” and “gooey”. When we heard the callback a little later, we turned back. We traveled upside down, and very fast. Afterwards I saw that we were hovering outside the tree once again.

“Commonalities: When Pam, Edie, and I discussed our journey, we learned that we had seen things in common. For example, Pam and I saw the old man who had lots of facial hair. The “gooey” stuff that I sensed was also sensed by Edie. Edie later said that, in the middle of our journey, we were traveling through a swamp.

“Differences: I also found out that I had failed to see a lot of other things. For example, the fairy that Pam saw, and the animals that both Pam and Edie saw (Turtle, Dragon, Crocodile).

“The turning back of our canoe was also different for me since I perceived that we went back in an upside down position, while both of them claimed that the canoe turned clockwise oj our return.”

That was the penultimate meeting of SHAMANS that term, the forthcoming week being finals week.

Quite appropriately, that was the same night that the Luzon blackout occurred, and right in the middle of the class. From where we were, we heard students screaming inside their classrooms on the second, third, and fourth floors of the building. I saw, through the windows, that the rest of the city was cloaked in darkness.

I was surprised but delighted that the SHAMANS class remained quiet and stayed in their seats. When I complimented them on this, they replied that they had gotten so accustomed to holding class in total darkness that a blackout was no big deal to them.

I requested the students to turn in reflection papers on our next and last meeting, before we all disbanded.

Mayet wrote:

“I have always wondered how far I could go in understanding myself. I have tried, many times, to focus on the things that happened and are happening in my life. More often than not, I find myself all the more confused.

“I had mentioned before that, when I was a child, I was always fascinated with the unknown. I loved watching movies and TV shows about the paranormal and the supernatural. I believed, as I still believe now, that there exists a world that is not different from ours, but that this world arouses fear within us.

“I never imagined that I would be able to realize this fear, much more, overcome it.

“At first I wasn’t really sure what this class would be all about. I signed up to it to complete my scheduled units this term, and it happened to be the only ‘floating’ class that didn’t conflict with my major subjects.

“I thought that this class would be like any of the other classes that the university offered, I found out that it was NOT.

“The first meeting was a scary one. I got scared of Mr. Perez the first time I saw him. I thought he was not easy to get along with. (I had been traumatized by a teacher when I was in grade school.) But then I came to realize, as the class progressed, that he is a kind-hearted person and that he wants us, through his class, to practice kindness and experience love in a most unusual way. He taught us how to achieve total relaxation, something I could not do before, among other things. But, most of all, he taught me how to understand myself. I learned how to open up and get through to my innermost self, and that was the moment in which I knew that I had made the right decision in taking this class. I also knew that, somehow, I would be able to find answers and solutions to my problems.

“The succeeding meetings made the class even more interesting, because the exercises were designed to heighten awareness of the psyche. I soon discovered that I had more psychic abilities than I ever thought. I gained a fuller understanding of my inner self and all of the struggles that I had to go through.

“I must admit that, during the first few lessons, I remained scared, even if I knew, at the same time, that this was what I had always wanted. I have had quite a few nightmares, but these negative experiences soon came to an end right after our spirit quest. Of course, all of the lectures and exercises would not have proven to be effective without the practicum, right? So there I was, together with some classmates and two Questors, ready to take a peek into the unknown.

“I ever imagined that I would experience fear, anger, joy, confusion, and peace all on the same night. It was an exhausting journey, but a fulfilling one, for me. A journey so replete with emotions that it left me speechless afterwards.

“This journey has also made me a stronger person. It made me focus on inner strengths which I thought I never had. I have also come to appreciate myself more, and have come to see people as people, and to accept them for what they are. Did I tell you that I have also gained friends? Because of this class, my outlook in like has changed—and this change is for the better.

“This class was, indeed, a part of my life cycle, a cycle that kept me moving on and not giving up, a cycle that helped me in my struggle a day at a time, a cycle that has made me overcome my fear.”

That night I asked the class whether any of them would like to join Pam and me for hot chocolate in Quezon City. Jing rode with Pam in her archer-green sports car, I with Edie in his car. We drove Oscar to his residence, which was located a short distance from campus, so that he could bring his car.

The traffic was heavy and all the lights were out, but we preferred to while away the hours on the streets rather than in the prospective semi-darkness of our homes. I could not help commenting aloud to Edie that everyone who volunteered to meet up with us that night, except Peter, had lost someone in some way: Edie his 17-year-old brother, Jing his father, who died when he was 13, and Oscar his girlfriend whom he had recently broken up with. I myself lost my elder adopted son Nelson, who died of a second heart attack in March of 1998. And, of cours, Pam’s brother Luke died in a car accident last month.

Peter caught up with us after picking up his girlfriend Shiela and two female friends.

Pam brought me home that night. I was hoping that the lights would be on by the time I got home.

No such luck. The power in Cubao was restored 2:00 AM.

Friday, December 17, we held the last meeting of SHAMANS at DLSU. Pam came in late that evening, barely in time to catch the second half of a group bonding exercise. After many warm goodbyes, Ibba’s and Jing’s announcement of a SHAMANS Web site, and several rounds of picture taking, the class finally broke up.

Pam, Jing, and I stopped at Burger King on E. Rodriguez for a light supper. For us there would be no goodbyes, since a long series of training sessions and quests lay ahead of us.

Pam dropped off his course reflection paper in my apartment towards midnight Sunday, December 19. We were to go on a congregate quest on Pasong Tamo, Makati, Monday, December 20, after which he would leave for Urdaneta at dawn Tuesday, December 21, for the Christmas holiday.

Back in high school I would always hind my father and brothers reading the Spirit Quest reports in the Sunday edition of The Philippine Star. I would impatiently wait for my turn to read the paper. In it I would follow the adventures of the Spirit Questors, a group of young, psychic volunteers who help other people resolve different kinds of problems involving beings from the astral plane. All of their adventures, to me, were adventures into the unknown. Like other readers I would dream of being one of the Questors. But, as in all daydreams, these thoughts came and went, and I entertained them only on Sundays.

I didn’t know then that the Questors, particularly their leader, would make the most dramatic and significant change in my life, one that, for me, involves a life-long adventure.

The years passed, and I quickly forgot about the Questors. Then, one day, my elder sister brought home a book titled The Spirit Quest Chronicles by Ruel S. De Vera. I read the book and I realized that an old dream came back, stronger than ever. More importantly, however, I discovered that their leader would be teaching a class on North American Indian shamanism at DLSU. I knew that shamans are some kind of native magicians. I thought that joining the class could be a stepping stone to joining the Questors and developing my psychic powers.

This second term of the ’99 – ’00 school year in DLSU has been the fastest. The SHAMANS class was held every Friday at 6:00 PM. I was always excited to be in class, to the point that I waited with much boredom for the other days of the week to pass by. No week would be complete without SHAMANS. And, every session contained mysteries waiting to be discovered.

I envy most of my classmates in SHAMANS. They experience a lot of manifestations from the astral plane. They heard, felt, saw, and conversed with astral beings. They encountered many experiences, I, merely a few. But those few were enough to make me a complete believer.

My first real experience was in psychic hearing. After the Tibetan singing bowl (that produces the most relaxing music I have ever heard) exercise we joined hands to try and access our psychic hearing. First I heard the traffic sounds outside the school. Then Tony told us to go farther along Taft and listen to the noise of the jeepneys. The noise I heard from the traffic came from a lot of jeepneys passing in different lanes. I heard them accelerating, braking, their horns honking. I am certain that what I heard didn’t come from right outside the school. The traffic in front of DLSU at 8:00 at night is not that congested and noisy. I know that the traffic I heard came from much farther, from outside Robinson’s Place.

I was very excited doing the yuwipi exercise. We were made to lie down on the floor with our eyes blindfolded and our hands and feet tied. First I heard footsteps going round behind me. I felt that whatever the being was, it was curious and observing what was happening to me. Then I heard chairs being moved. The first time, I heard only one chair. The second time, two. The third and last time, three.

My next experience was in a spirit quest held inside a DLSU classroom. We encountered two human spirits and one playful elemental. The elemental was the being I truly appreciated during this quest. I heard it laugh a few seconds. Its laugh was scary. It sounded exactly like the laugh of Dracula in B movies. It laughed in a very low tone, and it sounded demonic.

Unfortunately my companions chose one of the human spirits to converse with on this quest. Because I could not sense it, I had the misfortune to merely sit there bored, listening to my classmates communicate with it. Had I the choice to go back to that night again, I think that I would join, instead, one of the other groups. One of the circles had the luck of contacting an angel. The angel preached about love.

The last exercise was in shamanic journeying. I encountered a lot of creatures, mythical and real. The mythical creatures were a fairy and mermaids, Dragon, and Phoenix. The real creatures were Bear, Rabbit, and Wolf. On this journey I spent half the time evading creatures who bared their fangs to me.

I should also mention that I was privileged to be invited to join a quest at Ateneo de Manila University. I didn’t know at first that my dream was being realized. I thought that Tony was inviting me to join a class in magic 7:30 PM on Saturday evening. I wondered why such a class would be starting so late. When I got there, I was surprised to see Questors gathering and waiting to be dispatched.

While waiting, Tony instructed Questor Roy to fully open my third eye. We went into a room where Roy led me through the Tower of Light exercise. Then he told me to imagine the colors of the rainbow illuminating my body. Then he told me to visualize my third eye opening. I can honestly say that I felt it opening. It was like opening your eyes, only it took a lot slower, and it did not feel as heavy. After that Roy took me out into the corridor and asked me to tell him what I could see. I saw a floating silhouette and the white, upper curve of a head. The white curve was about three feet above the ground. It was “running” around, as though it was playing hide-and-seek with me. Roy affirmed all that I saw.

SHAMANS gave me the opportunity to learn ways of the Native North Americans. They have a more advanced culture that is rich in magic and stories of truth than I previously thought it to be. I hope that their ways will always be preserved and their heritage protected.

My invitation to become a trainee gave new meaning to the word “commitment” to me.

Because, it was here that I suddenly realized for the first time in my life, what I really want.

This course was supposed to awaken me to a new realm and make me a Questor, but what it really gave me are a family and an endless journey of love and service.

Pam would be training with the Questors then on, reserving her Saturday nights, sometimes even her Friday nights, for our regular meetings at Ateneo’s Department of Communication and joining us on quests. While both of us desired that she be a channel as soon as possible, it was difficult for both of us to schedule full training sessions. My workload peaked as the holiday season drew near. I also discovered that though Pam had already obtained Brent’s, Loida’s, and Jason’s approval to join the Questors, Brent had somehow become extremely protective over his remaining children and would not allow either one of them to be involved in activities that entailed their staying away from home overnight. As such the “Fright Night”—an overnight training session designed to open the third eye of new trainees and introduce them to the concept of channeling and facilitating—that we had planned to hold Sunday, January 9, 1999, at a Questor’s rest house in San Mateo had to be cancelled. I had also planned to take Pam with a team that I put together for a quest to be held in two private residences in Tarlac, involving a Chinese matriarch who had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, the night of Saturday, December 18. Since that would be an overnight quest, Brent disallowed her from coming with us.

I instructed Pam to stay home Saturday, December 18, since I would not be there for her for either a training session or a quest. She however insisted that her Saturday night would not be complete without a quest activity, and so hounded me until I finally, but reluctantly, gave her permission to proceed to Ateneo’s Department of Communication to join one of the teams that were to be dispatched that evening. I was, by that time, in an L-300 with Eloisa S. (an Ateneo Legal Management graduate and the Questors’ assistant adviser), senior Questor Mikah T. (an Ateneo Management enginerring graduate who was also auditing my Design and Management of Training Programs class), Sheila, Rita, George, Jon, and Wesley V. (an Ateneo senior high school student). We returned to Manila noontime the following day.

Pam did not do too badly the evening of Saturday, December 18, 1999. She joined up with a team that worked on the case of a haunted bar in Sampaloc, Manila. She was able to activate her psychic senses that night. However, she also experienced “real fear”. Unfortunately I was in Tarlac and not there to help her handle it.

As a matter of fact I did not see Pam all of that weekend. It felt strange to me that the SHAMANS terms was truly over and that I was not meeting, and would no longer be meeting, the class on Friday evenings. (I should note here, however, that Edie joined the Questors in February 2000, Art in March 2000).

Pam went back to DLSU Monday, December 20, 1999, to take her last exam for the term. That was the day we would meet up for the quest on Pasong Tamo. She would flunk a Microeconomics course because she had been unable to study for its finals due to Luke’s death and funeral.

The Pasong Tamo quest had been scheduled that evening, and Pam was supposed to pick me up at my apartment after her exam. Fifteen Questors, including myself, were to meet up 6:30 PM at the west entrance to Fiesta Carnival, in Araneta Commercial Center, and proceed to an international interior design company on Pasong Tamo, Makati. Ed B., general manager of its Philippine office, had called me a week ago to inform me that they were in the process of moving from their former location on Buendia to an old warehouse on Pasong Tamo, and that their new quarters were currently being renovated. The old warehouse that they were moving into had remained untenanted for the past two years. Now that they had leased it, a series of unexplainable events transpired. Employees and security guards reported that they could hear “strange, banging sounds” and “the sounds of tools being thrown about” at night. A series of work-related accidents occurred. One of the construction workers had almost lost a finger. And, most tragic of all, a young construction worker had fallen from the skylight and died.

Ed toured us through the warehouse, which looked like a giant hangar, upon our arrival. He showed us the spot on the concrete floor where the construction worker had fallen from the skylight. He brought us through the stock area where the “sounds” in question had been heard, and where I sensed a very strong, negative presence which both Questor Chad and Tommy affirmed. I intuitively knew that a high-ranking elemental had taken up residence there and resented the office’s taking over the compound.

