Moonlight Memoirs: Tales of the "Wild"

If it weren't for the occasional hourly bus passing on the highway, there would be dead silence, or the sound of the crickets and the rustling of the leaves of the trees around the hospital where I work.

It was a cold chilly night, but I wanted to get some fresh air and "recharge" after a long day of nonstop work.

It was around 8PM and I couldn't resist the urge to update my twitter and check out my Facebook from my phone, outside the hospital ward for a few minutes. Some patients folks were hanging out on the benches near the entrance and there were quite a number of us outside to savor the gentle, albeit chilly early evening breeze.

I would pause every few minutes to think and stare off into the distance. The place where I worked was pretty isolated, maybe 10 minutes from town and was surrounded by lush foliage (read: there were many trees around). Beyond the reach of the lights and lamps, it really is quite dark.

Such an atmosphere was the fodder for tales of hidden ghouls and ghosts.

And I had heard quite a few that day alone...

The Case of the Mysterious Death

     One night, in a town a few minutes drive away from the hospital, a hog-raiser bid his wife leave to go downstairs to watch his sow deliver its new piglets. He never came back upstairs...his wife found him outside, dead...apparently scratched to death. There was no other visible cause, they said. It seemed that something came down and scratched him, injuring him so completely. As to what it was, they could not say... but there was talk of a mysterious woman who everyone believed was an aswang... 

     That was three nights ago, and to this night, after dark, no townsfolk could be seen wandering after dark...all were in fear.

The Silent Watcher

     "That's not all, Doc," Ma'am J., the nurse on duty with me last night told me, "One time, the guard and some of the relatives of the patients were outside the hospital one night, when suddenly, they heard a sound coming from above...like a squeak." "And then...?" I asked, with a slow smile. "Doc, it was like a big bird-like creature with massive wings...!"

     "It was just there, seemingly watching them." she added.

     (I have heard that there were more ghoul and ghost stories from people in the hospital. This second one was just one of the many, but true (as claimed :-)) scary stories that some people still tell.)

"Chop-Chop Baby"

     One of the nurses said that a week ago, there was a child of about 4 years old who was fished out of one of the mountain lakes in the next municipality. 

     Well, parts of him, anyway.

     According to story (and with pictures to prove it), someone found the grossly dismembered body of a  4 year-old boy in the lake. Pieces of him were apparently floating in the water. 

      The child has not been identified, and no one has stepped forward to claim the body. The child's gender was the only thing they could determine, but as to who he is, and what distinctive facial features there were, none could help. He simply was just an unknown, purported to have been chopped up mercilessly and dumped into the lake.

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It all started yesterday afternoon when i got annoyed that a patient's mother was pleading with me to hurry up and give her a prescription so they could go home because it was getting dark. She and her patient had arrived really late for the OPD consults (of which i had been working straight all day) and I had just finished suturing a delicate case, so I was not in the best mood to be ordered around that time. "Please hurry doc, my parents don't know where I am and it is getting dark..." she asked me. "How come, Ma'am, how old are you exactly?" I muttered under my breath while I was auscultating the patient. (But that's not a very nice thing to say.)

I've never seen anyone so jumpy (at her age too, jk)  about not being home before dark... And after I did finish with her patient, and gave the baby what he needed, I got to find out why. The nurse on duty told me of the rash of rumors going on about how there was a resident aswang in the next town and how the townspeople were scared to death of it. ("Maybe it wasn't just the scratching, Ma'am, maybe he died 'cause he had a heart attack from the surprise...his girlfriend (or at the very least, someone he owed a lot of money too, who had long fingernails, haha) probably threatened to tell his wife and since he wouldn't let her, she scratched him some and he died of a heart attack from the fright," I joked. :-p

I tweeted that, later that night outside the hospital, thought some more about it, which is why now you have just read this story. It is entirely fictional, hearsay...so far.

Sweet dreams...

Love, 

~ S.