FITTINGLY and eerily, the story began with a haunted house. ?The house I grew up in was so haunted that my sister and I didn?t want to stay in any room?even the bathroom?alone, and would run from one room to another to avoid staying in the hallway, though we had no clue why,? narrates Yvette Tan, very much in her element as she unearths yet another creepy tale.

While watching TV in her parents? room, Tan would hear knocking on the door but would find no one when she swung it open. Her parents told her it was the wind. ?So I grew up thinking that the wind could knock on the door like a person,? she recalls. ?It was only when I got older and we moved that I realized that no, it wasn?t the wind at all.? The Tans also dealt with, among others, dwarves in their home and a maid who may have been a witch. ?Now that I think about it, I did have a lot of strange experiences when I was young.?

Those experiences may partially account for Tan?s affinity with the scary, the ominous and the unknown as perhaps the most proficient contemporary Filipino writer of horror. That?s quite unusual, given that Tan is easily spooked, then and now. ?I was afraid of almost everything,? she admits. ?I was, and still am, afraid of ghosts.? Though she confesses to never having actually seen a ghost (experiencing its presence is a different story), Tan sees revenants (zombies to you and me) and other frightful and unusual things in the most usual of settings.

The eldest of three siblings, Yvette Natalie Uy Tan admits to being difficult. ?I was probably a horrible child because I was round and chubby, which meant I got picked up and cooed over a lot,? she says. ?I eventually became surly because all I wanted was to be left alone.? She marvels that her parents--Chinese businessman Benson Tan and wife Lulu--remained loving despite her disagreeable nature.

A painfully shy child, Tan figured early on that she might be a little different from her peers. ?I?m used to being called weird,? she explains. ?In high school, my friends would laugh at me because I liked ?Come as You Are? or ?Mary Jane?s Last Dance? instead of ?It Might Be You.?? She pauses. ?I still don?t like ?It Might Be You.? I think my love for boy bands helped convince them that I was normal.?

What she did like more was reading. ?My father was big on education, something that he passed on to my mom, so we essentially could get any book we wanted as long as it wasn?t comics,? she says, noting that she saved up on her own to procure comics. Then, a crucial omen: ?I liked reading true ghost stories. Any book that had ?true? and ?supernatural? in its blurb was fair game to me.? Naturally, this would lead to the summoning of her own spectral stories. ?I started writing. I always wrote what came naturally to me,? Tan explains. ?It?s other people who say that my stories are gross or scary or weird.?

Tan continued weaving her tales through college at the University of the Philippines. Her stories haunted magazines. She reaped honors for them: second place in the 2007 Philippine Graphic/Literature Awards and the Palanca Awards in 2003.

She takes the next step into the darkness when Anvil Publishing releases her first book, ?Waking the Dead and Other Stories,? later this year.

What the book showcases is Tan?s impressive capacity for locating menace in the mundane?and right around the corner. ?My stories are pretty grounded,? she explains. ?There?s always an element that?s unmistakably Filipino. Also, there are usually elements that interest me personally.?

A passing glance at Tan?s quirky, impeccably crafted stories proves this. Take for instance, ?Kulog,? which takes a very Pinoy monster and adds a very Pinoy pastime, resulting in a unique mix, what Tan describes with a laugh as ?an ornery kapre who doesn?t like karaoke, like me.? There is the title story, ?Waking The Dead,? which she explains is about a man who resurrects all of the barrio?s dead so he can find his wife and child. ?Inspired by one of my favorite ?Shake Rattle and Roll? episodes, where Gina Alajar plays a zombie,? she adds.

For her day job, the 31-year-old Tan does a lot of writing, including stuff for magazines, newspapers and TV shows like ?Project Runway Philippines? and ?Rakista,? and an online column on the GMA News website. That she also suffers from muscular dystrophy, a disease that causes the weakening of the muscles, has not slowed her down. ?I have trouble climbing stairs and wearing heels, but I still do both anyway,? she explains.

Apparently, her words born at night are just as sprightly, sprouting powerful wings and marking the writer as extraordinary.

Her choice of the genre may be unusual but it is also a good fit. ?The cliche answer is I didn?t choose horror, it chose me--which is true,? Tan admits. ?If I had my way, I?d still be churning out romances, except for some reason, my brain doesn?t work that way. For some reason, it always goes for the dark and horrifying. I don?t know what that says about me.?