I divided up the Questors into three teams: the first would be located in the stock room and converse with the high-ranking elemental, the second with either Ed’s or the office’s spirit guide via the Ouija board in the manager’s mezzanine, and the third with the spirit of the departed construction worker. I assigned Chad to the stock room, Tommy to the mezzanine, and myself to that part of the warehouse where the construction worker had fallen. I asked Chad and Tommy to choose their team members. I took with me Pam, PJ, Maricris, and Kit.

I requested that all of the lights in the warehouse be turned off. I also asked that the security guards slide shut the giant steel doors at the entrance. I waited for Chad’s team to settle down at the farthest corner of the stock area, and for Tommy’s on the mezzanine.

Pam, PJ, Maricris, Kit, and I formed a circle on the concrete floor, under one of the skylights, where the construction worker had fallen. PJ and Maricris alternated as channels.

We sensed the presence of the construction worker. He was not covered with blood, but he was shrouded in darkness. He was earth-bound. Although he responded to our call by materializing in the deeper shadows near the steel staircase that led to the mezzanine, we had difficulty getting through to him because he was surrounded by many, black elementals that kept screaming for our attention. I had to get the elementals out of the way by sending them over to Chad in the stock area.

Even with the elementals gone, the construction worker just stood there impassively, at a distance from our circle. He was plainly disinterested in us. He realized that he had passed away but it seemed that it was no big deal to him. He had a family “somewhere in Manila” that he used to go home to everyday, but he did not know how to get there now, in the state he was in.

“Ask for his name,” I requested PJ.

“The letter R. Raffy,” PJ replied. He pronounced it the way the spirit did—“Rappy”—as Tagalog speakers have the tendency to omit the “f” sound.

“Rafael,” Maricris stated.

I sent Kit to leave our circle and mosey over to the stock area, where Ed was, and ask him for the construction worker’s name. We waited. When Kit came back, he said, “Rafael Hifana.”

We did an introduction round in Tagalog. I explained to Rafael, to the best of my ability, what we were doing, in a way that he would easily understand. We also tried to impart to him our concept of “moving on”, and of “the light”. We encountered one problem: Rafael did not believe in God. We had to do one round of emotional truth, relating to him our personal experiences of faith and the presence of God in our lives. He was visibly touched by our sharing, especially by the love that we extended to him. Yet, he was unable to visualize “the light” and move towards it. In the end, all we could extract from him was the promise to “move on” whenever he was ready to.

We congregated on the mezzanine half an hour later.

Chad reported on his team’s quest results: they had conversed with a young but powerful earth-and-fire elemental that had been responsible for the series of accidents and the manifestations on the site. When asked whether it caused the construction worker to fall through the skylight, he replied that it did so by leading the worker to believe that the structure would bear his weight.

During this team’s quest, metal objects on the shelves shifted of themselves and made clanking sounds. I recall one, loud, banging sound that my team heard from where we sat during our conversation with Rafael.

Chad and his team were able to negotiate with the earth-and-fire elemental. The compromise was surprisingly simple: the elemental and its minions would desist from bothering the humans in exchange for a symbolic acknowledgement of its “ownership” of the lot, a small table with offerings and a lit red candle, to be set up in a corner of the warehouse.

George reported on his team’s quest results on the Ouija board. The spirit guide they had been able to access was not Ed’s but the company’s. It provided several guidelines and precautions that Ed and his employees were to heed within the following months. I affirmed these by reading cards for Ed.

After we had done with the three reports, we all went down and out of the warehouse. Ed introduced me to two representatives of the international interior design company’s Singapore office. They had hoped to join us, had arrived late, but were nonetheless eager to know what happened. I asked the channels to give them summaries of our quest results.

The Singaporeans invited us all out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant. They continued chatting with the channels. They asked me whether it would be a good idea to fly in a Singaporean medium to check out the warehouse, but I advised them to first observe any changes, as a result of our negotiations, over the next two weeks.

I would meet Ed once again the morning of Saturday, April 11—almost five months after the Pasong Tamo quest—at the Katipunan branch of National Book Store. He would tell me that all of the manifestations had ceased and that their company was doing much better on Pasong Tamp than it had been on Buendia. The Singaporeans never flew their medium to the Philippines. It is interesting to note, however, that the medium recommended that “a red light on a lotus flower” be placed in a corner of the warehouse. Ed and I both smiled, recalling the “lit red candle” that the earth-and-fire elemental had recommended, through Chad, on the night of our three quests.

Ed drove Chad, George, and me to Cubao, and Pam to the Fiesta Carnival building where she had parked her archer-green sports car. It was 2:00 AM Tuesday, December 21. Pam would be leaving with her family for Urdaneta in two hours.

I recall little of the period covering December 21 – 27, all seven days that Pam was not in Manila. All I recall is that I text-messaged her on the morning of December 21: “Please place a flower in Luke’s grave for me.”

And, that night, she texted me back that she had done as I had asked.

Three nights later I dreamt that I was standing in the dark as I was on the evening of December 20, the massive hulk of Araneta Coliseum skulking behind me and the gaudily-bedecked Fiesta Carnival building flashing its colored lights at me, thinking what I should do next, as scores of holiday strangers passed me by.

In my dream I saw, once again, Luke. He walked up to me from the south side of the coliseum, in a sleek, black suit. He smiled at me. And then he gave me a white flower.

The following morning I text-messaged Pam and told her about my dream, and I asked her whether the color of the flower that she had placed on Luke’s grave for me was white.

She text-messaged back: “The flower was white.”

We were then both under the impression that her family would return from Urdaneta Thursday, December 30, Bonifacio Day, in time for the Millennium celebrations. I set a post-Christmas, pre-New Year lunch date with Pam and Ella at Tibreizh, a crepes restaurant outside Ateneo’s Gate 3, on Katipunan Avenue, so that Ella could read cards from her light deck and her dark deck, both of which I had given her, not only for Pam but for Luke.

At 8:00 PM Tuesday, December 28, however, I received a text message from Pam that read: “I am on my way home to Manila.” She was with Brent. They had left Urdaneta ahead of Loida and Jason, who would remain in Pangasinan over the next two days.

Pam discovered, upon arriving at Heroes Hills, that she had accidentally been locked out of her bedroom, and so she spent the night at a cousin’s dormitory in Quezon City. She had planned to visit their doctor the next day, Wednesday, December 2i9, in order to be treated for her sinusitis. The visit, however, did not materialize, because it turned out that the doctor was out of the country for the holidays.

Brent and Loida had requested me to check out Tonga, their family bar and restaurant in Antipolo. According to them, employees and diners had been attesting to several ghostly manifestations, particularly near the rest rooms on its upper floor. Brent and Loida informed me, in addition, that the bar and restaurant was not doing well and that, perhaps, we could scan the place to see the reason behind this. Although they had requested this as early as the first day of Luke’s wake, when I had a long talk with them, we scheduled the actual quest Saturday, January 8, 2000. Pam and I agreed that Ella would channel on this quest.

Pam picked me up at home on the morning of Thursday, December 30. We then picked up Ella at her house on Oxford Streeet, Cubao, and proceeded to Tibreizh. Pam mentioned to us, after we had ordered lunch, that she had somehow developed an obsession with dragons.

Wendy B., one of the restaurant’s four managers and a singer of the rock band Spindrift, introduced herself to us and informed us that she had recently discussed with Eloisa and Mikah, who were regular customers, the possibility of holding oracle readings by the Questors on a regular basis. The readings would be held on the upper floor of the restaurant Saturday nights from 7:00 PM through 2:00 AM. We agreed that the Questors would commence doing this January 8, the second Saturday in the year 2000.

Wendy watched Ella read cards for Pam. I noted that guilt feelings figured prominently in Pam’s cards but I did not voice out my observation.

While we were having lunch, a man named Jojo G. called me on my cell phone to schedule a quest for his brother, who had “just passed away.” He requested that the quest be held either that night of the day after, since he was leaving soon for the Middle East, where he worked. The earliest date that I could set, however, was Sunday, January 2, since I doubted that I could put together a team willing to work Bonifacio Day, a holiday, or the following day, which was New Year’s Eve.

Jojo immediately settled for the proposed date, saying that his mother and his sister-in-law would be at their residence, on V. Mapa, in Manila, to receive our team. For that particular quest I would have Pam, Rita, George, and Wesley.

Pam and I then brought Ella to their family reunion in Fort Bonifacio after lunch, before Pam drove me home.

Friday, December 31, 1999. New Year’s Eve. While all of Manila hurried off to “places to be seen in” to celebrate the Millennium that night I decided to stay home with my family. I had told Denia Claret, an aura reader, in a phone conversation last week, that I would do this “to counterbalance” the excess of festivities.

I lit a wishing candle in my bedroom that night. Only Tommy and Jon bothered to text-message their own wishes. I received many text messages from former Questors and students. The last text message I received that night was at 12:00 midnight, from Pam. It read, HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Pam picked me up after lunch Saturday, January 2, as we previously agreed. We spent the early part of the afternoon searching for a Globe card for her cell phone. Rita, George, and Wesley met up with us later at Wendy’s. We walked to the basement parking lot of aurora Tower, where Pam had parked her archer-green sports car, and proceeded to negotiate the holiday traffic, once again, to V. Mapa.

By the time we arrived Jojo had left the country, as he had indicated on the cell phone, for the Middle east. We were met by his mother, Lolita, and his sister-in-law, Criscel, whose baby girl, Alyssa Joy, was merely three months and a week old when her father died. Lolita informed us that they had been referred to the Questors by a cousin, Nanette G., who had been one of our agents two years ago.

Inside the apartment Lolita showed us a portrait of her departed son, Bobot—who worked as Presidential Staff Officer VI at the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Northern Luzon, as indicated on his calling card—which had been set up with flower and candle offerings on an altar. Bobot was 26.

He was one of the fatalities of the Asian Spirit aircraft that crashed the morning of December 7.

Lolita and Criscel showed us two albums of news clippings and photographs they had put together on their own. According to the clippings, the twin-engine aircraft took off from Manila 8:35 AM under a steady drizzle and an overcast sky. Its pilot, Captain Rolando S., 47, himself the Vice-President for Operations of Asian Spirit, made his last radio contact 9:20 AM while approximately 95 kilometers north of Manila. He contacted the Bagabag Domestic Airport and requested clearance for an emergency landing at the airport, but never arrived.

Bobot and his best friend, Warner U., were in the one-hour flight to Cauayan Airport in Isabela, approximately 280 kilometers to the north. They were both staff members of Maria Angela C., former Quirino representative and now Presidential Assistant for Northern Luzon. They were going to check out an important dam project.

The news reports also indicated that when Captain S. last conversed with traffic controllers, he reported nothing unusual regarding the condition of his plane. The Philippine Air Force dispatched two UH-1H Huey helicopters to search for the missing aircraft in Cauayan. The wreckage was found by the Army’s 54th Infantry Battalion, which maintains a detachment approximately nine kilometers from the crash site, the Philippine Air Force, the Air Transportation Office, and Asian Spirit personnel in Barangay Didipio, Sitio Pimadic, Kasibo, Nueva Vizcaya. The site was approximately 40 nautical miles south of the Cauayan Airport.

A news item in The Philippine Star dated December 9 indicates that the plane was cruising at 9,000 feet when it suddenly made an abrupt descent and slammed into the side of Mount Mamparang, between the Caraballo and Sierra Madre mountain ranges. Investigators theorized that the pilot might have seen a break in the clouds and decided to go through it, apparently thinking that visibility was better at a lower altitude, but only to find out that it was even darker under the thick clouds.

All of the bodies—except one, Bobot’s—were found near the wreckage, in Sitio Pimmandec, Barangay Didipio, Kasibu town. A host of volunteers was recruited to bring them down to the mountainside in the rain, and this took several days.

The bodies were to be taken to a townhouse in Balabag for air transport to Manila but were held in Cabarroguis town, Quirino, until the weather cleared up. Relatives of the victims were then advised to proceed to Asian Spirit’s office at the Delta Hangar at Manila Domestic Airport in Pasay City to identify the remains.

Lolita had prepared a list of mystifying questions that she wanted us to answer. All of the passengers’ bodies, for instance, had been completely burned and decapitated, except for Bobot’s, which was intact and bore no burns. When the volunteers came upon his corpse, it was sprawled some distance away from the others. It also appeared that he had taken off his leather jacket and wrapped it around his portfolio, which, even as he died, he held close to his chest. Furthermore, Bobot, who was a huge man, weighed 281 pounds when he was alive, yet his corpse weighed all of 500 pounds.

Since the day he died Lolita and Criscel would hear Bobot’s distinctive knock on the front door late at night, as though he had just come home from work. They would also hear his movements and footsteps on the second floor whenever they themselves were on the ground floor. Moreover, they would hear him sobbing inside his bedroom.

Lolita seemed resentful that Bobot’s supervisors and coworkers offered her little sympathy and assistance during her time of grief, considering that her son had successfully managed several major projects, had always been hard-working, and had remained loyal to their organization. “They were interested only in the portfolio that he managed to save from destruction,” she said. She reminisced how Bobot had always been proud of the fact that he was “a clean employee” after all his years of service, and had no intention of “making himself rich”. Now Lolita was upset because, in addition to the cessation of his salary, which she relied on to cover her family’s main expenses, his office sent her none of her son’s death benefits.

I took Bobot’s portrait from the altar, held my left palm over it, and determined that his spirit was still earth-bound. I passed the portrait on to Pam, Rita, George, and Wesley. Rita and George affirmed the same.

