the vigil

When someone died in the family, we always tend to have the vigil, for the family to pray and for the people to cherish the memories that were left by the person died. But did you know it is important to guard the corpse even though there are lots of people around. Thus someone must stay awake to guard it all night.

When Eva heard the bad news that her boyfriend’s father died due to heart attack, he immediately flown there. Since she was never been in the place, Jason, her boyfriend had to fetch her in the airport. Then, they immediately drove to his house and Eva realized how creepy the place was.The house was surrounded with huge trees like they were hundred years old.

Nightfall came and visitors started to come, some you would know were from the cities and others were just neighbors. Early in the evening, it was still so noisy, people playing cards, talking, and praying. When it was about midnight, people started to leave one by one and only the immediate family was left. Exhausted of the flight, Eva wanted to go to bed but Jason wanted her stay for a while since only few people are left awake. Midnight passed and she noticed that only her and Jason stayed awake. But moments later she fell asleep leaving Jason with no one to talk, thus he fell asleep too.The next day, Jason’s mother was quite bothered asking everyone who stayed awake all night. Jason pretended that he did.

When it was the day of the funeral, all people were filled with great sadness, burying the father. But when the evening came, it was not too long for the mother to know if Jason did stay awake that night. People still came to sympathize the entire family. While entertaining the guest, Eva notice somebody was standing under the tree. She asked Jason who the man was and maybe asked him to join the crowd. When Jason took a good look at him, he noticed it was his father. "I'm just hallucinating", he thought. So he asked her mother if it was someone from his father’s family since it looked like his father. His mother approaches the man and suddenly screamed. It was his father. People were terrified and looked what had happened; they saw that something enormous snatched the lifeless man toward the darkness ‘til it disappeared. The mother immediately confronted Jason if he did guard his father’s corpse that night, there was no reason left to lie after what he had seen, so he admitted the truth. They immediately went back to the cemetery and dig the coffin right away. There they found no body but a trunk of a banana tree.

The neighborhood took action immediately. They gather around the tree where they had found the lifeless father and had a noise barrage. They kept on banging silver wares, tambourine and shouting to give the corpse back. Hours later, the Bal-Bal (monster who steals corpse) with his teeth and claws so sharp, appeared above the tree; threw the body back to the people and yelled them to scram. People were so scared that they ran so fast but eventually felt happy that they had the body back. Though everybody got so tired after what had happened, still Eva and Jason can’t sleep and stayed awake all night.


facts:
Stated by a friend
location: Negros Occidental, Phil.