“Sharing Horror Stories on the set of May Bukas Pa”

    Last Saturday, we learned that several scenes taken in the cemetery at the back of San Guillermo Parish Church had to be retaped. While the retaping was going on, some of the “priests” including Andre Tiangco, Tony Manalo David Chua and myself were huddled outside our airconditioned tent and we were exchanging horror stories.

    Our hypothesis was that the scenes were retaped because there are some spirits that are playing or disturbing our taping. That was when Andre who a resident of  San Fernando, Pampanga told us his horror story that according to him happened during the period when lahar was regularly devastating the province. The story goes this way: the national and local government constructed the mega dike along the river bank to protect the municipalities from the onslaught of the mudflows of volcanic debris called lahar from the slopes of Mt. Pinatubo everytime that there were heavy rains. One night, the local authorities were beset with a problem: the forecast of the rainfall was that it would be very heavy that it would cause the lahar mudflows to overflow above the mega dike and thus will cause damage to a bigger portion of the province including the capital town of San Fernando. An option was earlier floated among the local residents that perhaps a small hole could be made in a portion of the mega dike that could cause the mudflows to be diverted to the town of Bacolor and thereby saving a bigger portion of the province including the capital town of San Fernando. The people of Bacolor of course vehemently opposed the option that would make them the sacrificial lambs in favor of the bigger portion of the province. Then, that night, the heavy rain poured. When daylight came, the town of Bacolor was a sight of total devastation: bodies of familiar faces like Andre’s teacher were found hanging on the branches of trees. An unknown number of residents of Bacolor died that night many of them were buried under the lahar mudflows and were in fact under our feet where we stood that time, under the grounds of San Guillermo Parish Church!

    No wonder, there are spirits that are “playing” on us! I am sure that they are enjoying the taping and are just simply making their presence felt!

     There was an instance that during the taping of a scene inside the church, the communications equipment being used by the crew malfunctioned! It took a long time before finished the scene because of the malfunctioning!

    Thank you very much for watching the first few days of “May Bukas Pa”. I hope that you will continue to watch it every night!