MANILA, Philippines – Urban legends tell us that spirits warn the living, seek justice for untimely deaths, or send a specific message.

And Fr. Joselino “Joey” Tuazon, parish priest of San Roque in Pasay City, says these wandering souls are most likely seeking prayers to help them get to their final destination.

“Our faith teaches us that all of us have a soul that lives on when we die. In dealing with spirits, you have to read with the eyes of faith. Otherwise, you cannot see the signs or understand what is going on,” he says.

Tuazon is known in religious circles for his ability to sense spirits. Sometimes the vision is very detailed, like the one in a Makati seminary whose cassock sleeve, hand and fingers he still remembers vividly.

Other times, he simply feels a need to sprinkle more holy water on a certain spot without knowing what took place there.

“There are also instances like the sudden flash of images in one’s mind—images of the departed who could be asking for prayers,” he says.

Fr. Jose Francisco Syquia, chief exorcist of the Archdiocese of Manila and author of the book “Exorcism: Encounters with the Paranormal and the Occult,” says that “when a soul manifests itself to the living, it is basically a cry for help.”

Syquia quotes from the work of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich who said: “There are also souls neither in heaven, purgatory, nor hell, but wandering the earth, in trouble and in anguish, aiming at something they are bound to perform.

“They haunt deserted places, ruins, tomb, and the scenes of their past misdeeds.”

Spiritual combat

Tuazon has also engaged in spiritual combat, the most memorable of which involved three hostile spirits who harassed him in his parish church, in his old room on the third floor.

The room faced west and got very warm in the afternoon, so Tuazon had the glass windows tinted in three layers, with plywood reinforcing its insulation.

“As a result, the room became very dark. I also became very sickly, and there were many accidents after that,” he says.

One day, a London-based nurse who happens to be a friend of Tuazon’s sister visited the priest at the parish office.

“She said she did not know what had driven her to visit. But she asked to see my room, so I took her there,” Tuazon recalls.

When they reached the third floor the nurse refused to enter his room, saying: “Father, I cannot stand it. They are too strong.”

Then she started crying and asked that they go downstairs.

The nurse later explained that she possessed a third eye, and that she sensed three menacing entities in the priest’s room.

She told Tuazon to move to another room because, he says, the three “have the capacity to hurt me.”

According to the nurse, Tuazon has a third eye like herself.

“But she said mine is closed,” he says. “She said I may not see the spirits but I can sense them. She also advised me not to find a means to open my third eye because the spirits will never leave me in peace.”

Pregnant women

Tuazon mentioned the incident to a colleague, who told him to tear down the plywood and keep his room always lighted.

The colleague consulted a psychic, who said the three spirits were a man who committed several murders in his lifetime and two women who were pregnant when they died.

Tuazon says that according to the psychic, one of the women died in a botched abortion, and the other was abandoned by her child’s father and went mad.

Shortly after heeding his colleague’s advice, Tuazon began having disturbing experiences.

When he was having breakfast one morning, his oatmeal bowl flew a few feet from his seat and broke.

Then two of his Sto. Niño statues shook and fell to the floor; their heads separated “as if neatly sliced away.”

Says Tuazon: “I suspect it was one of the women who caused it. The bowl is similar to the outline of a pregnant belly. And the Sto. Niño, as we know, represents the Child Jesus.”

Then there was the invisible wound that the priest believes was caused by one of the spirits.

“I was just going to turn on the air-conditioner one day when I felt a very sharp pain just behind my left shoulder, as if someone stabbed it with a knife,” he says, recalling that he was moved to scream.

No wound was found in the area, and all medical tests showed nothing. But Tuazon endured the on-and-off pain of this invisible injury for a year.

As a recourse, he included the three spirits in the list of Mass intentions kept in a sealed envelope at the center of the San Roque altar to this day.

Fighting with prayers

The attacks continued until the parish’s resources became sufficient to build a new convent and a new room for Tuazon, this time at the northeastern side of the church.