Pam disclosed to me that, as soon as she entered the apartment and sat in one of the chairs, she saw Bobot standing on the staircase and looking at us in the sitting area. This piqued my interest. It seemed to indicate that Bobot wanted Pam to function as the primary channel on this quest. Pam said to me, however, that she did not yet feel confident enough to do that.

We went upstairs to Bobot’s room and formed a circle on the wooden floor. I assigned Rita as primary channel and Wesley as facilitator. Aside from Rita, George, Lolita, and Criscel, we had with us a woman named Anita (a family friend of the G.s), Grace (Warner’s widow), and a woman named Aida (Grace’s companion). I sat outside the circle, near the door, drawing cards from my deck under a portable, clip-on, reading light.

We invited Bobot to converse with us. Rita saw him dressed in a barong Tagalog, and covered with blood. Indeed, he was still earth-bound. He could not accept the fact that he had died in a plane crash. He was continually worried about his wife and baby daughter. He felt guilty for having brought his best friend, Warner, with him.

I asked Rita to travel astrally through time. She went inside the aircraft and narrated what she could see happening inside. She saw Bobot walking up to the cockpit. He was chummy with the pilot and co-pilot. He was holding a map. He maintained presence of mind all throughout the disaster. When the crash occurred he even saw what Rita simply described as “a big piece of metal” falling on Warner’s head, fracturing his skull and instantly killing him. Bobot leapt through “a hole” in the fuselage as the plane passed over the trees, but the distance to the ground was too great. He lived at least an hour, lying on the ground, semi-conscious and in pain.

Understandably, Lolita and Criscel were very emotional during this quest. Neither one of them wanted to “let go”. They themselves could not accept the man’s fate, and this did not help his spirit any. We were simply able to suggest that he “move on” as soon as he felt that he was ready to do so.

We were able to determine that Warner was not earth-bound, and that he had “moved on” immediately. Although Grace seemed visibly relieve about this, she would call me a few days later and ask that a quest be scheduled in her house. Bobot asked her forgiveness for his not having taken proper care of his best friend. Grace articulated the forgiveness he requested and told him not to worry about it any longer. Before we ended the quest, Bobot gave individual messages not only to everyone in the circle but to members of the family who were not present.

We all went down again to the sitting area. Lolita had further questions about business and financial matters, and about specific individuals in Bobot’s life. I lent Rita my cards so that she could read a spread for Criscel.

Pam, Rita, George, Wesley, and I had supper in a Chinese fast-food store on Morato before going home. Rita disclosed to me, aside, that she had seen Luke’s spirit, more than once, wandering near the San Colts Seminary, in Guadalupe Viejo, on EDSA. She had recognized Luke from the photos that were placed on his coffin. I asked Rita to inform Pam about this on our way home. She did so. She would herself channel Luke’s spirit the evening of Sunday, January 20, 2000.

Saturday, January 8, was a painfully long day for me. After my usual, morning class at Maryhill and afternoon and evening classes at Ateneo’s Department of Communication, the Eyewitness crew descended on me and the Questors to shoot a television feature on New Age activities for their program. The shoot ended 10:30 PM. By then, Eloisa had dispatched all the teams to their designated agents, except for mine, which included Pam, Ella, Maricris, and Jeric P. We were scheduled to check out Tonga, Brent’s bar and restaurant in Antipolo, that night. I was getting antsy because Brent, Loida, and Jason had been there since 8:00 PM, anticipating our 9:00 PM arrival. Pam was constantly on the cell phone with them. I was overjoyed when the TV crew finally packed up. After herding out everyone, I locked the building doors as quickly as possible.

We arrived at Tonga 11:30 PM. I apologized profusely to Brent and Loida for the big delay, and they were very gracious about it. I learned that Pam’s 15-year-old first cousin, Colt, one of Colt;’s elder sisters, and a female friend had been waiting with Brent, Loida, and Jason for us. I also learned that Colt, a sophomore at Ateneo High School and a varsity volleyball athlete, was the young man sitting beside Luke in the rear passenger seat during the accident in which he died last November. Loida informed me that Colt’s third eye had been open ever since he was a child, but, due to night terrors, his parents hired an albularyo to close it. I suddenly felt, for some reason, that I would be responsible for opening Colt’s third eye once again in the future, but, I thought, I would not do it without his permission.

We held two quests inside the manager’s office at Tonga that night: one channeled by Ella and accessing Brent’s unconscious, since Brent, who did not wish to join us, was in the adjoining eating area on the upper floor; the other channeled by Maricris, involving a spirit of a young, rape victim that frequented the vicinity and that we were finally able to assist in “moving on”.

That night Chad and Judith were dispatched on a team to visit Grace at the U.’s condominium unit in Santa Cruz, Manila, to converse with Warner’s spirit.

Earlier that week, after I had scheduled the session for Grace, Criscel called me up on my cell phone to book a return quest for Bobot before the 40th day following his demise. The earliest slot I could find for this was the afternoon of Friday, January 14.

Again, Pam was available for this quest. Again, I hoped that she would be able to function as one of the channels, if not the primary channe3l, on this quest.

I text-messaged Eloisa over the week and informed her that I needed Questors for a second session at the G. residence. I asked for Michael and for Judith, who was in the quest held for Grace last weekend. Eloisa got back to me and said that both of them would proceed directly to the G. residence from their workplaces.

Pam and I met up as usual 5:20 PM—after her last class for the day at DLSU—at the Bank of Philippine Islands (BPI) branch on the corner of Taft and Vito Cruz. I gave her, as a birthday gift in advance, her first two tarot decks, a light one and a dark one. I asked her to consider the light deck a gift from Luke, the dark one, a gift from me. After a snack at Wendy’s we proceeded, through the rush-hour traffic, to V. Mapa.

Neither Michael nor Judith had arrived when we got there. We waited half an hour. I thought that Pam would be compelled to channel on this quest, whether she liked it or not, and I wondered if she was not thinking the same. When we entered the apartment, she saw Bobot’s spirit, once again, standing on the staircase and looking at us in the sitting area. She also disclosed to me, later, that before she sat down in one of the chairs “a bright entity” rushed into her body and made her “feel dizzy”.

I felt very strongly that, as in our previous visit, Bobot wanted Pam to channel his spirit during this quest. Before I could announce to the group, which included Lolita, Criscel, and, this time around, Nanette G. herself, that we had no choice but to proceed upstairs and that Pam would function as channel and I as facilitator, Judith arrived, accompanied by her teenage niece. Michael materialized at the front doorway soon after.

We noticed that a tape loop with a soothing, Buddhist chant on it was playing on the altar in the living area, and I wondered, aloud, if the family was Chinese. Lolita and Criscel explained that Grace had acquired two tape loops at a Buddhist temple, kept one for herself, and gave the other to them.

We went upstairs to Bobot’s and Criscel’s bedroom, which was familiar to Pam and to me by now. We formed a circle, as before, on the floor. Judith reported to us what had transpired during the U. quest in Santa Cruz last Saturday. She said that they held the quest mainly to affirm that Warner had, indeed, already “mov4ed on”, and that he conversed with them to impart his final messages to his loved ones.

Our quest took time, and it rambled. Like the first, it was an emotional one, particularly on the part of Lolita and Criscel. Lolita remained concerned with their financial situation, with having to provide for the family, and with the insurance company’s giving her a fine runaround. Bobot remained concerned with Criscel and with the welfare of their baby daughter. Criscel was able, this time, to “let go” and ask Bobot to “move on”, pledging that she would be able to take care of their baby daughter all by herself. Bobot said, in response, that he would “move on very soon”, but that he desired to remain earth-bound for the time being and “look after things”.

Lolita served us a special supper on the eve of the departed’s 40th day. I asked Pam whether she sensed anything during the quest, but she said that she had seen, heard, and felt nothing. I thought that the presence of senior channels Michael and Judith might have contributed to the suppression of her psychic abilities. I made a mental note to take her on a quest in which the5re would be no senior channels, perhaps co-trainees only. I hoped that, wherever she was getting, she would be getting there soon. I knew that she was eagerly anticipating being able to converse with his brother Luke on a future quest.

Pam dropped me off at home and rushed to a 10:30 PM meeting with her cousins at a disco.

The Questors gathered once again in Ateneo’s Communication Building the evening of Saturday, January 15. Pam and Colt came in, having escaped from a family despedida in Xavierville. I asked Sheila to take Colt inside the radio studio and try to fully re-open his third eye. She afterwards came to me and said that she was unsuccessful because Colt was still “unprepared”. I simply interpreted this to mean that he remained defensive due to residual fear that he still could not manage to get rid of. I brought him back into the radio studio and led him through three exercises designed to activate psychic vision. Half an hour later he was able to see my aura with the lights on and with the lights off. He was also able to see the outlines of two human spirits inside the room: one crouching against the wall adjoining my room, the other standing in one of the two doorways.

Eloisa dispatched six teams that night. I went with Pam, PJ, Maricris, and Colt to a unit deep within a high-rise cluster of studios rented by students enrolled at Ateneo’s Professional School at Rockwell Center. We picked up Joy S., a member of the Mages of The Dawn and our agent, at a nearby café. He escorted us to a basement unit being rented by his girlfriend, two female friends, and one male.

Three young men and three women were waiting for us inside the studio. Two of them offered to leave after I mentioned that there were too many of us to form an intimate circle. We were briefed on the case mainly by the young women. They had experienced manifestations such as hot and cold spots in different parts of the room at different times; physical, sometimes sexual, sensations; the movement of objects such as a bag and a cup of coffee by invisible hands, and the sound of sinister laughter. One of the young women pointed out that all these manifestations began soon after they admitted their latest roommate, a male student, whose financial contribution they needed but whom they knew very little of.

After Joy doused the lights PJ, Maricris, Pam, and I immediately felt dizzy. Pam was able to access one of the spirit guides of Joy’s girlfriend, who was seated directly across him. PJ, Maricris, and Joy alternately described out astral environment, and said that we were being surrounded by three tikbalangs (Philippine mythological creatures with the lower bodies of a horse or goat and pronounced male genitals, the torsos of a man, and the horned heads of a horse or goat) and their minions. One tikbalang—the leader of their pack, and whose energy was strongest—had been responsible for most of the manifestations inside the studio; it was attracted to one of the female roommates, and it simply enjoyed playing trickster. It argued with us in mental circles and enjoyed being difficult to negotiate with. Although Pam was already able to channel by this time, she kept silent for the most part and left much of the work to PJ and Maricris. She did, however, share with us that the pack leader’s head was “wolf-like” and that the new, male roommate, whom we were all waiting for but who had not yet arrived, was “from somewhere in the South, in Mindanao”.

The male roommate arrived in the middle of our quest. As soon as the door opened, the energy inside the room shifted. The pack leader zipped towards the male roommate’s aura as though drawn by a powerful magnet. The male roommate joined our circle, and I asked PJ, Maricris, and Pam to scan him. They stated that the male roommate practiced, or used to practice, black magic, was at present going through the process of letting go of a tragic relationship, and was being consumed by the desire for revenge. With a bashful grin but without batting an eyelash the male roommate admitted that all of this was true. He was, indeed. “from the South”, but was from “the Visayas” and not from “Mindanao”.

I built an astral tunnel between the studio and the television studio at Ateneo’s Department of Communication, and instructed the channels to invite the elementals to “move residence” from here to there. At first PJ declared that the bridge was not big enough, and so I had to reconstruct it.

After much hemming and hawing, the elementals agreed to move through the tunnel and try out the “change of place” I had proposed. The pack leader went first, not without asking PJ whether “the girls” on the other side would be prettier. As it was saying this, a picture of Ola S. (a University of the East Manila fourth-year Dentistry major and a trainee) momentarily crossed PJ’s mind, and he expressed some concern over this. I told him not to worry because Ola was capable of taking care of and protecting herself.

Joy turned the lights on again. I asked the agents to observe any changes within the next two weeks. However, in the backs of our minds, we all knew that, as long as the male roommate lived in the studio, the elementals that had gone would soon be replaced by others.

On our way back to the vehicles I remarked to Pam that, in a sense, our visit tonight was a déjà vu experience for me, since I had seen the studio, the staircase, and the hallway in a dream that I had three months ago. She looked at me with a strange expression on her face. She, too, had dreamt of this place on or about the same time that I had my dream, and claimed that, in her dream, she saw me and two others inside the studio. She remembered the studio in her dream quite vividly but had little recollection of the staircase and the hallway.

Pam and Colt drove me back to my apartment that night, after which they snuck back to their family despedida in Xavierville.

At 10:00 AM Tuesday, January18, I took a short break from work and sat with friends from other sections in the smoking pavilion. Since our cell phones have no signal inside the building, we turn them on whenever we are in the pavilion.

That particular morning a call from help came in from a Mrs. Mercy A., whose only child, an 18-year-old boy named Nonoy, had developed a one-day fever on New Year’s Day, suffered profuse nose-bleeding, and was rushed to hospital the following day. The boy died the night of January 3. His death certificate indicated the case of his demise as dengue fever.

Mercy mentioned on the phone that Nonoy had been a freshman at College of Saint Benilde, an institution that belongs to the DLSU System and is located right across the main campus, on Taft. I immediately thought of Pam. I text-messaged her the details of the case and asked if she was willing to channel on this one. She replied that she would try her best.

I scheduled an early evening quest on Friday, January 21, which Mercy immediately confirmed. On the night of Friday, January 14, I text-messaged Pam and proposed that we meet at 5:20 PM—again—on the afternoon of the 21st. I informed her that we would meet, as before, on the corner of Taft and Vito Cruz, and that I would ask co-Questors, whoever they would be, to proceed to the A. residence on A. Maceda, in Sampaloc. She text-messaged me back: Schedule OK.

