The Man Watching My Niece

By: chinchai

This story happened in Cavite, a few months ago, in my sister's new home.

Strange things started when my sister and her family transferred to their new home. My niece started to get sick and would wake up screaming in the middle of night. Sometimes my sister would see that her daughter seemed to be talking to someone my sister couldn't see, though my sister couldn't understand her words. My niece is still learning to talk (she's one year and four months old when this story happened,) but you would know how toddlers respond when somebody plays or talks to them.

A few months had passed and my niece doesn't seem to get better. They decide to bring her home to our province, hoping that she would get better. And true enough, she recovered and hadn't been sick ever since they arrived. It was only then when my brother in-law told her the reason why he sent them home.

He said he saw a black man beside the bed, staring at my niece one night when she was sick and he couldn't move. He couldn't figure out the face, but he knew that it was a man based on the shape. After the sighting, he left the light on all night long to be sure that he could watch his daughter sleep. He didn't see the black man again, but sometimes, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he could feel that someone is inside their house. He was alone in the house after my sister and niece went home to the province. He told the story to their neighbors who live across the street, and a neighbor told him that she had seen an old woman by the window several times already. The old woman was the previous owner's mother, who died in the house.

My brother in law still lives in that house but doesn't come home often. Instead, he usually sleeps in the barracks to avoid seeing the man again.