Sunday.
Shift begins at 10 in the evening. I have three agents working with me in a large building occupied by less than twenty people. Our office sits on the third floor of the white-washed edifice, and with barely-lit hallways to cross before reaching our work stations, expect to be spooked as you pass by the empty rooms.
My place of work is replete with stories of spectral encounters. There's this little boy who peeks behind empty office cubicles. One time, a delivery guy from Jollibee got his biggest scare when the kid joined him inside the elevator at 2 in the morning.
I'm not sure how he got out without shrieking all the way to the lobby.
There's also this faceless male adult often seen near the elevator. He wears a white upper garment and tends to disappear shortly after being seen. A white lady is also spotted walking past walls. Among the three entities known to us, the lady makes the least appearance.
In a place where strange encounters become ordinary occurrences, the living residents have gotten used to the invisible presence that it frighten us only when we realize that we're sharing spaces with the dead. Sure, the elevator opens at the lobby before buttons are being pressed, or our peripheral vision tells us of human figures disappearing in the dark but these are merely harmless encounters.
However, there are moments when courage simply betrays us. These are times when the hauntings break all forms of reason that it resigns us to our basic instincts of fearing what cannot be explained.
One Sunday evening, I was left with two agents because the other one decided to work remotely at home. The hallway leading to our office was darker than usual because of the broken light in front of our room. I had no intentions of getting frightened, but there's no doubt the vibe on the floor was heavier than the previous nights.
So I decided to plug my music player in hopes of shaking the blues away. Thirty minutes into our shift, a loud thud was heard outside the room. The sound was akin to a plus-sized person trying to force himself against the wall.
An agent thought a robber might be trying to sneak in. Perhaps one of the nearby offices was being burglarized. Gut feel was telling me otherwise. Despite the hair on my skin rising, I turned up the volume of the speakers and switched to club music to show my defiance. Light were turned on as well to keep that darkness from getting in.
Had the loud thud went on, I honestly don't know what to do. Should I speak the Creator's name to drive the spirit away? Should I call on the Blessed Mother like what the priests-exorcists do. The night was still young and had the haunting persisted, I doubt if the agents would still report to the office the next night.
Fortunately, the loud thud ceased at once. Meanwhile, clairvoyant friends from Twitter were telling me that it was a dark creature who followed someone to work. As to how they sensed the creature's presence, I leave to their extra-sensory abilities. One of them even suggested to leave sweets near the door before I go home in the morning.
Nobody spoke of the loud thud during the course of the night. I also did my best to avoid having trips to the bathroom out of fear that I might bump into something in the hallway. Much as I have grown used to my own encounters with the spirits, a wrong apparition may force me to scream in falsetto voice all the way back to our room.
The agents told me it was the first time they had such experience. They have gotten used to the split-second "malik-mata," but a loud thud, they said was out of the ordinary. I was ready to believe that what we heard came from an outsider. However, an agent from the morning shift also told me that they too heard a loud bang, this time from the room next to our office earlier that weekend.
Come to think of it, I was told a few weeks ago that an agent from the night shift (the one who decided to work at home) heard some scratching noises on the wall as he passed by the hallway directly across that room. It was five in the morning and their workers are not expected to arrive until seven.
The agent also claimed that the door was ajar when he passed by it, but when he returned from his bathroom break minutes later, the door was firmly shut.
Word spreads that its new occupants seem wary of strangers. Weeks into their office refurbishment, nobody knows the kind of business they engage in.
Meanwhile as the mystery of the strange noises unfold, I have this feeling that the loud thumping will go on. I am convinced that it was never the kid nor the old guy who's responsible for our entrenchment, As to when the haunting happens next, only time will tell.
We will just have to wait and listen as ghost stories are told on the floor.