The morning of Wednesday, January 19, Grace called me on my cell phone to inform me that she was able to obtain for me a tape loop with the Buddhist chant on it, exactly like the one that she had and like the one that she had given Criscel. I picked it up at her office after work that day. She informed me that the Buddhist chant on the tape loop was”LAM-U-OHMI-TOHUT” and that I should chant it, in my mind, while listening to it.

I set the tape player on the Chinese altar at my headboard that night and played it while drifting off to sleep, ensuring that only I and none of my family in the adjoining bedrooms would hear it.

That night I dreamt of a boy named Francis Heslet ( a jewelry agent), Frank Regis (a metaphysicist), and Frank Jenista (a former supervisor). I am all tied up inside a room, and all three of them are torturing me. In the end I am able to set myself free and I overcome them with water sprayed from a hose.

I entitled the dream, “The Franks”. I wondered, all of the following day, what it could ever mean. I finally interpreted it to mean that I was beginning to feel “tied up” with obligations and expectations in my waking life, that “the three Franks” represented frankincense, or the need for purification, and that I decided not to suffer through the ordeal, reverting, instead, to my emotions (the element water) as a defense mechanism.

Over the next two days I attempted to put together a group of Questors who could join us Friday evening on A. Maceda. While Eloisa and I were able to accomplish that for the quest last week, this time around we were unsuccessful in recruiting volunteers who were willing to travel all the way to Sampaloc from work or school on a Friday evening. Only on Friday morning did I realize that it would be just as well, since I thought that Pam had been intimidated from channeling, on previous quests, by the presence of co-Questors.

I met up with Pam at our designated time at Wendy’s on Taft. She was sitting on the pavement, waiting for me, with Oscar, whom I had not seen since our last meeting in SHAMANS. Over a quick snack on the second floor, Oscar told us that he was still recuperating from his break-up with his girlfriend. I invited him to come with us but he demurred.

Oscar escorted us to the parking lot on Vito Cruz and walked on home. Pam had parked her archer-green sports car, as I had instructed her to, in an isolated corner where no one would disturb us. I led her through three exercises designed to activate psychic intuition, using three different card decks.

I then guided Pam through two exercises in which she had to access, with her physical eyes closed, information that only I could see. She had parked her car at the foot of a tall building that was undergoing construction. I asked her to describe two construction workers: one on the seventh floor of the building, another on the ninth. She succeeded the first time only. I was not so satisfied, but I had to go with that.

The A. residence is on the second floor of the A. Beauty Salon, which is owned and operated by Ike and Mercy A.—Nonoy’s father and mother. Ike is a gay beautician who himself wears make-up, and most of his employees are flamboyantly gay. It was a setting and a situation that Pam did not expect.

Ike and Mercy led us to their small bedroom on the second floor of the building. They had shared this room with Nonoy, but had folded up his bed and rearranged the room right after his death. They showed us the most recent photos of the boy, including a ceramic plate with a snapshot taken in Hong Kong and his high school yearbook. He was just about Pam’s age.

Ike and Mercy conducted a briefing as we sat round a small side table that they had arranged at the foot of the bed and on which we placed Nonoy’s photos and a single, white candle on top of a plate. I located Pam across me, seating her at the foot of the bed, with Ike on her right and Mercy on her left. One of the gay beauticians, Thyrsus E., came up and asked if he could join us. I located him to my right, between Mercy and myself.

It was evident that all three agents were still very much in grief over the boy’s demise. Even Thyrsus had been very fond of him.

It was 9:00 PM. Pam lit the candle. Thyrsus switched off the ceiling light. We held hands.

“Do you sense him?” I asked.

“He’s walking round the circle.”

“Emotion?”

“He’s agitated.”

“Describe him.”

He was only partially able to. The boy’s face was up close to hers, but he could only see “an eye”, and that the eye “kept moving”. This was exactly how she had seen Luke the afternoon of Tuesday, November 30, on the corner of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue.

She asked me to snuff the candle, the brightness of which disturbed her. We tried to access the spirit during the hour that followed, eliciting messages for Nonoy not only from ourselves but from Ike, Mercy, and Thyrsus. The only information we could obtain, however, was that Nonoy realized that he had passed away, that he felt lost and in darkness, and that he was not ready to converse with us.

On our return trip from A. Maceda, Pam extracted a pledge from me: “No more grieving families for me,” she said. “Elementals, yes. As dark as they can get. Let them go after me, let them poke at me, let them tear out my hair, let them scratch my flesh. Give me astral battles, give me astral fights. But not more grieving families.”

I pledged as much. Because she is in grief herself, I thought.

She remained quiet the rest of the evening, up to the time that she dropped me off at home.

I attended my morning class at Maryhill the following day, Saturday, January 22, then went to Ateneo to conduct my afternoon and evening classes as usual. Pam arrived with Colt to be dispatched with the other Questors that evening.

I dispatched a small team composed of Chad, Neil, and Candice to visit Ike and Mercy at their beauty salon and try to resolve the situation that Pam and I had left uncompleted the previous night. They later reported that, as Pam experienced, it was not easy to get in touch with Nonoy’s spirit, but that they persisted and were able to assist it to “move on”.

I took Pam, Colt, PJ, Maricris, Kit, and Bhonny with me to a residence near the United Doctors Medical Center in Quezon City. Eugene C., the eldest in their family, had called me up in behalf of his parents to check out their duplex, which had been the site of a number of manifestations.

Eugene and his younger brother Bernard met us at the Shell station on the corner of E. Rod. and D. Tuazon. We convoyed to their compound.

The family met us in the living room. Eugene briefed us on the manifestations that the family members, including some of the children, experienced, which consisted mostly of mysterious figures walking up and down the main staircase, crossing the corridors, and going in and out of bedrooms. Eugene’s wife, Lidda, saw them not only in the waking state but in her dreams. Among the others who witnessed these things were Eugene’s eldest boy, one of Bernard’s children, and one of the C. family’s maids. It was clear to me that the household had members whose psychic vision was activated.

Eugene had also informed me that his father had lung cancer and was currently undergoing chemotherapy, and that his mother was recently operated on by one of his brothers, a surgeon, who discovered that a huge fishbone had inexplicably lodged itself inside her rectum. On top of everything, Eugene said, the family businesses were beginning to run low on funds.

After the briefing, Bernard took Pam and PJ through both houses on the compound to scan the area and determine where we would hold our circle. While they were doing this, Mrs. C. and Eugene took me aside to inform me that, recently, one of their maids, whom they liked because she was efficient, had begun talking to herself, behaving irrationally, and claiming that an elemental that lives in one of the trees had “befriended” her. This elemental, according to the maid, would ask her to do special favors for it.

Pam and PJ came back and reported their findings. The entities on the compound were composed of humans and elementals. Negative energy was strongest at the end of the corridor on the second floor of the main house—and in the maids’ room next to Eugene’s house.

I decided that we would hold two circles: in one, Pam would channel and I would facilitate, in the other, PJ would channel and Maricris and Kit would facilitate.

Pam, Edie, Bhonny, Bernard, the surgeon, a sister, Lidda, and I formed our circle inside the surgeon’s bedroom, at the end and to the left of the corridor on the upper floor of the main house; PJ, Maricris, Kit, Colt, and other members of the C. family formed theirs inside Eugene’s house, since the maid’s room was too small.

Pam herself led the group to alpha. I afterwards guided her through an astral scanning of the room and of the trees outside, yet, it took all of 30 minutes before any kind of information came through. I discovered once again that, like me, Pam is distracted by candlelight. I therefore snuffed the candle I was reading cards by. Only then did things really get going.

We conversed with a tall, male elemental standing outside and looking at us through the window, and with a fairy who had somehow gotten attached to the surgeon and therefore frequented his room. The male elemental was uncooperative, the fairy petulant. In the end, they agreed to tone down the manifestations and help out the family in exchange for two simple gestures of friendship: for the male elemental, a bunch of bananas to be tied to one of the trees, for the fairy, a symbol to be hung on one of the bedroom walls.

When we turned the lights on again I laid out two card spreads for the C. family and interpreted them.

We reconvened in the living room only to find out that the tall, male elemental had actually circle-hopped from PJ’s to Pam’s. Both channels were convinced that the family would soon experience a change in atmosphere and a turn for the better.

The family took us out to dinner in a Chinese restaurant on Morato. As for myself, I was satisfied that Pam was finally able to use her channeling abilities with confidence, though without initial difficulty. I consider this quest as her first successful attempt to function as a channel on an actual site and in the presence of agents and co-Questors.

Two days later the C.s’ maid took leave to “visit relatives”. She never came back.

Eugene and his brother Bernard would eventually consider themselves Questors and join us in several training sessions and quests.

Sunday, January 23, Edie picked me up at my apartment and brought me to Ateneo’s Department of Communication, where Pam and Colt met up with us.

Pam handed me a blue, plastic bag containing one of Brent’s unwashed shirts.

After the Tonga quests that we held Saturday, January 8, Loida requested me to cleanse Brent’s aura and cut, with my karma knife, any of the astral threads that remained connected to negative energy. Since Brent would not come himself to Ateneo’s Department of Communication, I said that we would cleanse his aura in the manner of distant healing, using a two-foot, wooden mannequin dressed in one of Brent’s unwashed shirts, which we would afterwards burn to ashes. We would hold the actual session, however, on the afternoon of Saturday, February 5.

During the early part of that Sunday one of the groups in my thesis class—comprised of senior Ateneo Communication majors Tina A., Mark T., Sharwin T., Reg P., and Leo M.—sat in consultation with me and conducted a walk-through of the advertising library that they had been working on. I invited them, after a fast-food lunch, to join Pam, Colt, Edie, and me for an exercise in activating psychic vision, psychic hearing, and psychic feeling inside the studio. We were able to access astral memory and actual spirits that were moving round us. After I had turned the lights on again, I taught Pam how to use the karma knife in scanning and cutting astral threads on the thesis group members’ auric shells.

At about this time a young man named Nestor I., a graduate of DLSU, was speeding through the South Superhighway with one of his younger brothers in the front passenger seat and their mother in the back seat. The car rammed into another vehicle and turned-turtle several times. Nestor and his mother died instantly. Only the younger brother survived.

I would be told about this accident three days later. Nestor was a nephew-in-law of Chona N., a DLSU Psychology and Marketing major and a student in one of my sections of SHAMANS during the first term. He was also a friend of Edie, who is quite close to Chona’s husband, Newton, a DLSY Finance major.

After the thesis group left for the day I conducted a series of training exercises for Pam, Colt, and Edie. We held two sessions on two different talking boards to access spirit guides. Afterwards I led them through an exercise in astral projection using tattwa cards.

I had retrieved a letter from my pigeon-hole, from a woman named Maricar B., who lives in Laguna.

“January 10, 2000

“Dear Mr. Perez,

“I am Maricar B., 31 years old, married, and a resident of Barangay Banay Banay, Cabuyao, Laguna… I’d been wanting to reach you since last year.

“My in-laws purchased a 1.5-hectare industrial lot three years ago. Its former owner, a Chinese businessman, decided to close their brake lining factory because of labor problems. We ourselves are in the trucking business, and so we thought that this lot was perfect, especially since it’s only 15 minutes away from out major client. My husband, my son, and I live on the compound.

“The last quarter of 1997 one of our truck helpers died in a hit-and-run accident in Pangasinan. His body was brought straight from Pangasinan to his hometown, which is somewhere in Isabela. We offered prayers and Masses for his soul.

“The following year, 1998, one of our janitors was electrocuted while fixing the antenna of the TV set inside the canteen. He did this so that he could watch TV during his lunch breaks. I was not there at that time and I am sure that, had I been there, the accident could have been prevented. I would not have consented to his fixing the antenna on his own.

“The janitor died after several days in hospital. His wake had to be held on the compound prior to the transport of his body to Davao for internment.

“Late last year, 1999—December 23, to be exact—one of our employees who is only 24 years old, died of a heart attack while sleeping in our office on a different compound.

“To top it all, two other of our employees, a driver and a helper, met an accident on Bulacan on Christmas Eve, around 10:00 or 11:00 PM. Their deaths were instantaneous. However, their bodies were burned. We paid for all of the expenses. Again, we offered prayers and Masses. We even had the property blessed last Saturday. We’ve had it blessed almost every year since the time we moved here.

“Aside from these tragic events a lot of strange things have been occurring.

“One of our drivers, Pablo, was about to feed the dogs approximately 5:00 AM when a lady in traje de boda appeared to him neat the dogs’ cages. He let go of the dogs’ food and ran away. Our janitors, who start their day early, allege that they see this so-called ‘white lady’ at the tumoy, which is a Visayan term for dulo, or rear end of the property. One of these janitors, Ronnie, claims that he often sees this lady in white. We think that this spirit is attracted to him; at one time he saw that a ring had been placed on top of his pile of clothes. It looks like a wedding band and has a girl’s name—Luzviminda—inscribed on it. We have less than a dozen women employed here, maids included, and not one of them has that name. Ronnie could not have gotten that ring elsewhere. He is the shy type. He has few friends, and he has never had a girlfriend. He, by the way, lives at the tumoy.

“Another janitor, Bosyong, swears that he also sees the ‘white lady’. He claims that, once, while he was inside his room, a table was hurled at him by an unseen force.

“On two separate occasions, while our trucks were under repair, their engines started of their own.

“Lights sometimes turn on or off by themselves, without human assistance.

“Several personnel claim that they see ‘an old man’ walking about and sometimes sleeping inside their bunk house. They once mistook this ‘man’ for our mechanic who, until now, is on vacation in Cebu.

“In our repair shop, some of the engines being worked on are ‘sabotaged’, sometimes splattered with sand or soil, but no one is able to tell who, if anyone, has been doing this. We are a small company, and everyone here knows everyone else.

