During the “witches’ feast” hosted by US Ambassador MaryKay Carlson in her official residence just before Halloween night, saying “Booo!” was giving a compliment.
As always, Mrs. Carlson pulled out all stops to make her home “Spooktacular,” ghostly and ghastly. Skeletons were taken out of the closet. Skulls made eye-catching, if not hair-raising, table centerpieces. “Insects” crawling on the wall made hairs stand on end. And cobwebs were swept off one’s mind and onto tables.
Fright night was fraught with fun. The gin, in various concoctions, gave a chill. Blood curdling were the screams from the “spooky bathroom,” where a masked man, a cousin of Dracula probably, was waiting motionless outside the bathroom door before springing a surprise on the clueless. Thank God I lived to tell the tale, Mr. Aubrey Carlson!
Ambassador Carlson was Morticia Addams with short hair. She took pains to put on garish makeup. Around her neck, she wore a string of skulls hand-carved in Argentina, when she was assigned to the American mission there.
She went ghost-hunting in Dapitan market in Metro Manila in mid-year and picked up an assortment of hair-raising décor that she assembled in various nooks around the residence. When she goes on to her next post (hopefully, after more Halloweens in the Philippines), you could say she would be packing sticks and bones from Dapitan to take with her.
Dinner, curated by Soil Catering, was ghastly, but the flavors, heavenly.
It started with crisp tofu shaped like a coffin, with edible petals strewn around it. It was followed by crab salad that you scooped into white crunchy kropek that was made to look like a white ghost. This was followed by pumpkin soup served in a gourd carved like a skull. The main event was Wagyu Bistek Tagalog with Japanese Garlic Rice and Honey-Cured Egg, garnished with a large, halved bell pepper that looked like a beating heart. Dessert was champorado mousse (it did really taste like champorado), garnished with dark chocolate in the shape of a skull. Dinner was skull-fully prepared, indeed!
Ambassador Carlson was asked if she believed in ghosts, or has ever seen one. She said she hasn’t. But one guest, interior designer and creative entrepreneur Maja Olivares-Co, sure has.
By the time she finished sharing her experiences with ghosts, I was at the edge of my seat.
Once, she recalled, a businessman with the initials V. J. asked her to design his office, located in an old building in Malate. After stepping into the bare office, she flatly turned him down. Maja says she saw a woman floating in the air, hands outstretched.
“She was asking for help,” believes Maja, who calls a spade a spade. (Once she told off the French bodyguards of President Emmanuel Macron, who warned her not to take photos of him on a street in New York City. She told the bodyguard that wasn’t the law in the United States, and turned to the US Secret Service agent assigned to the French president for confirmation. When he nodded, she started clicking on her phone camera.) Later on, the Malate businessman V.J. admitted to Maja that a woman was killed violently in the building, and he already had the space “exorcised.” Still, Maja refused the project.
At another time, she was in a posh resort in the Philippines. She was in her casita with her son and she heard a woman saying, “I found you!”
“She sounded like a Caucasian in her 40s,” recalls Maja. When she and her son opened the doors to the terrace, they found the tiny footprints of a child, from end to end, of the terrace. According to whispers, a child may have drowned near that casita and Maja was not the first to see the tiny footprints.
She also recalls hearing a woman playing Rachmaninoff in the living room of a luxurious Parisian apartment, where she and her family were guests. Maja says she assured the woman that they were not intruders and that they would not take over her space. “Please allow us to stay here,” she implored the source of the music. The playing stopped.
Maja believes these “ghost” sightings and unusual sounds come from “souls who are not at rest.” She prays fervently for them
“I have never seen anything evil,” she says.
Well, aside from ghost stories, there were other juicy entrees during the dinner. The witches drew up names that, according to their sources, are the strongest aspirants for the Philippine presidency in 2028. Of course, some witches shrieked at the choices.
One guest said, “Someone new can still emerge for 2028.”
And to that, all the witches turned to their crystal balls for clues. Real life can be scary.