The Witching Hour

It's past 4AM on Friday night and I'm unable to sleep.

Of course, I know exactly why. I woke up this morning in order to make it on time for a client meeting (from one of my classes this semester), spent an exhausting day walking through the site and collapsed as soon as I got home at 7PM-- only to re-wake myself at 9:30PM to go to a good friend's birthday party on the Lower East Side.

Now, I'm back at home, awake and annoyed, because I need to meet someone else at 8:30AM.

Another friend, who I'm meeting at noon, just texted me and my neighbor is playing his cello.

So odd that there are so many random people awake at this hour, but none of us are actually interacting with others...

For some reason, my imagination is starting to get the better of me and I'm thinking of ghosts and other supernatural beings.


And this is all reminding me of being back in the Philippines this summer...

For a strongly Catholic country, there were definitely a lot of superstitions going around.

As an example, this one rural village in the mountains that I stayed in had a creek where people would bathe. But nobody would go there after dark, due to the frequent sightings of ghosts there. The story went that there was a scorned woman in that village, who ended up hanging herself on a tree in the mountains. Now, she appears as an attractive ghost to unsuspecting men that follow her-- ultimately off the edge of a cliff, meeting her in the afterlife.

And I also met some other interesting folks who actually said that they were able to see spirits-- similar to the kid in "The Sixth Sense".

Imelda Marcos-- the crazy first lady of the Philippines from the 1960's to 80's-- did some horrible things to people in her country and there are tons of stories of angry spirits still restless in certain areas of Manila.

Oddly enough, some of the Filipinos I know who have visited NY haven't noticed anything strange at the World Trade Center (i.e. 9-11 attacks) site.

They theorize that perhaps the way that the country united in the immediate aftermath calmed the souls...

Strange late night ruminations I'm having, huh?