“We’ve also heard that when the property was still undeveloped, a woman was raped and killed on the premises, specifically at the tumoy. And that someone else had been electrocuted on the very same spot where our janitor died, but had survived.

“I feel very uncomfortable in some of the areas on the compound. I avoid passing through or going to these areas whenever I can. I always have this dread that I might ‘see’ something I won’t like.

“All of these have seriously affected our employees. No one wants to go to the tumoy alone. When they do have to go, they insist on being accompanied by someone else, or on going in a group.

“My husband and I decided to seek your assistance. We would like to invite you and the Questors to visit this place.

“Enclosed is my calling card. Please contact us so that we can meet and schedule a quest.

“I hope to hear from you soon.

“Sincerely,

“Maricar G. B.”

I initially communicated with Maricar via landline. Aftewards we kept in touch by text-messaging each other on our cell phones. She rented two rest houses in Los Baños so that the Questors could stay in Laguna overnight. One rest house would accommodate ten Questors, the other, eight. This quest, which would consist of several circles on the compound in Cabuyao, would be held the night of Saturday, January 29, 2000.

Chona text-messaged me the morning of Wednesday, January 26, 2000. She had begun to feel the presence of Nestor in her bedroom and sensed that he was asking her for help. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen, more than once, the figur4e of the dead, young man inside the billiards room, where he used to hang out when he was still alive. On top of everything, she dreamt about him the previous night. And, in the morning, when she washed her face in the lavatory, she saw the water coming out of the faucet momentarily turn to blood.

We both agreed that it would do no harm to schedule a quest either in Newton and Chona’s bedroom or in their billiards room. We would neither hold the quest in Nestor’s house nor include the remaining members of his family—two younger brothers, since their father also tragically died last year—because they and their closest, elder relatives do not believe in communicating with spirits.

Pam and I coordinated this quest through Chona’s sister Ilona, a DLSU Business Management major, a student in my SHAMANS class the second term and a classmate of Pam, over the next two weeks. We asked Ilona for a photo of Nestor that we could borrow. We were unable, however, to hold the quest on the first two dates that we had originally set. Close to giving up on the idea, we decided to meet up and discuss the best possible schedule. I therefore invited Ilona to join us and a group of Questors in watching a performance of “Sierra Lakes”, a play I had written at the age of 18 and which theater artist Gabe Mercado was directing for Tanghalang Ateneo. This performance would be held Saturday, February 5.

Saturday, January 29, would be, to me, another long day. After attending my Theological Anthropology class at Maryhill I had to rush to De La Costa Hall at Ateneo to attend the thesis defense of Alec L., an Interdisciplinary Studies senior who had written about the portrayal of magic in Philippine movies. Alec had chosen me as lone reader for his thesis. I could not say no to him because he was a former student; he was in my Psychology of Communication elective last year.

Alec walked with me, after his defense, to the Department of Communication, where my own thesis class was waiting for me. I spent the next three hours going through their final drafts and conducting mock defenses in the studio.

My graduate class in Design and Management of Training Programs met 4:30 – 7:30 PM as usual, after which the Questors started arriving. Eloisa assigned, Neil, Pats, and Candice to read oracles at Tibreizh for the night. Although Maricar had brought along two vehicles, a Benz van and an L-300, three of the Questors decided to take along their own to Laguna that night: Tommy, PJ, and one of a five-member group of observers from DLSU’s medical school in Cavite. The rest of the team included Eloisa, Michael, Sheila, Judith, Pam, Jon, PJ, Ola, Edie, Jeric, and James L. (a UST Biochemistry sophomore), and myself. Colt was unable to join us. He was on Ateneo High School’s varsity volleyball team, which was playing for the University Athletic Association of the Philippine s(UAAP) competitions, and his coach did not allow him to travel to and stay overnight in Laguna with us. On the other hand Wesley, who was also representing Ateneo High School and participating in a pole-vaulting competition for UAAP the following day, had originally planned to stop by the Department of Communication that evening but decided, at the last minute, to come with us.

Since PJ had to stop for gas along the way, our vehicles reconvened at the Select station on the South Superhighway. While waiting for everyone else to emerge from the grocery store and the rest rooms Edie pointed out to Pam and me the exact spot where Nestor, his brother, and their mother met their fatal accident.

We arrived at the B. compound in Cabuayo approximately 10:30 PM. Maricar had a feast spread out for us inside the canteen. After everyone had eaten we congregated outside, where she and her family members conducted a detailed briefing. I asked the family members to take the Questors through the entire compound for an initial scanning. Since the compound was huge, this took all of a half hour.

Eloisa and I divided up the Questors at first into seven teams, then five. Most of the senior channels had sensed the presence of human spirits and elementals in certain places on the compound. They expressed their preference to form their circles in these particular locations. We divided up the family members and one employee who had volunteered to join us among the five teams.

I was already writing my manuscript for The Pamela Quests at this time, and so I asked Pam to put together her first quest report.

January 29, 2000

B. Compound

Cabuyao, Laguna

Channel: Pam

Facilitator: Edie.

Agent: Mang Ronnie, a janitor

Observer: Eina, a student of DLSU’s medical school in Cavite

Upon arrival at the trucking compound we were embarrassed to learn that Maricar had prepared a huge dinner for us. After we had eaten, Tony asked the seven channels to scan the whole facility and instructed them to choose one site each.

Scanning the large trucking compound was both exciting and disappointing to me. The Sunday before this quest I had my first training session as a Questor. While conversing with G., one of Tony’s spirit guides, she indicated that my third eye would fully open and that this quest would be a successful one. [Tony’s note: G. is a crone-spirit that resides in a statuette that I keep on top of my small ref in my room at Ateneo’s Department of Communication.]

I failed to sense any strong presence in the whole compound during the scanning tour. All I felt was a slight pressure in my ears. I flinched when Edie used his lighter to illuminate the interior of the repair shop and when Jon lit a candle, because I saw that there was oil all over the place.

I was dejected at not having picked up anything. I consulted Michael. He told me of Mang Ronnie, one of the janitors, who had experienced some of the manifestations and had encountered a “white lady” in the back part of the compound.

Mang Ronnie was the only worker who volunteered to participate in our quest. He told us of “a woman with long hair, dressed in white”. This “woman” frequently appeared to him and frightened him all the time. According to Mang Ronnie he once tried to talk to her and asked her why she chose to appear to him, but only merited a scowl on her face in reply.

The back of the compound is rectangular. It holds a litter of dogs. The trees grow only along the sides of the lot. It was very dark when we went there but none of us felt afraid. This was where my team decided to form our circle.

We sat on chairs that we had brought with us from the canteen. Edie led us through the Tower of Light. This was his third quest, but his first time to facilitate. Tony had instructed me to guide him through. I therefore sometimes channeled and facilitated at the same time.

We did a round of greetings. I sense five entities: one at my back and another in front of me and at a distance from the circle, just outside the fence: the three came rushing towards us from a tree. The first two entities were female. Both were wearing “white gowns”. The one that was behind me came up to me first. She had long, black hair. She was in a white dress.

“Edie, ask her for a name,” I said.

“May we know your name?” Edie asked.

“Gemma,” I replied.

At this point the other “white lady” came to me and I informed Edie of this.

“May we also know your name?” Edie asked.

The first “white lady” then retreated, going farther away to the back. This sort of thing continued. Whenever we addressed the first entity the second would retreat, and vice-versa. I told Edie that we would converse only with Gemma. I had two reasons for this: the second astral being was not connected with the first in any way, and it resided in another lot, which had nothing to do with our visit. (I afterwards saw this second being’s white dress transform into a black cloak. She occasionally floated within my vision on the other lot in order to catch my attention, and watched us with some curiosity.)

We continued our conversation with Gemma. We determined that she was a human spirit and that she had passed away in the vicinity.

“Tell us what happened,” Edie asked.

“I was raped.”

“Do you remember when this was?”

“In the 1970s.”

“And was this how you died?”

“I was afterwards stabbed several times.”

I interrupted the conversation to remind Edie that we were not supposed to obtain details about death but, rather, seek an explanation behind the manifestations.

“Are you responsible for the manifestations on this compound?” Edie asked.

“What if I were?” she responded. “And what is it to you? Get out of here.”

“We are here to—“

“—Shut up. I don’t need you. Get out.”

I told Edie, aside, that it was probably a bad idea to bear down on Gemma in this manner because he is male. I suggested that she might be more conversant if Eina addressed her. I requested Edie to guide Eina in this, however since this was her first quest. Things were really getting difficult for me now. I not only had to tell Edie what to do, I also had to tell him what to tell Eina to do. But, they both complied with my suggestions to the best that they could.

“Who raped you?” Eina asked.

Again, I interrupted the conversation, reminding Eina that we were not there to ask about the gory details of her death but to console her, and, if possible, assist her to move on, thereby putting an end to the manifestations.

“I know that this is hard for you, but you must forgive yourself and your killers,” Eina said.

I then noted that a third, also female, entity passed. She was singing.

I heard a number of other female voices, and it sounded like some kind of a party was going on. I knew that this could not be on the physical plane since the nearest house was a good distance away, and two men and only one woman were inside it.

All of the dogs began barking at the same time.

“Edie, did you hear that?” I asked, referring to the voices.

“No.”

“Do you see what is happening? Look through your forehead. Do you see them?”

“I can’t.”

The conversation with Gemma continued. It lasted longer, but it was just as hard as ever for us to persuade her to convert her negative emotions to positive ones.

“Can you forgive them?” Eina asked again, at last.

“Yes. No.” Again, “no.” Then, she finally answered, “Yes.”

“Do you see some kind of light anywhere around you?”

I instinctively told her that “the light” to look for emits a warm, serene, energy.

“Yes,” Gemma replied.

Looking up at “the light”, she saw two entities, a male and a female, who she said were related to her. I received the impression that these were her parents. I mentally guided her to “go to the light”. When she was already half the distance, she descended once again. This happened twice. It made me suspicious. I disengaged ourselves from the visualization.

I told Edie that we were being tricked. And right after I made that statement, Gemma showed her true form to me.

She retained her white complexion but now wore a different kind of gown. Four wings emerged, two at each side of her “body”.

A fairy.

“Why do you scare off people?” Eina asked her.

“I don’t like you. Get out of here,” she countered.

“But why the manifestations?” Edie asked.

“I said, get out. Don’t you have anything better to do? And hurry up, my father is calling me.”

I received the impression that she lived in a kingdom underground.

“We are here to help you,” Edie replied.

After Edie said that, the fairy flew 45 degrees to my left, disappeared, then reappeared at my back. She drew out a golden wand with a star at its tip. Her face looked distorted. She swiftly stuck the wand inside my back. I felt it go through me and around my heart. I panicked. I thought, she can’t have done that because we shielded the circle with light.

“Edie, what is she doing to me?” I asked, aloud. “Do you see her now?”

“I don’t,” Edie responded.

“Open your psychic eyes. Please, try.”

“I can’t see anything.”

I nervously cursed in the dark, trying to think what kind of harm the fairy could do to me. I also wondered, on the other hand, whether the thrust of her wand into my body could be a gift that she might be giving me. I asked Edie to guide our group in creating a second layer of protective light over the first one. After this was done, we went on with our quest.

“Couldn’t we offer you something that would defuse your hostility?” Edie asked the fairy.

“I want a castle with three towers to be built on this spot. I also want all these metal objects, including the trucks, out of this part of my territory,” she replied. “The structure here could be used, instead, to house humans.”

She gave me a mental picture of the land she was claiming was her own.

“Is there anything more?” Edie asked again.

“No. Just get out. Get lost.”

I requested Mang Ronnie to address the fairy, at the risk of his thinking that this was a stupid idea. I asked him to say to the fairy that if she had further demands, complaints, or messages, she could relay these through dreams.

Mang Ronnie did as I asked. Fortunately the fairy concurred.

After a round of thanks I remembered the three other entities that came rushing towards us from one of the trees. They were very tall. I could see now that they were tikbalangs. Maintaining the two layers of protective light around us we gave them a round of greetings.

“What are you doing here?” they asked us. “Get lost”—a reception similar to what the fairy gave us.

“We are here only to help,” Edie replied. “Are you also responsible for the negative energy in this part of the compound?”

“We do nothing wrong. We just live here. Get out.”

Claiming non-involvement in any of the mishaps that occurred on the compound, the creatures eventually became irritated by our questioning. They felt that we were unnecessarily accusing them of wrongdoing. I concluded that they were innocent. I then asked Edie to start off a round of goodbye. Before he could do that, however, the three creatures asked for a gesture of our friendship. They asked if a fire symbol could be placed in one of trees that they live in.

We returned to our meeting place outside the canteen afterwards.

While walking on our way back, Mang Ronnie asked me why he was able to see astral beings while others couldn’t. I explained to him, as best I could, psychic sensitivity. I also told him about the third eye. I asked him whether my explanation scared him. He responded with the usual, popular reasoning that the educated sometimes have trouble accepting: “I have nothing to fear as long as I do nothing wrong.” I thought, in that moment, that an attitude like that would serve a lot of other individuals well.

As soon as we reached our meeting place I consulted Eloisa and Sheila, and asked them what the fairy had done to me. I received mischievous grins from them in reply. At first they would not tell me, holding me in suspense and waiting for me to figure it out myself. Then they laughed and told me that what the fairy did was merely an affectionate gesture on her part.

Now it made sense to me how she got through our protective light. She had actually meant me no harm.

I rode back to Metro Manila with Tommy the following morning, Sunday, January 30. After a heavy breakfast at Jollibee Calamba Tommy brought me home.

