Do you believe in earth spirits?

As I was on my way home from biking in UP Diliman this morning, I marveled at the lush greenery and though back to the time I was a kid playing at our back yard that was very much overgrown with trees.  My mom would always tell us to respect nature and to always ask for permission from the spirits whenever we would play at the trees or just go running about.  Add to this being told to come in by 6pm because that would be the time that the earth spirits would be out and about and that being outdoors would put us in a great deal of danger should we anger them in our rowdiness.

As kids, we never would take such things seriously.  And what with the tawas and prayers that the local healers would often do over us when we would fall suddenly ill, we could never really understand what it was all about.

As I go about my recollection, I remember the time that I trapped a toad under a big tin can and set a dilapidated chair atop of it so that the toad could not escape.  I was thinking of letting the toad out the next day just to see how it would do without any food or light for a day.  And so came the next day and lo and behold the toad has mysteriously vanished!  The chair was clearly untouched and the can was right where I had left it but the toad was nowhere in sight.

That afternoon I had begun to run a fever and my mom called in a local healer to have a look at me.  As she did the reading, she said that I had been naughty and that I was being punished by an earth spirit.  So I told mom about the toad and that was the Eureka moment they had been waiting for.  The healer uttered a prayer and rubbed some oil on me and told my mom to let me rest.  They then went to where I had trapped the toad and the healer again said a prayer.  She then left and told my mom that I should be more respectful of animals since many of them are actually under the care of wild spirits and that they would not hesitate to punish a mischievous kid should we hurt their animal friends.

The next day my fever was gone and I was out and about again.  It was as if nothing had happened.  But I had learned a hard lesson that day and have since come to believe that there are many things that are out there but are beyond our limited human perception.  Call me crazy, but I believe that they are out there, living among us since the beginning of time.

Do you have an earth spirit story too?