Never bring home food from a wake

Among all the superstitions I've encountered being raised in the Philippines, there is one that I follow faithfully.

Never bring home food from a wake, unfinished or otherwise.

Here's why.

My father died when I was 7 months pregnant.  During his wake, I was alternating between nibbling on food and greeting guests.  At one point, I absent-mindedly stuffed a pack of half-eaten crackers in my pocket and promptly forgot about it.

As midnight came and all the visitors had left, we decided to close the room for the night and head home.  A man wearing a white barong and trousers suddenly walked in.  He claimed to know my father through business and was late in arriving because he came all the way from the province.

My father was retired for 10 years and to our knowledge, did not have any business dealings in the aforementioned province, but we shrugged it off and let the man in.  He prayed over my father for a while, but as he turned to leave, he refused to sign the guestbook.  Some superstition or other in his family, he claimed.  Again, we let it go.

Still,we began to feel uneasy.  My brother peeked out the door and only found an empty corridor.  We started making half-hearted jokes (really, we were scared out of our wits) that our visitor may have been a spectre as we locked up and made our way home.  In the car, I noticed the pack of crackers and a small bundle of string near my pocket.  I brushed the string off and thought nothing further of it.

Back at home, we all went straight to bed.  Sometime in the night, I felt something nudge my stomach.  Fearful for the baby, I opened my eyes and saw a hand clutching my own, trying to drag me down and off the bed.  It was a dark hand wrapped in rags.  I screamed my husband's name repeatedly.

My husband woke me up then, panicky as I was apparently moaning and gurgling in my sleep.  On my pillow, I saw that bit of string again and on my dresser, the crackers.  I immediately threw the crackers in the garbage and flushed the string down the toilet.

To this day, I try to stay away from the edge of the bed.  And I never, ever bring home food from a wake.