The Car (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)
Have you ever taken a ride in a haunted car?
Barangay chairperson Marjorita Cangmaong of the mountain barangay of Malubog in Cebu City had such an experience after she accepted a vehicle assigned to her by the Cebu City government.
“Mang limbawt gyud akong balhibo kada sakay sa sakyanan. Dili ko kasabot sa akong gibati (I will always have goosebumps every time I use the vehicle. I could not explain how I feel),” she said.
The city government-owned black Toyota Hilux used to be assigned to Mabini barangay chairman Rey Oybenes who committed suicide inside the vehicle more than a year ago.
Cangmaong said even 49-year-old driver Remegio Camingawan gets afraid everytime he gets behind the wheel.
Feeling fear
She said they would sometimes hear “unexplained sounds” coming from inside the vehicle while it was parked near their barangay hall.
The barangay is located 20 kilometers away from Cebu City Hall.
Cangmaong said she had the vehicle blessed a week later to appease herself and others who also witnessed what could have been the “presence of restless souls inside the vehicle.”
“I could not help but feel fear knowing what happened to the previous user of the vehicle,” Cangmaong told Cebu Daily News.
Tragic incident
The black Toyota Hilux with license plate SKV 566 was among the vehicles bought by the Cebu City government two years ago and it was assigned to Oybenes.
Oybenes figured in a tragic incident with his reported girlfriend, Rohama Luage, on May 23, 2013.
Luage’s dead body was dumped on a cliff along the transcentral highway in sitio Boli in barangay Cansumoroy, Balamban town located 64 kilometers southwest of Cebu City.
Police investigating the incident said Oybenes killed Luage before shooting himself with a .45 pistol.
Oybenes’s body was found with a bullet wound on the chest inside his service vehicle that was parked outside the Maryville Subdivision in barangay Talamban.
Blood stains
Engr. Rolando Ardosa, former head of City Hall’s Government Services Office (GSO), said they repaired the car’s broken right front window and removed the blood stains.
Reme Oybenes, Oybenes’s brother, broke the window with a stone so he can open the vehicle. .
Cangmaong said she would use the Hilux as a service vehicle in her trips downhill to City Hall.
Still around
She would also use it to bring patients to the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) and to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) because their ambulance doesn’t function anymore.
Cangmaong approached her friend, Fr. Ciano Obod, from the neighboring barangay of Babag and asked that he bless the Hilux on Dec. 14, 2013.
Though convinced that the spirits may still be around, Cangmaong is happy that they haven’t been disturbing her since.