My weekend was far from over. Mae, Bill, and Irene picked me up at my apartment after lunch to bring me to Ateneo’s Department of Communication for a special session that my thesis class had set.

Text message from Pam the evening of Sunday, January 30: Can we cut some of Dad’s astral threads with your karma knife on Saturday?

It rained hard Saturday, February 5. Cathy and a friend picked me up at Maryhill after lunch to take me to Ateneo, where ten of us were scheduled to watch the final performance of “Sierra Lakes” at Rizal Mini-Theater. Although thesis defense sessions for my class were ongoing, I wanted to catch this production not only because Gabe directed it but because Mimi T., a student in my thesis class, was acting in it.

Pam was waiting for us at the Department of Communication when we arrived. Mikah arrived soon after, but begged off watching the play because she was working on a group presentation for my graduate class that evening.

Pam, Cathy, and I walked to the college campus after pinning a note for stragglers on the bulletin board. Senior channel and mage Moose M., Tommy, Neil, Pats, Candice, Wesley, and Edie joined us at the theater. Last to arrive were Ilona and a friend. Gabe, who had invited us to this performance, had two rows of seats reserved for the Questors.

I waited for Pam and Colt to arrive after my class that evening. I set up the wooden mannequin on one of the classroom desks. Tina T. and I dressed it in Brent’s unwashed shirt that Pam brought to me two weeks ago.

I asked Tina to scan Brent’s aura at a distance and, if necessary, cut, with my karma knife, some or all of the astral threads that she perceived connected to negative energy. Although she was able to identify many—which were connected, in particular, to the survival, sex, and feeling chakras—she asked my clearance to sever only one. This involved an unresolved relationship with a woman who remained obsessed with Brent despite the fact that he was married and had children.

Immediately after the cutting we took the shirt off the mannequin and set fire to it outside, in a Chinese burner, as Pam and Colt looked on.

I decided not to quest that night. I told Pam that I wanted her to be more independent of me. I assigned her team, which included Sheila, George, Colt, and Edie, to go to Concepcion II, Marikina, on the case of 21-year-old Mariane S., who had been found murdered and abandoned in a ditch. Kagawad (Councilor) Norman S. called me the previous week to schedule this quest. Pam would be the primary channel, Sheila the secondary channel, and George the facilitator.

This would be Pam’s first murder case, and so I briefed her on what to expect from the agents of such cases. I told her that the Questors’ priority is to determine whether the spirit of the deceased has “moved on” and to assist it to do so if it has not, and that other information was to be treated as secondary. I gave her the usual, additional precautions that I give the Questors before dispatching them on a murder case.

Pam was apprehensive about this quest. We all ended up agreeing that Michael should go on the team and facilitate, that Sheila would be the primary channel, and that Pam would be in the circle as an observer. I said to Pam that, despite the fact that she would not be proactive during the quest, this would be an excellent opportunity for her to see how the Questors handle a murder case.

The team drove me home to my apartment before proceeding to Marikina that evening.

Surprisingly Colt, who so far had undergone minimal training, was able to function as secondary channel that night.

Text message received from Maricar 3:00 PM Tuesday, February 8: We offered a Mass for the souls of the departed, here on the compound. During the sermon there was a strong scent of incense. I guess it’s their way of saying thank you.

The Questors were scheduled to visit Baguio City Friday, February 11, through Sunday, February 13, for a series of workshops at Café San Luis and SLU. I left Cubao 11:30 PM Thursday, February 10, with channels Michael, Rita, Chad, and George in a van sent us by Vangie Q., former director of SLU’s Public Information and Community Relations Office. A second group left Chopstix Express on Quezon Avenue 5:00 AM Friday, February 11, with senior Questors Connie, Judith, and Tommy, Pam and Edie, and agents Eugene and Bernard in the C.s’ L-300. We met up at the guests’ apartments on SLU’s campus in time for a late breakfast Friday morning.

We had the rest of the morning free, which the Questors spent setting up their respective bed spaces and walking in the immediate vicinity. Dion F., leader of Outpath, the Spirit Questors’ Baguio City chapter, and his associate Melvin G., dropped by to welcome us an introduce to us Jing T., a senior Outpath member, and Maileen P., a gothic researcher and Outpath’s newest member.

Our lunch was hosted by Malou F., proprietress of Café San Luis, where I conducted a “Love Magic” workshop that afternoon. A total of 30 walk-in participants attended this workshop. During this time, Pam, Eugene, and Bernard managed a sales display of items from Marvy R.’s shop, Connie and Michael a sales display of items from their Q Shop, and Edie a sales display of heart-shaped pillows from his DLSU thesis group project.

The workshop was followed by an oracle reading session that lasted through 9:00 PM. I retired after dinner, since I had to be up early for the following day’s workshop at SLU. Past midnight, however, Malou brought Elena A., an agent, on a case involving the murder of her mother and daughter, to the apartment next to mine. Michael, Rita, Chad, Judith, Connie, Tommy, Pam, Edie, Eugene, and Bernard worked on this quest, which lasted through the wee hours of the morning.

I spent all of the following day, Saturday, February 12, conducting a workshop on “Dreamwork and Dream Analysis” in the audiovisual room of Vath Building, on SLU’s campus. The Questors managed a whole-day screening of my videos on extraterrestrials in the library and the previous afternoon’s sales displays. Anvil Publishing Inc. also set up a sales display of my and Ruey De Vera’s books. The Questors nonetheless took turns in going on sightseeing and shopping trips.

Vangie, Annie C. (a dermatologist in practice for 17 years, a faculty member at SLU’s College of Medicine, a graduate student of anthropology at University of the Philippines’ College in Baguio, a mother of two, and a participant in my “Dreamwork and Dream Analysis” workshop), and I made a brief spin round Mines View Park before proceeding to Café San Luis, where the Questors held a second oracle reading session immediately after dinner.

The Baguio Questors brought Michael, Rita, Chad, Judith, Connie, Tommy, Pam, Edie, Eugne, and Bernard to Loakan Cemetery, also known as the Second Cemetery, on Loakan Road. They formed five circle and held a congregate quest that was videotaped by Channel 5’s Kontak 5. Michael recorded the names of the participants and the quest proceedings of each circle. The first, comprised of Michael and Connie and Outpath members Maileen, Mae-Ann B., Fred T., and Sheila G., encountered two human spirits and one earth elemental; the second, comprised of Chad, Eugene, and Outpath members Marjorie F., Ronan M., Cheryl B., and Jenny C., encountered four earth elementals; the third, comprised of Judith, Pam, Edie, and Outpath members Jing, Leslie I., and Sheree B., encountered two human spirits; the fourth, comprised of Rita, George, and Outpath members Melvin, Tina C., and Joseph G., encountered one earth elemental; and the fifth, comprised of Tommy, Bernard, and Outpath members Dion, Emerald M., and Malen C., encountered one human spirit and one earth elemental. Most of the Outpath members who joined the circles had been participants in my “Love Magic” and “Dreamwork and Dream Analaysis” workshops.

The Loakan Cemetery quests ended 1:00 AM. Pam told me about her experience the following morning before breakfast. She had seen her first “giant”—a tall, mountain elemental whose knees measured way above her head—and considered it a mind-blowing vision.

“Did you try to communicate with it?” I asked.

“No. It wasn’t interested in what we were doing.”

I explained to her that I had met a few of them during quests on Ateneo’s campus and in the La Vista, Blue Ridge, and Valle Verde subdivisions, i.e., along the western rim that defines Marikina Valley. “They tend to be arrogant.”

“This one wasn’t arrogant. He just didn’t care.”

She expressed, once again, her intense interest in elementals, particularly the warrior-like earth elementals she had seen that night. “Send me on quests that involve astral battles at any time,” she reminded me.

Tommy, Eugene, and Bernard had left Baguio City immediately after the Loakan Cemetery quests in order to get to Manila early in the morning. The rest of us—Michael, Rita, Judith, Chad, Connie, George, Pam, Edie, and I—departed after breakfast Sunday, February 13.

Before leaving the apartments on SLU’s campus Pam came to me and asked me to scan her because “two elementals, a light one and a dark one” had clung to her the night before and would “not let go”. I could tell that one of them was female. She complained that it kept “doing things” to her right ear.

“What kind of things?” In pressed, but she would not explain.

The two elementals kept eluding me. I knew that they were there, but they kept crawling round and round Pam’s body, away from me. I smudged Pam’s body with incense and then anointed her head and shoulders with oil. The elementals continued to cling to her; this was how I decided that they could eventually pass on power to her, if dealt with correctly. Pam, however, did not like “the feeling”, and asked that both elementals be taken off her, especially the female.

Thinking that a female Questor would be more effective in persuading the female elemental to let go, I solicited Connie’s assistance, and then Rita’s. They used my karma knife, which I had brought to demonstrate during the “Love Magic” workshop, to scan her aura and cut off the dark, astral threads around her. This irritated the two elementals. I advised Pam to “see what happens” over the following week and afterwards see me.

On the way to Manila we made a side trip to the Holy Family Chapel in Bamban, Tarlac, where Jaime Claret and his wife, Denia, had brought Ella, Tommy, Neil, Pats, Candice, and me on their feast day, December 26. This afternoon the grounds were empty, and everything was still. Fortunately the resident psychic, Apo Simon—whose real name is Francis L.—was there, and was able to receive us. I introduced my companions to him and asked for special readings for the Questors. He then had Rita channel a series of apocalyptic visions. Before leaving the chapel he formally bestowed blessings on us in front of the altar. I sense that he took away something from me.

The week after our Baguio trip was a confusing one. For some reason Chona, Ilona, Pam, Edie, and I had gotten mixed up on the dates we had initially agreed on for the I. quest. Friday, February 18, was out because Pam had disclosed to me that our Friday afternoon quests had proven exhausting to her, because Chona, Newton, and Edie had evening classes, and because I had a morning class at Maryhill the following day. Saturday, February 19, had also been ruled out because Chona’s family was celebrating Chinese New Year. The same for Sunday, February 20, which is Chona’s father’s birthday. In the end we all agreed to hold the quest the evening of Friday, February 18, in the penthouse of the five-storey condominium that Newton’s father owns on Pilar Street, Quezon City. Chona would cut her afternoon class. Edie would rush to the venue immediately after her evening class and, hopefully, I would get enough sleep that night and be on time for my Theology class the following morning.

Pam and I met up at Tapa King on the corner of Taft and Estrada 5:20 PM Friday, February 19. We both tried to reach Chona and Ilona via our cell phones because neither one ofnthem had confirmed the time that we should meet in Quezon City. After waiting another half hgour I decided that we should proceed to the quest venue.

Pam, once again, battled the rush-hour traffic. Fast-food stores, the 5:20 PM meeting time, Pam at the steering wheel of the archer-green sports car and the crush of vehicles on all main roads were, by now, familiar elements of our Friday quests.

I was able to reach Chona on my cell phone an hour later. She was also still on the road, on the way to her home from school. She informed me that Ilona was already in the condominium on Pilar Street, waiting for us. We were in Santa Mesa, and still in heavy traffic, by this time.

Pam and I also tried to contact Colt, who was waiting for Pam’s call at Ateneo’s College Covered Court. He had agreed to stand by as a back-up channel for Pam. Although I text-messaged him the address we were headed for, there was heavy traffic on the network as well. I received Chona’s text confirmations an hour later; Colt mine, three hours later; and I Colt’s reply much later that night.

On the way to Quezon City Pam and I discussed the quest we would be holding for Luke Sunday, February 19, which was her birthday. She informed me, sadly, that Loida would be unable to join us that day because she was going through a mild depression. I wondered aloud whether we should postpone the quest for her sake, but Pam objected. She told me that, despite her tears, Loida insisted we go on with the quest. She also reminded me that Monday, February 20, was Luke’s birthday.

We arrived at the condominium 7:30 PM and took a service lift to the penthouse. Two young men—Newton’s brother and a cousin—were playing in the billiards room. With Chona and Ilona were another young woman in the living room and Chona’s first baby, whose ankles, I noted, were encircled with red coral.

Pam whispered to me to check out a dark figure that she saw standing outside, on the balcony. She asked me whether it was Nestor’s spirit. I said to him that Nestor’s spirit was indeed in the room, but that the figure she had seen on the balcony was an air elemental.

Friday, February 18, 2000

I. Quest

I. Condominium, Don Pilar Street, Quezon City

Primary Channel: Rita

Facilitator: Pam

Agents: Newton and Chona I.

Questors: Tommy, Edie

Observers: Ilona, Clarisse L., Ivan M., Samuel

Tony and I arrived at Newton and Chona’s concominum unit around 6:40 PM. As soon as she saw us Chona asked Tony if four other people could join our circle during the quest. These were Newton, Samuel (Newton’s younger brother), Clarisse (Samuel’s girlfriend and an Ateneo Economics major), and Ivan M. (Newton’s and Mark’s cousin). I had been expecting only three people in our circle during this quest: Chona, Ilona, and me, with Tony sitting outside the circle to oversee proceedings.

Tony asked me if having all those observers in the circle would be okay with me. I said that we would have to call in other Questors, those who live within the vicinity, because six agents and observers in the circle was too big a number for me to handle.

But, that wasn’t the real reason.

Being a new Spirit Questor I accept all of the challenges presented to me. Opening myself and my energy tosix agents and observers was one such challenge. However, hours before the actual quest, I knew that I would not be able to function as a channel tonight. Deep inside me, I knew that something was wrong. It was as though my psychic abilities shut down for no apparent reason. I therefore had to deny myself that challenge.

I asked Tony to call other Questors to help us out. I would function as facilitator. Questors Rita and Tommy, who live near Quezon Avenue, responded to Tony’s text messages. Edie, a family friend of the agents, arrived last, from his evening class at DLSU. We ate a late dinner, during which Chona conducted a casual briefing.

