'Haunted house' in UAE scares Pinoy tenants

A haunted house in the Jumeirah area in the United Arab Emirates is scaring a group of Filipino tenants there, a news site reported on Thursday. Encounters with “ghosts" in the seven-bedroom building have left the occupants “scared and shaken to the core," according to a report on Gulf News. The report quoted the Filipino tenants as saying they had been seeing ghosts for over a year. “There’s something that lives in our house, and it isn’t human," said “Karl," one of the residents. Another Filipino, “Lora," claimed to have had encounters with a male “spirit" since Nov. 2010. She said she was once woke up at 3 a.m. and felt an “intense pressure" all over her body, as if a person were sleeping on top of her. “I tried to sit up, but couldn’t move anything besides my fingers and toes. On the curtains I could see a dark shadow atop me," she said. She also said she heard a man moaning from her roommate Mary’s bed a few nights later. “At first I thought her husband was back from the Philippines, but a quick peek revealed Mary was fast asleep with that mysterious shadow on top of her reflecting on the wall," she said. On another night, “Mary" claimed to have had another visitation, where she felt something at her foot while she was sleeping. She said she saw her sock peeling itself off. This happened eight times during the night, according to her. “Phillip," 30, claimed being visited by the ghost at least once a week. “Normally, it just draws open my curtains every time I close them, but one time I was in the shower and it locked me in for two hours. My flatmates had to eventually break the lock to get me out," he said. “Louise," a Filipino teacher who lives in one of the ground floor bedrooms, said she is afraid to enter her own kitchen alone because she feels “a strong presence" of the ghost. She said the kitchen becomes cold, the bathroom door opens and shuts by itself, and the flush goes off mysteriously. — JE, GMA News