That same choice is not always an advantage, as recidivist readers still denigrate horror as an inferior subdivision within the greater city of Fiction. Tan is not spooked by that. ?People tend to react negatively to the word ?horror? but what a lot of people don?t realize is that horror is more than just a genre; it?s an emotion that we see in a lot of literature,? she explains. ?We have it in the classics, we have it in the Bible. National artists like (Franz) Arcellana, (Nick) Joaquin and Sionil Jose have written stories with themes that deal with horror.?

That?s why Tan can appreciate the rewards of living out her passion, particularly the support that her late father had given her. ?I only realize now what faith my dad had in me since all my life choices had nothing to do with being a ?traditional Chinese daughter,?? she recalls.?I always tell people that one of my happiest experiences was when I brought my parents to the Palanca (Awards). This was the year before my dad died. He was pretty impressed with the event. He got to see that writing isn?t such a bad thing after all.?

Still, it must be unsettling to be someone who thinks up new ways of scaring other people. Except for someone like Tan who owns up to believing in the supernatural. ?Though I?m not sure yet how I feel about the extraterrestrial,? she says. Her worst fears do not involve strange creatures, she adds, but anything that has to do with ?my loved ones experiencing hardship, whether physical or psychological. What?s most horrible for me are things that could actually happen.?

What continues to challenge Tan is crafting stories in a way that?s true to her own experience: ?Since we?re talking about mine specifically, I think my experience is that of a minority-minority-minority-minority-minority?being a slightly handicapped Chinese-Filipino woman who does not want to embrace the Chinese-Filipino feminine ideal.?

Coming out with her first book is a big deal for her, says Tan, who dreams of other story collections, as well as a novel. ?I would also love to write a horror film and/or a TV show and collaborate with an artist on a dark-themed exhibit or book.?

As the date of her book launch approaches, Tan revels in the highly unusual but eventful trip through the dark that has led her to this point, fearless and breathless. She loves all of it: ?The fact that I can exercise my imagination, and that there are people out there who appreciate it when I do. I also like that I can live vicariously through my writing. A lot of my characters do things I can?t or won?t do. This makes me seem cooler than I really am. But I think that the only thing I could murder is a really good steak.? ?

An Excerpt from ?The Bridge?

I sat down at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside the lamp stand was a big basin of murky water. The presence I felt seemed to emanate from it, flow back and forth around the room, returning to draw sustenance from the mysterious liquid before rushing about again. I had an impression of eyes and scales and teeth. I looked away.

The Madame spoke.

?I?m so glad you decided to come. I was sad when you refused to see me before.?

?You would have hurt my family,? I said quietly.

There was a low laugh. ?I would never do such a thing,? she said, though it was not hard to detect the lie in her voice. ?I need your help.?

I was puzzled, but did not speak, my anger stronger than my curiosity.

?Sometimes, when something is done for the good of the country, other things have to be sacrificed,? the Madame began. ?Surely you have heard about the accident at the bridge? I understand your father was one of the workers who were nearby when it happened.?

I still did not say anything. She continued, ?It was an accident, and to us, no one was hurt.?

The presence rode the air, slithered past me, whispered in my ear. It was all I could do not to bat it away, to run screaming from the room. I could feel my heart beating fast in my chest. I have always been comfortable with my abilities, never been afraid of the beings I could see and hear and feel, until now. I knew what an enkantada was, and a duwende, and a kapre. I did not know what was in the room with me.

?Come closer,? the Madame said. ?Come to the light.?

Frightened, I drew near the sound of her voice, near the light. The curtains parted. I could not believe what I saw.

The Madame sat on her bed, clad only in a silk sheath. She had thrown off her blanket, laying herself bare before me. She was beautiful even though she wore no make-up. Her hair, even in her state of distress, was still teased into a bouffant. She looked at me, her face contorted into a mask of fear and hate, daring me to stare and at the same time, daring me to look away. I forced myself to keep my gaze on her.

Her limbs were covered in green-brown scales. But instead of being smooth and regular like a fish?s, these were misshapen and diseased, with bare patches where gnarled, barnacle-like tumors grew. Some of them leaked pus, thick and viscous, smelling like rotted fish. Her hands, her beautiful hands were not spared. A thin, mottled membrane had grown between her fingers, which had become twisted, ending in nails that were now talons. Her legs had fused together and were covered by the same grotesque, cancerous scales. Eight little legs with clawed feet grew out of them, dangling uselessly. Where her feet should have been grew what looked like a tattered fishtail the color of dried blood.