[Tony’s note: I have observed that these fluctuations in Pam’s psychic abilities are always caused by one or more of the following: the presence of a senior Questor or senior Questors whose energy is capable of overriding her own; and the presence of too many strangers.]

Once our circle was formed Rita had no problems inviting Mrs. I. and Nestor to join us. They had already been there, in the room, waiting for us. Both of them were earth-bound.

“Describe their state,” I asked Rita.

“Mrs. I is very angry,” Rita replied, “because of what happened. She blames everyone for the accident, including the driver, her own son.

“Nestor, on the other hand, is ready to ‘cross over’. But, he’s waiting for his mother.”

Since Nestor had already covered whatever issues he needed to resolve before ‘moving on’, I turned my attention to Mrs. I. I explained to her that what had happened was a tragic event but that she was being called on to forgive herself and everyone who had ever hurt her.

I asked Rita for her response.

“She is still in ager, grief, and hatred. She wasn’t prepared to die.”

Tony drew a card and said that a man was involved in this, a man whom she loved. He was neither a relative nor Chinese, and was most probably one of her coworkers or employees. They had a close relationship.

“She demands to know why all this had to happen,” Rita continued. She had lots of plans concerning the family business, that close associate, and something involving a baby.

“It would also be easier for us if we speak to her in Chinese or English.”

After Rita’s message, Chona broke down and cried, affirming everything that Rita had told us.

Chona kept repeating, “You don’t understand. You don’t understand. No one ever understood me. I felt, at last, that I was free. And then, I died.”

I quickly reminded Chona that the source of her breakdown was not her own, inner feelings but those of Mrs. I., whise spirit she was spontaneously channeling. I looked at Tony and asked him if this was safe for Chona, since she was pregnant with her second child. Tony simply nodded his head and said that it was okay.

[Tony’s note: I was privy to knowledge that Chona’s third eye was fully open, and that she is a strong channel. She manifested this while doing the mirror-gazing session in SHAMANS during the first term. She was already pregnant at the time.]

I also noticed a teardrop running down the cheek of Clarisse, who was seated on my right. I asked what was wrong, but she only shook her head.

I asked Tommy and Edie to project pink light all over the condominium in the hope of providing the departed with some emotional consolation.

“Does she see ‘the light’?” I asked Rita.

“Yes. But, she is still crying. She wants to be with her sons. She doesn’t want to leave them. She also doesn’t want to let go of that close associate. She loves the man and wants to have a baby with him. She wants to watch over and take care of all of them.”

I explained to Mrs. I. our concept of life after death. I requested her to let go of her anger and hatred and, instead, forgive everyone who had wronged her. I said that ‘the light’ would take her to a ‘higher plane’ where she would experience a happiness that could never be had on earth. I also said that, from that ‘higher plane’, she would be better able to care for her loved ones who remained on earth.

“Response?”

“Still the same. But, about that baby. I think the baby she keeps mentioning is one that she had been planning to adopt.”

By this time Chona was still weeping and channeling Mrs, I.’s emotions. I therefore requested Newton and the observers to hug Chona in a clockwise round. Each one of them was to visualize that they were hugging not Chona but Mrs. I. Moreover, each one of them was to send her healing thoughts of love, courage, and forgiveness and pledge assistance in caring for the rest of her family. They did so in Hokkien.

I shifted my attention to Rita. She said that Mrs. I seemed better but that she was still not ready to ‘cross over’. I discussed the situation with the members of the circle, suggesting that it might be best to wait through the traditional 40 – 49 days. Tony nodded in agreement.

Before breaking the circle I asked the agents again to give their last messages to Mrs. I.

And, since Mrs. I. had expressed that she felt more comfortable staying in the condominium rather than in her own place or workplace, I recommended to the agents that they invite her, aloud, to stay there for the time being.

Before this message round Newton nervously asked me if Mrs. I. would manifest herself in any way to them. I told him that, if he didn’t like the idea, he could ask that he not see or hear her, or sense her presence in any way, and that, if Mrs. I. had further messages, she should instead relay these through the residents’ dreams. He seemed to accept this as a sensible compromise.

The rest of the message round flowed with ease. Tony advised the family, in conclusion, to light one pink candle on an altar inside the condominium every day up to the departed’s 40th or 49th day.

It is really a big disappointment to me that most people are afraid of “ghosts”. When you ask them why, all they’ll ever tell you is that they are “the dead”. Some Questors, myself included, do experience this fear, especially because we all grew up in an environment in which “ghosts” and “the dead” are feared. But, that’s just the way things are. “Ghosts” linger because they don’t know where to go or because they don’t know how to “go to the light”. They can be in a state of constant anger or depression; sometimes they don’t even know that they are “dead”. They can be in this state 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Persons who died hundreds of years ago can still remain earth-bound.

I personally believe that what we must have is compassion for the dead and for the dying. To this cause, a reason for the Questors’ existence.

I checked my cell phone after we broke the circle: four text messages from Colt had come in. I text-messaged him back to inform him that we had ended the quest and that it was much too late for him to come and join us. He text-messaged an OK.

Chona and Newton brought us to the gate, outside which Pam had parked her car. I teased Chona that, since she had quested at least twice in her pregnant state, she would most probably have a psychic baby. I was not sure whether Newton thought this amusing or not.

Pam drove me to my apartment. I arrived 11:30 PM.

I had planned to take Pam and Colt with me on a quest in Plaridel Subdivision, Angeles City that Saturday, February 19. It was a prospective “Pam” quest, involving warrior-like elementals frightening off a series of tenants in a newly-renovated duplex with a series of manifestations, including the pelting of the rooftops, windows, and floors with invisible pebbles, the constant reappearance of a snake to a family member whose third eye was open, and bloody scratches on a maid’s arm.

Come Saturday, however, Sheila, who was dispatching teams that evening, requested that Pam be assigned to a similarly difficult quest on UP’s campus, and so I brought with me instead Michael, Tommy, Ola, and Edie.

February 19, 2000

UP College of Home Economics Quest

Primary Channel: Sheila

Secondary Channels: Neil, Pats

Agents: Mrs. A., Professor F., Gigi J., Joseph E., Lila N.

Questors: Colt, Chris B. (a Miriam College Mass Communications sophomore)

Observers: Che N., John Y., Rommel S., Magda I.

Upon our arrival the College of Home Economics Mrs. A briefed us on the case. Several days before the actual quest she was with Eloisa in one of the rooms. She initially related the problem to Eloisa, who then promised to schedule an emergency quest. Eloisa sensed that the environment was pervaded with an atmosphere of intense wrath.

The building on UP’s campus had witnessed a series of tragic events. Five people who used to work there died of different causes within a short time span. There was a feeling of heaviness in almost all of the rooms in the building. On top of everything Gigi was befallen with a mysterious illness. After napping within a hard workday she awoke to discover that she had lost the ability to move the left side of her body. That half of her body remained paralyzed, and only a year of physical therapy did it regain normal mobility with the exception of her left foot, which continues to limp to this day.

During the briefing Mrs. A. and Professor F. claimed that they had direct contact with their guardian angels.

The agents led us through the building to do psychic scanning. I felt that something was amiss. My psychic abilities, for some reason, had once again shut down. I noted that I wasn’t even interested in Mrs. A.’s briefing. I felt no motivation to scan the building, and even after I had done so I was unable to detect any of the negative energy that we were searching for.

During our scanning Sheila and Neil remarked that the negative energy was “following us” around the building. Whatever the entity was, it demanded to know who we were. Neil proposed that we solicit the assistance of one of the resident water elementals, a female, in protecting ourselves. Sheila, Neil, and Pats also saw a spectral tea party transpiring inside the building’s canteen.

As soon as I had the opportunity I consulted Sheila about what I was going through. She told me that she could see a “white, astral, wooden stick” in my third eye area that was blocking my psychic vision. I was about to ask her to remove it, but hesitated and told her that I would get Tony’s reaction to this first. She agreed. I then decided that I would not channel that night and merely act as a facilitator.

Neil recommended that our quest be held in the garden, since, at its center, there lies a pond where a beneficent, female, water elemental lives. We would form two circles, and inner one and an outer one. We located Sheila, Neil, Pats, Colt, Chris, Professor F., Gigi, Lila, John, Rommel, Magda, and me in the inner circle. We decided to have open channels”. [Tony’s note: “Open channels” is a term that the Questors use to denote that no particular Questor is designated as channel and that, therefore, everyone within the circle is obliged to activate their psychic senses.]

The entire group of Questors, agents, and observers proceeded to the front of the building to do the Tower of Light. We took advantage of the light of the full moon, which had a yellow, indigo, and violet nimbus around it. We visualized green light surrounding us, and further visualized each one of us connecting to the moon. When then proceeded with our quest.

“I sense that the water elemental is in front of you,” I said to Sheila.

“She is here,” Sheila answered.

“And the negative energy?”

“It’s a male, fire elemental. He’s very angry.”

“Its name?”

“He says, Hari (King).”

I saw that the fire elemental was beginning to inflict pain on Sheila, who was writhing with growing discomfort. We did a round of introduction, after which I asked for the elemental’s response.

“He says, ‘Get lost. I will hurt you,’” Sheila responded.

“We are here not to antagonize you but to negotiate for peace and harmony, and to help you, if we can. What can we do for you?”

“Give me a life. Offer me one.”

I thought of the water elemental and of the possible help that she could extend to us. I shifted my attention to Neil.

“Call her. We need help.”

“She is here,” Neil replied.

“Its name?”

“She says, ‘Sophia’.”

The fire elemental then aimed his displeasure at Sophia.

“Get out of here. I hate you,” I heard Sheila say.

“Mellow down. You are not powerful,” Neil countered.

“I am. I am King. You don’t want me to call my minions here.”

Hari then began to enlarge himself, which seemed to have the effect of lifting Sheila off the ground. I noticed Sheila’s arms and elbows go up, and that she was having a hard time ignoring the pain. I instructed her, with some apprehension, to psychically pass on her pain to Colt and to me. I figured that since my psychic powers had shut down, I wouldn’t feel anything anyway. I noted, after some time, that Colt was beginning to sweat profusely and had assumed his usual position when experiencing psychic feeling, his head tilted down almost 90 degrees to his left. I asked Colt if he was okay. He did not respond.

Pats interjected and addressed Hari.

“Are you responsible for the deaths that occurred here?”

“I am. And what is that to you? I am powerful,” Hari responded through Sheila.

“Stop this,” Neil rebutted. “You are not strong, nor are you powerful.”

“I am strong.”

Sheila then broke through and commented that setting two elementals against each other would only lead us nowhere. In the meantime Chris picked up arguing with Hari. I requested the other Questors to cover Hari with pink light, but this only inflamed his rage.

“Hari, stop this. We all know you are waging a useless feud with the workers in this building. Mellow down.”

Sensing that we were merely going in circles with the repartee between Sheila (Hari) and Neil (Sophia), Sheila (Hari) and Pats, and Sheila (Hari) and Neil, I wanted to call a respite. We were wasting time. I asked Mrs. A. and Professor F. to invoke their angel guides for help, and they nodded.

The arguments went on, and Chris was beginning to get hotheaded. I asked Professor F. if her guardian had arrived. She shook her head. I asked Mrs. A. the same thing. She nodded.

“What kind of angel is it?” I asked.

“A warrior angel,” Mrs. A. replied.

Those words, somehow excited me. I was going to see a warrior angel fight a fire elemental in an astral battle! But, I was wrong.

“What is he saying to you?” I asked again.

“He is telling us about love.”

I was disappointed.

Still, I looked up and saw white, astral beings flying from side to side around us, and I was glad that my third eye was beginning to reopen, I also saw the head if a small being who was peeping at our circle. I tried to identify what it was exactly, but whenever I stared at it, it disappeared. I brought back my attention to Hari.

“If you are really a king, call your minions here.”

This statement merited disapproval from Sheila, who was, as it were, having difficulty coping with the fire elemental within her; summoning his minions implied that more pain would be inflicted on her.

Pats immediately scanned the area and, to my joy, informed me that the fire elemental had no minions with him.

I asked Sheila if she could discern any kind of sigil on Hari. She replied in the affirmative, and said that it was the symbol of the planet Uranus.

I kept quiet for the next few minutes and let the other Questors facilitate. After some time I asked Mrs. A., once again, what her angel guide was telling her. The message was the same. It was still about love. I reflected for some time. Then, the idea of forgiveness allowed Neil and me, simultaneously, to figure out what to do.

I attuned myself to the fire elemental. Even before I said anything I felt that an outside source relayed to me everything that I would have to say.

“Hari, I know that you are in pain, but it is never right for you, or for anyone, to take away life. We are all beings created by God. We must love one another. No matter how much you hurt the people here, they, and we, will still love you. You don’t even have to ask for our forgiveness. We have already forgiven you. Even for all the other things that you have not yet done but are still planning to do. That is how much we love and respect you.

“All of us here respect the power that you have within you. As for ourselves, we mean you no harm.

“Please let go of all of your anger and hatred, and you will find that you will be happier. It is for the best that you peacefully co-exist with the people who work in this building.”

I repeated the message approximately three times, in not so many words, and finally asked Sheila for a response.

“He’s crying, and he’s saying that he’s sorry.”

I took this opportunity to generate a conversation between our agents and the fire elemental. I requested the agents to tell Hari that they loved him and that they forgave him. I knew that this would be a difficult thing for them to do, since each one of them had experienced the loss of at least one friend or colleague. Nevertheless they did as I asked because deep within themselves they knew that all this was meant to better the situation, and that it was the right thing to do. The last agent to verbalize her feelings was Gigi, who had mysteriously lost the motor skills on the left side of her body. Just as she was about to say her first words she burst into tears. We all knew that it was the elemental who had been responsible for her temporary paralysis. Yet, she articulated her forgiveness, and emerged feeling much better after that.

