Lorega folk adjust to life with ghosts

He lives, eats and sleeps with the dead inside the Lorega San Miguel municipal cemetery since he was a boy.

Now employed as a cemetery caretaker at P1,000 a month, the 50-year-old Arsenio Puentenegra said he has gotten used to encountering spirits during his nightly patrols.

“Sa una mo dagan ko sa kakuyaw pero ma immune ra man ka ma dugay (At first, I used to run from fear but I have gotten used to it),” he told Cebu Daily News.

He said his need to support his wife, Jocelyn, and son, Jaylord, overrides his fear of the dead and spirits.

“Life’s been very difficult for us.  Since we lack money, we have not even brought my son to the doctor for consultation,” he said.

Puentenegra said his 13-year-old Jaylord has the comprehension of a child, preventing him from finishing Grade 1.

The Puentenegra family lives in a shanty built beside the Lorega cemetery tombs along with other residents.

Encounters

Some use tombs enclosed in their shanties as their dining table while others sleep on it.

Others built their shanties on top of tombs and use tombs for their stairs.

Jene Quiñanola, a 71-year-old pensioner, said he can’t afford to transfer to another place.

He also makes a living as a security watcher in a nearby Gawad Kalinga condominium project site, where he earns P250 per day.

Puentenegra recounted to Cebu Daily News his encounters with the spirits.

One time, he said, he saw  Caucasian looking children playing in a “hammock” tied to a tree which used to grow near the cemetery’s entrance.

“I would see them play but I could not see their faces,” he said.

Untouched

Another time, he heard something thrown and break as he slept on a tomb, only to see nothing in front of him.

Puentenegra said he would also hear voices of an elderly man and woman talking.

The voices came from inside the temporary chamber where bones exhumed from the demolished tombs are now placed.

He said the lot where the temporary bone chamber stood used to be the burial ground for Air Force Major Oscar Salis, a pilot who died in a crash during World War II, and members of his family.

Although the Salis remains were already removed and brought by family members to Manila, their empty tombs have remained untouched.

About 400 cadavers buried at the Lorega cemetry were exhumed since December 2010 to give way to a Gawad Kalinga urban poor condominium for cemetery occupants who would pay for their units at P300 a month.

Bones were temporarily kept in an improvised chamber located at the back of the construction site.

Exhumed

Puentenegra said he was not included among the first 60 beneficiaries of the first GK condominium.

He hopes to get his unit in succeeding GK projects. The construction of GK’s first condominium project was funded from the pork barrel funds of former congressman Raul del Mar.

Also funded by the non-government organization Action for Nurturing Children and Environment, the housing project is expected to be completed before the year ends.

The lot where the bone chamber stood housed a two-story structure that was earlier used as daycare center for the Lorega children.

Classes were held on the upper floor while the Salis family’s empty tombs remained on the lower floor.

When the daycare center was relocated to another area, Lorega barangay officials decided to use its lower floor as a temporary chamber for bones exhumed in Dec. 2010.

Puentenegra said they placed the bones on sacks and properly labeled these with the dead’s name, date of birth and the date of their death for proper tracking.

Playing tricks

The chamber was sprayed with chemicals by city health personnel to make sure they don’t smell smell, he said.

Puentenegra holds the key to the temporary bone chamber.

He also placed a huge wooden cross in a corner of the bone chamber where relatives could say their prayers and light candles for their dead.

“Sometimes the spirits of those inside the bone chamber would play tricks on me),” he told Cebu Daily News.

Puentenegra recalled that when he looked for a sack of bones which relatives wanted to claim, he couldn’t find it.

When he finally gave up, he found it hanging on a nail in one corner of the bone chamber.

“Pero naanad na man sad ko ani kay mao man ni akong panginabuhian.  (But I have gotten used to this because this is what I do for a living),” he said. /Doris C. Bongcac, Chief of Reporters