“But late one night, for some reason, I left the keys to the tabernacle in the old room. I didn’t want to go back there but I had to because there were Masses set the next day and the tabernacle had to be opened,” the priest says.

He took a while to muster his courage and then set off:

“Before climbing the stairs to the third floor, I called out to the spirits that I was on my way up and that I only wanted to get my keys. Once inside the room, I began to sing the ‘Salve Regina’ (Hail Holy Queen) loudly.”

Tuazon was about to pick up his keys from the floor when something suddenly rode him piggyback and tried to strangle him from behind.

“I recited the Divine Mercy Prayer very loudly: ‘You died, Jesus, but the source of life poured out for souls ...’ Whoever it was loosened its grip. By the time I reached ‘Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One ...’ it had released me,” he says.

First encounter

Tuazon’s first encounter with a spirit happened in 1975. He was 14 then and studying at the Our Lady of Guadalupe minor seminary in Makati:

“I was sleeping but was awakened by something that felt like a blanket hanging on the left side of my bed. I followed it with my eyes. I saw a sleeve and a hand. And the fingers were very vivid. With light streaming from a nearby window, I was able to make out the neckline of a cassock. But there was no head.

“I could not scream. I froze and closed my eyes. I prayed the Our Father, Hail Mary, Apostles’ Creed, all prayers known to me. When I opened my eyes, it was gone.”

Tuazon reported the incident to his spiritual director, who forbade him from telling anyone else.

“But being young, I still told a classmate and the story spread. I was not reprimanded for telling it,” he says.

In 1991, as a newly ordained priest assigned to the Immaculate Conception Parish in Pasig, Tuazon saw a spirit that initially appeared seated on the chair at the foot of his bed, like Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

Headless apparition

Believing it was a dream, he went back to sleep. But the spirit later raised his bed off the floor and turned on the radio in the nearby office.

Tuazon offered his morning Mass and prayed 15 mysteries of the Holy Rosary for the spirit, which never bothered him again.

But he reported the incident to the parish priest, who told him simply: “Ah, so the kind one has visited you.”

He subsequently learned from the cook that the same spirit had earlier showed itself to the parish priest in a mirror as a headless apparition.

It also appeared to a new priest in the parish five years later as a floating cassock that went right through the wall of the convent’s stair landing, he says.

Third eye

Tuazon’s third eye, while closed, serves him well during certain house blessings.

At a house in Merville, Parañaque, the priest felt compelled to use more holy water than usual in the maids’ quarters.

“The members of the household looked at each other while I was doing it. Later they asked me why; I said I didn’t know,” he says.

The house owner later said he requested the blessing after one of the maids claimed to see a long-haired woman with piercing red eyes and dressed in a black gown floating in the shower stall in their quarters.

On Vergel Street in his own parish, Tuazon again found himself sprinkling more holy water at the stair landing of an apartment.

The landlord eventually confessed that tenants had been unable to stand the man who appeared there nightly.

“Spirits are everywhere,” says Tuazon. “Where there is a church or a convent, that’s where they are because each church is a center of spiritual combat. Besides, these are the places where we pray, and they need our prayers.”

What to pray

There are varying reasons why spirits refuse to cross over or, as some say, “go to the light.”

Attachments to material things or surviving relatives are the usual causes, says Fr. Armand Tangi of the Society of St. Paul.

Says Tuazon: “For souls who cannot cross over, we are not really sure of their final destination.

“St. Matthew was clear that at the end of time, the lambs would go to the right and the goats to the left. But until that happens, there is nothing categorical about these wandering souls. In the meantime, we will pray for them.”

Tuazon recommends a series of prayers for a spirit that manifests itself:

“Recite the Apostle’s Creed, followed by the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be and Divine Mercy Prayer (also known as the 3 o’clock Prayer).

“If the spirit was a person known to you, it is also good to have Masses celebrated for the repose of his soul.

“The Divine Mercy Prayer is a very powerful prayer, I recommend it all the time because I have prayed it over dying persons, and have seen them become at peace. I believe it also helps the wandering ones who need prayers.”