The family home was a traditional house on stilts in a farming province of the northern Philippines, built in the 1950s, with dark hardwood floors and a springy bamboo kitchen floor you could see the ground through. Rice-farmer grandparents lived there with four grown children, the yard was walled in by eight-foot walls, and everyone's washing went on the same lines.
The youngest daughter, Ella, about 21, began to notice that her underwear kept disappearing from the line. Only hers, never anyone else's. She blamed a prankster sibling, then questioned everyone, including the maids. Nobody owned up, the washing was watched for birds or animals, and still the gaps appeared week after week.
Fed up, the grandfather called in a local manghuhula, a seer. She walked the compound and announced that the family weren't the only ones living there: a small family of dwende, the little people of Filipino folklore, lived under the coconut trees, and their territory reached under the house. One of them, she said, had taken a fancy to Ella.
She led the family under the house, and there was every missing piece, folded neatly and tucked into cracks. The seer blessed the house with coconut oil and prayers to move the dwende on, and advised the family to paint red crosses on the stilts and walls underneath and put white crosses in the windows. The grandchild who shared the story found those red crosses as a small child, which is how the story came out. The house still stands, crosses and all.
