Hell can wait

SKETCHES - On Halloween, my thoughts were on killing. Specifically, on those who kill people. It seems there are a lot of them in our country, despite widespread religious devotion as well as belief in ghosts, the devil and malevolent spirits.

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

Normal people are scared of ghosts, but murderous psychos aren't normal people. Those in the business of killing won't be bothered by niceties such as conscience or the wrath of God. But wouldn't they at least be bothered by ghosts?

I've often wondered if killers ever get haunted by the ghosts of their victims.

When former town mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. was detained at the National Bureau of Investigation's main office in Manila for the November 2009 massacre in Maguindanao, he was moved out of the detention cell and allowed to sleep on a bench near the visitors' area, wrapped in a comforter, after he claimed he was scared of ghosts.

Anyone would have trouble sleeping after leading some 200 lowlifes in mowing down 58 people, squishing them alive inside their cars and then dumping them in a shallow grave, together with the cars, using a government-owned backhoe.

Military officers told me that Ampatuan was notorious for brutality and decapitation of his political foes and armed threats such as members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, at the time still an enemy of the state. The government liked the Ampatuans for keeping the MILF and other armed elements in check in Maguindanao (also for the votes they guaranteed to produce - just give the number of votes needed, and the clan delivered).

With so many kills personally attributed to him, that story about Ampatuan's fear of ghosts stretched credulity. But maybe there were other ghosts haunting the old headquarters of the NBI, and the ghosts didn't like mass murderers.