The house on the ridge overlooking Taal lake

About Midnight Stories: October is the month of spooks and things that go bump in the night, so what better than a series of scary stories to get you in the mood for Halloween? Have a spine-tingling story to share? Email them at submissions@gmanews.tv. Read on.

Illustration by Jannielyn Ann Bigtas

They were a family of means, both lawyers and art collectors who raised seven children in comfort and privilege.

They maintained several sprawling mansions including a weekend house on a ridge overlooking Taal lake.

One reached the main door of the great house through a circular driveway, framed by trees and flowering shrubs like the hardy bougainvillea.

The house itself was filled with art and antiques: from the paintings on the walls by national artists like Amorsolo, to the sculptures, porcelain jars to the furniture, even the santos that the old families were wont to acquire.

As for the children, there were the required piano and violin lessons, ballet classes for the girls, tutors, nannies, schooled abroad.

It was impressed upon the children that these were necessary to develop in them the qualities appropriate to their gentle birth and they accepted this without question.

Sometimes the lessons were held in the veranda of the Tagaytay house during summer vacations with a scenic view of the lake and the daughters would pirouette to the music of the breeze turning the leaves of the surrounding coffee trees, glissade like the butterflies hovering over the hydrangea beds. And the sons would worry the strings of a violin would wear down the ivory keys of the grand piano in the main living room under the watchful eyes of friends of the family from the conservatory.

And they never lacked audience for their private recitals because their parents always had guests over: old theater friends, artists, actors.

Dinner was always a noisy affair with different conversations going on all at once, crystal goblets chinking,  silverware clinking on plates, wine being poured (the children were used to drinking wine having traveled extensively with their parents to Europe) and the maids hurrying to and fro with the various courses.sometimes the father cooked (he was the consummate chef) or one of the guests did.

But under all the gaiety ran an undercurrent of the unexplained, the mysterious, even the horrific.

Of the sudden loud thumps in the hallway outside one's door at night, of something heavy being dragged past like a creature from an Edgar Allan Poe story.

Or a guest who would wake up in the deep watches of the night to feel like someone was sitting on his chest, suffocating him until prayers would send the batibat or bangunot of Ilocano folklore (who would take the form of a huge, old fat woman) - scurrying back to its tree in the garden.

Guests seem to pick up on it even before entering the treshold of the great house, especially the children among them. They would draw back suddenly or bury their face in their father's shoulder or hang back behind their mother's skirt.

Whatever entities these were — they seemed to have taken a shine to a young niece of the family — a fair-haired and fair-skinned baby.

Every time the baby's family was spending the weekend, a sound not unlike a thousand tiny bells or wind chimes would 'march' its way from the main living area
and up the grand staircase to wherever the baby would be sleeping.

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. The tintinabulation would galvanize the help into action.

Frantic nannies would rush up the steps two at a time and fall all over themselves trying to get to the baby's room first but as soon as they yank open the door, a rush of wind would hit them and disappear and the sound of tiny tinkling bells along with it.

Once, a boy of four — the son of one of the family's artsy friends from the film industry — who was always mortally afraid to enter the house was seen pedaling his arms and running his hands atop the colorful bougainvillea blossoms lining the ridge, to the accompaniment of the sound of a thousand tiny bells when the family would insist time and time again that they did not own or keep a single bell or chime in the house!

So the grownups discussed the mystery among themselves over endless cups of barako and a game of boggle in the veranda or the drawing room over many a chilly night. Some offered that it could be the ghosts of ancestors that came with the burnay or paintings or antique furniture from Paoay, Ilocos Norte.

The artsy crowd surmised it could be elementals from the lake seeing as the house stood on a ridge overlooking.

But even after the children grew up and moved out leaving the great house to the care of house sitters (who never stayed after dark and who would find every door to every cupboard and aparador open in the weekend house in the morning), they never solved the mystery.

And if you ever find yourself in that part of Tagaytay on a weekend and happen upon the house on the ridge, you can  ask the caretakers to allow you to explore it for yourself.

I'm sure the wind-chime entities would be happy to put on a show for you, especially if your party includes little fair-skinned children.

They might even invite you to stay.

Indefinitely. — LA, GMA News