Which is witch?

It was about two weeks ago when I met up with some friends that I haven’t seen in the longest time (read: since I graduated college more than a year ago). In between talking about new jobs, burning out and happy crushes, one friend started her story by saying that their household helper is a witch. Yah, very casually. She continued talking about her guardian who’s been taking care of her ever since she was a kid. My friend and her mom have been travelling a lot lately and her younger sister is busy at school. That leaves the two helpers and a driver at home most of the time. While seniority — with all the perks and authority it merits — was expected from the older guardian, surely it wasn’t enough to prompt the driver to quit his job and leave. Later on, my friend found out that their driver got so sick that he went to an albularyo. He found out that he wasn’t just cursed but also poisoned for so long as well. (Think puking something mud-like. It’s so not normal.) It didn’t take much for my friend to be convinced to finally get their house checked when the senior helper was away. As the driver and my friend picked up another expert manggagamot to examine their house, she couldn’t help but recall the past instances that they shrugged off and dismissed as simply “weird.” Kinda like the time the helper would stare her down (my friend jokingly thought the helper had “hidden desires” for her), the many times she would be overly secretive about her belongings, or even something as simple as that constant feeling of negative energy in their home. The manggagamot easily confirmed everything. There were spells not just on every corner of the house, but on the people who lived in it as well. The senior helper had been casting them ever since she started working there. Now, my friend and her family continue to fight off the negative energy around them and it’s not really as simple as dismissing their senior helper. Defeating Filipino witchcraft often involves things like having an anting-anting, avoiding hospitals and cemeteries (apparently, witches harness their powers from dead bodies) and playing a lot of mind games (you have to make them want to leave on their own).

While I don’t necessarily believe everything the mangagamot said (I’m very particular with proof), my friend’s story did make me question my sensitivity to the energy of the people around me. After all, who knows how many supernatural beings are actually really close to us?

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