My BFF's Aunt is a Monster

I want to write scary again, soon.

I am in the thick of revising (nay, rewriting) my historical novel, and I keep wanting to put ghosts in. Alas, its plot won't have any in the way of ghosts unless I put in a nightmare scene.

Anyway, about this story itch.

I keep thinking back to this trip I made with my girlfriends between high school and college. What if my BFF's aunt was a monster?

Mmm.

Friday the 13th

Are you superstitious about Friday the 13th?

I'm not. But when I was growing up in the Philippines, my family was superstitious about some other things.

For example:

Don't sweep uncooked rice or you will sweep good fortune out the door. (As a child, if I spilled uncooked rice, I had to pick up every grain.)

If you bite your tongue, someone is thinking of you. Name a letter and a person's name starting with that letter; they are thinking of you. (This is a fun game I do with my kids now.)

Jump at midnight on New Year's Eve and you will grow taller. (Didn't work too well for me.)

Serve round fruits and long food (like noodles) on New Year's Eve to ensure prosperity for the coming year.

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Are YOU superstitious?

A Grave Tradition

No pumpkins, no trick-or-treating, no costumes.

Halloween in the Philippines, as our family celebrated it when I was a young girl, was called "All Soul's Day" or Todos Los Santos on October 31st.

The first scary thing about the holiday was...the traffic jam created by all these cars lined up to go into the cemetery, Loyola Cemetery, where my mom's parents were buried. I remember the smell of candles and garlands of this fragrant flower called Sampaguita which vendors hawked along the way.

Once we got in to the cemetery, it was time to settle in for the rosary (I was Catholic then, LDS now). Usually one of the elder aunts recited it for us to follow along. It was really hard to concentrate because...

...sometimes I would see a hand rise up from behind the grave markers.



(photo by yveslecoq on Flickr)

Well, I imagined one...

It was also hard to concentrate on prayers because all around us was a big party.

Music. Loud laughter. Food spread on top of people's graves. The whole place blazed with lights from candles.

I thought then how rude of these people to not be solemn this day commemorating the dead.

But now that I think back, perhaps it was good to be celebrating the living, too!

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If you want to see how I celebrate Halloween today, come by my scary photo post (that needs a caption) on my blog "Pink Ink".