Old River: The Hidden Mystery of Roses

Trick or treat! Growing up in the countryside, I heard many stories about the supernatural and strange beings and entities. There were lots of tales about "aswang (Aswang is a mythical creature in Filipino folklore, known for shape-shifting and associated with nighttime and malevolent activities like eating human flesh)," tikbalang (Tikbalang is a creature from Philippine folklore that has been part of the country’s stories for a long time. It looks like a tall, skinny person with the head and hooves of a horse and very long limbs) , and other mythical creatures. Our house is at the end of our barangay, a lonely spot surrounded by mountains and trees.

Every night was quiet, especially back then when we didn’t have electricity. By 6PM, it felt like late at night. We used kerosene lamps, which made everything really dark. It was so dark that you didn’t even have the courage to step outside the house once it's 6PM. Sometimes even the sounds of the night and winds feel so creepy.

I had many terrifying experiences, but one stands out that we really can’t forget. It was a normal day, and we didn’t have viand. Since it was summer, we decided to catch crabs in the old river. In our hometown, during summer, the river runs dry, and you can find lots of small crabs hiding under the stones. We thought it would be a fun way to find something to eat.

(This is how the old river looks. I don’t have a more recent photo, so I used the old one I have on my phone.) - Staring @lhes on the left photo 😂

My two sisters and I went to the river, bringing a basin and a dipper with us. We usually use the dipper to catch the bigger crabs. The old river is far from our home, and we had to walk almost 1 kilometer to get there. There are no houses near the river, so it felt very quiet and empty.

When we reached the river, as we expected, it was dried out. We immediately started to check under the stones to find hiding crabs. We caught a few and decided to go further. Then, we noticed something strange and went to check it out. To our surprise, we found a pile of roses!

We looked at each other, amazed at how beautiful the roses were. They were not like the ordinary roses we planted at home because their petals were much bigger. They came in different colors—pink, red, and dark pink.

At first, we ignored the roses and went back to looking under the stones for crabs. But after walking about 40 or 50 steps, we found another pile of roses! This time, each of us picked one because we couldn’t ignore how beautiful they were. Then we continued on moving further to catch more crabs.

To our surprise, after walking another 40 or 50 steps, we found another pile of roses! We started wondering who could have placed those roses in the old river. There were no houses nearby, and no one ever came there except us, especially when the river had water because sometimes, we would wash our clothes there or swim, but we had never seen anyone else around. It felt strange to find so many roses in such an empty place.

We decided to look further to see if there was another pile of roses, and viola, there was! We started to think that maybe someone had put the roses there to see if we would steal them. So, we hurried back to return the roses we had picked earlier. Then we moved on to catch a few more crabs because there was a spot a little further along where we usually found more and bigger crabs. And strangely that was the last pile of roses so far.

After a few minutes, we decided to go back, but then we noticed that the last pile of roses was gone. We ran to check the next pile, and to our shock, it was gone too. All of the piles of roses had disappeared, as if they had never been there at all.

We looked at each other in confusion and started to realize that what's happening is not normal. We ran as fast as we could, as we hurried back toward home.

We told our mother what happened, and she said that maybe something we couldn't see was playing with us or trying to lure us in. She said that good thing we didn't take any of the roses.

When our mother told our neighbor and her friends, some said maybe someone had put those roses there as an offering, but for what reason, we didn't know. Others said that something we couldn’t see might have been trying to lure us in, and if we had taken the roses, we could have disappeared without a trace. Even now, it remains a mystery for us what those roses were for. This is a real story, and I'm not making this up. I still wonder what could have happened if we had taken the roses. What supernatural thing might have occurred? Any idea?