“Response?” I asked Sheila.

“He is still saying that he’s sorry. He promises to change. He has a few requests.

“Go on.”

“He wants us to assist the spirit of the woman who was raped in the rest room to ‘move on’. He also requests that a small castle with an inscription of his symbol be placed in one corner. He asks the agents to keep the building neat and clean.”

I discussed these requests with the agents, who readily agreed to fulfill them. Before finishing up, Neil instructed everyone in the circle to psychically cleanse the area.

He asked the members of the circle for suggestions, among which was for us to sing a plain, happy song. We all gaily acceded. Mrs. A. proposed that we sing the theme from the movie Conspiracy Theory. We started cleansing the area with the Tower of light, visualizing a pink whirlpool and pink cleaning materials. And, we sang the song.

Before we were done the Questors were giggling and the channels informed us that even the participants of the spectral tea party in the canteen had joined our small festivity, and that they were dancing. This made all of us erupt with laughter. We ended the quest feeling good.

As a new Questor I am always open to unpredictable adventures. That is the reason why I asked for help from the angel guides. I was hoping that they would battle the fire elemental. Now I know that that was wrong.

Angels are messengers of God. They are not meant to retaliate or wreak revenge but to help us, protect us, and heal the wounds that have been afflicted on the Almighty’s creation.

Indeed, every quest has its own story that is waiting to be told and heard, and all of these stories merge into one, big, journey. As Ruel De Vera put it in his The Spirit Quest Chronicles I, it is “an endless journey of love, discovery, and letting go.”

Likewise successful on our Angeles City quest, the Questors of my team departed for Quezon City 3:00 AM after a hearty meal with sisig at Aling Lucing’s, on Riles. Our agent, Mrs. Zen N., gave me four tumblestones of amethyst, sodalite, green agate, and yellow agate, which she had acquire, among others, at Santa Fe, California, where she lives. Her son Alan, who owns the Stargate Computer Shop near UST, drove us back to Quezon City. Upon our arrival at Ateneo’s Communication Building I asked Tommy to take Michael and Ola, and I asked Edie to take me, to our respective homes.

I arrived home 5:30 AM, decided not to shower, and dropped into bed. I slept four, inadequate hours. I rose 11:30 AM Sunday, February 19. Today was Pam’s birthday. It was also the day we would hold our quest for her brother Luke.

Everyone else had arrived when I got to the Communication Building: Rita, Jason, Colt, George, and Edie. Pam took me aside and said that the two elementals that we had tried to get off her in Baguio were still bugging her. She constantly felt one of them, the female “in a wedding dress”, fiddling with her right ear.

I took Pam into the studio consecrated her chakras with dragon’s blood oil, and made her drink a power potion from a phial. I also gave her the amethyst tumblestone that our agent had given me the previous night, since amethyst is her birthstone. Later, however, Rita scanned him and said that the elementals, particularly the female one, had “torn holes” in her aura so that whatever energy I sent her merely “went through”. She said that the female elemental actually “wanted” me, and was trying to get to me “through Pam”. It wanted to get from me, specifically, “a wand with crystals” that had special powers. Indeed, I had been keeping such a wand at home (described in “The Fire Denizen”, Beings, Anvil Publishing Inc., 1999).

Rita was able to get the male elemental off Pam with my Shiva wand and entrap it inside my blue witch’s ball. The female elemental, however, posed a greater challenge. It clung to Pam, its arms round her neck like a grotesque necklace, its head constantly close to Pam’s right ear. Rita and I performed a series of rituals using my Round Table dagger, a black candle, and a red candle. The sun was setting by this time, and Pam’s third eye remained “blocked” with what Sheila had referred to last week as a “white, wooden splinter”.

We were not ready to begin our quest for Luke.

We formed a circle inside the studio before I doused the lights. I located Rita directly across me, Pam on her left and Jason on her right, Chad on my left and Colt on my right, George between Pam and Colt, and Edie between Jason and Chad. Rita asked that two candles—a pink one and a blue one—be lit in a holder that Pam had brought for our quest, in the center of our circle.

I began this quest by leading the group through a progressive relaxation exercise, after which I brought Colt, gently, to a state of semi-hypnosis. I made a slow countdown and regressed him to a moment in time past midnight Sunday, November 28, 1999, five minutes before the fateful car accident.

“Are you there?”

“Yes.”

I asked him to identify the driver, Luke, and his sister in the front passenger seat, and to speak in the present tense, “as though in a dream”. He was unable to identify Luke’s clothing, which, to me, was an indication that his defenses were still up.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking—out the car window.”

“What do you see?”

“Everything is dark. Darkness.”

“What are you thinking?”

No response.

“Is the car stereo on?”

“Yes.”

“Do you hear the music playing?”

“Yes.”

“Can you identify it?”

“Yes. No. I’ve heard it before, but I don’t know its name. It’s a rock number.”

“Look ahead of you. Look at the car that’s suddenly stopped in front of you. I want you to describe the car, its color, and its plate number.

“Do you see the car?”

“No. I don’t see anything.”

He was absolutely terrified. I made an effort to lead him through the regression twice more. He had told me that he was “fully conscious” before the car crash, but that the next thing he could remember was that he was “inside a taxi” as they were being rushed to hospital.

He had been place in the front passenger seat of the taxi, had looked back, and saw Luke in the rear passenger seat. Even as he was narrating that scene, I knew that Luke was already dead by then. I knew that Colt knew it, too. I wanted Colt to regain his memory of that gap in time, activate his psychic vision, see where Luke’s spirit had gone after the crash, and converse with it.

Colt, however, became more and more unresponsive to me each time. I decided that he was not ready for this exercise.

There was something that I needed to clarify with him, however, before proceeding with the quest.

“You pushed him away,” I whispered to him, “and it’s made you feel guilty. You feel guilty about it up to now. I want you to know that there’s nothing to feel guilty about. We all have survival instincts, and you simply, spontaneously, responded with yours.”

I felt that this feeling of guilt would prevent Colt from seeing Luke’s spirit during this quest. Likewise with Pam, who also still harbored feelings of guilt, looking at me desperately from time to time during the quest because she could neither see nor sense Luke, and still thinking that this inability was due to the “white, wooden splinter”.

I instructed Rita to astrally travel in time to the snap quest that Pam, Jing, and I held on the corner of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue the afternoon of Tuesday, November 30, 1999, to affirm what we had experienced.

“Do you see the bridge of pink light that Jing made?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you see Luke?”

“Yes, sir, he’s on Jing’s side of the street. He looks lost and confused.”

“Does he see Jing?”

“No, sir.”

“Does he see the bridge of pink light?”

“Yes, sir, but it’s very weak. He doesn’t know that he’s supposed to cross it. There are two elementals crossing the bridge, and he’s afraid of them.”

I instructed Rita to disconnect, and to astrally travel in space to EDSA.

“Is Luke still there?”

“Yes, sir. He still looks lost and confused. He’s very, very tired. He keeps walking up to passersby to talk to them, and he doesn’t understand why they don’t see him or respond to him.

“He’s also afraid. He can see other spirits, and he’s afraid of them. Especially of the elementals, sir.”

“Where is he now? Is he near the seminary?”

“No, sir.”

“Try and ask him to come here.”

“Yes, sir.” Then: “He won’t come, sir. He’s afraid to leave the place where he—“

“Go to him, astrally, and take him here.”

“Yes, sir.”

We waited a few minutes, Afterwards Rita declared: “He’s now standing near the entrance, in front of the double doors. But he won’t come near us.”

George affirmed this.

“Describe him.”

“He’s covered with blood. The right side of his face, his right shoulder, and the right side of his chest are—smashed. His clothes are bloody and torn and dirty.”

“Does he know that he’s passed away?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does he recognize Jason, and Pam, and Colt?”

“Yes, sir. And I’m trying to explain to him what we’re doing. He says that he hasn’t seen Jason and Pam in a long time, and that he’s wondered why.”

“Didn’t he see Pam, Jing, the family driver, and me when we pulled up along EDSA?”

“He says no, sir.”

“Did he—go inside—Loyola?”

“He says no, sir. But he was there on the street the night they brought his coffin out. He says that he saw Pam then, and that he called out to her, but that she didn’t hear him.”

A short pause.

“Sir, he’s asking me if it’s all right for him to go home, and if he can ever be allowed to do that.”

“Tell him, he can go home whenever he likes.”

“Yes, sir.”

I asked Rita to invite Luke to come closer to us. He did, but remained “standing outside the circle”, behind Colt and me.

We introduced ourselves, in a clockwise round, to Luke.

I then told Rita, “Ask her about ‘the light’.”

We learned that Luke had seen “the light” but refused to “go to it”. He became very emotional. He asked, again and again, why he had to die, and at such a young age. We did a round of messages for him.

“Does he see the light?”

“It’s right there, but he doesn’t even want to look at it.”

I suddenly felt a wave of warmth and peace wash over me. I intuitively knew what this meant. In my mind, I saw my departed son, Nelson, the way I saw him on the night I assisted him to “move on”, in a white barong Tagalog and black pants. I looked up at Rita. Both she and George affirmed what I could see.

Nelson walked up to Luke and encouraged him to listen to us. He eventually calmed down.

“He’s beginning to look cleaner,” Rita said. “There’s less blood on him.”

During this portion of the quest Jason, Pam, and Colt conversed with Luke, not without tears, asking him questions and obtaining his answers through Rita. Pam asked his forgiveness for her having been a “strict, conservative elder sister” who had imposed many restrictions and expectations on him. Luke warmed up to this. He gave her a hug, although she was unable to sense it. He ended up teasing him about all the boys he had introduced to her, none of whom had appealed to her. In the course of the conversation private, family jokes surfaced. Luke became “typically Luke”, the same one that Jason, Pam, and Colt had always known.

We greeted Pam a happy birthday, and Luke too. Nelson, Rita, and George then accompanied Luke “to the light”. Rita described Luke as being “very clean” and “very beautiful”.

Luke promised that he would come back as one of his family’s spirit guides and that he would communicate with Jason, Pam, and Colt via their dreams. The quest ended with a lift, and with a harmonious feeling among us.

The black candle was still burning away next to my room, and so I brought it outside and placed it in an ash heap of burnt, dried leaves, under a santol tree outside my window. After locking up the building I proposed taking everyone out to dinner, but Jason and Pam protested because they had to be home for a family dinner. I was sorry that Brent and Loida had been unable to join us but was relieved that this much-anticipated “Pamela” quest was over.

As I finish writing this volume Pam continues to be a trainee and a Questor. So far she has been on a total of 30 quests.

Yet, had I the choice, the freedom, and the privilege to do so, I would start all over again, way at the beginning, in September 1999. I would beg off teaching SHAMANS that second term, making my life a less complicated one, and, perhaps, by deliberately redirecting the flow of events, even preventing at least one tragedy from occurring. Yet, I know that we are what we are, and we have what we have, and the things that happen to us are the things that were meant to happen to us, because we are all a part of a grander design.

All these things, I accept.

I must be content.

But sorry that I do not have the power to turn back time.

—2000

Encouraging an earth-bound spirit to move on, spirit quest at the Chapel of The Most Blessed Sacrament, De La Salle University, February 24, 2011

Photo by Hedwig de Leon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

TONY PEREZ is a creative writer, playwright, poet, lyricist, painter, portraitist, fiber artist, and psychic journalist and trainer. He is one of the 100 Filipino recipients of the 1898-1998 Centennial Artists Awards of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. His other awards include the 13 Artists of the Philippines, the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas from the Writers Union of the Philippines, four National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle, a FAMAS Award for Best Story, five prizes from the Cultural Center of the Philippines Playwriting Contest, the National Fellowship for Drama from the Creative Writing Center of the University of the Philippines, the Irwin Chair in Creative Writing from Ateneo de Manila University, and a prize in photography from the Children’s Museum and Library, Inc. He was a member of the first official Philippine delegation to the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, in 2010.

Some of Mr. Perez’s works in Filipino have been translated into English, French, and Polish. His artworks have been showcased in 21 individual and group exhibits curated by Marian Pastor Roces, Nonon Padilla, Bobi Villanueva, Judy Sibayan, Lalyn Buncab, Nilo Ilarde, Ernie Patricio and Jun Veloso, Chari Elinzano, Reverend Father Loy Divino (CICM), and Raven Villanueva.

Mr. Perez holds an A.B. in Communication and a Cand. M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Ateneo de Manila University, an M.A. in Religious Studies, magna cum laude, from Maryhill School of Theology in New Manila, and certificates in Publication Design and Production from the Department of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin and Fundamentals of Graphic Design from the University of California at San Francisco. His master’s thesis, titled Pagsubok sa Ilang: Ikaapat na Mukha ni Satanas, was awarded the National Book Award for Theology and Religion by the Manila Critics Circle in 2006.

Mr. Perez has been working as a full-time Cultural Affairs Specialist at the Public Affairs Section of the Embassy of the U.S.A. in Manila since 1979. He conducts workshops titled “Writing from The Heart”, “Writing from The Creative Unconscious”, “Dramatherapy”, “Community Theater”, and art classes nationwide.

Mr. Perez has two sons, Nelson I. Miranda and Chito I. Miranda, and four granddaughters, Angelique Pearl Miranda, Nielsen Tegelan, Aubrey Rose Miranda, and Chevy Keith Miranda. His daughters-in-law are Agnes Tegelan and Ivy Vercasion. They live in Cubao, Quezon City, where Mr. Perez has resided since 1955.

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