The Peter Pan Possession: The Curious Case of Cornelio Closa

A photograph of the boy in question as an adult

The year was 1965, and 'The Invisible Boy' had moved on with his life as best he could after what had happened to him. Two correspondents from the United Press International arrived at his house to interview him about the bizarre events, but he was retiscent at best about retelling the story in the company of strangers. What had taken place had happened approximately thirteen years previously, and the Invisible Boy was now the visible man. He was twenty-five years old, married, and the father of two children. Vicente Maliwang and his photographer Eduardo Martinez desperately wanted to speak to him to gather his description of what had happened to him, and he reluctantly agreed. His father, twenty-three-year-old sister and eighteen-year-old brother accompanied him. Before he spoke to the journalists, he told his wife to remove the children from the house. She already knew about the event, but he wanted his children never to know. He admitted that he would prefer to forget that it had ever happened. It felt like a nightmare. Now fully prepared for his interview, the Invisible Boy sat down and started to speak...

The Unearthly Child

An illustration of a pixie by John Bauer

Cornelio Closa Jr. first took the plunge into what he would later describe as being like a 'frightful dream' made real in September of 1951. He was only thirteen years old, and was in sixth grade at Zamora Elementary School in the city of Manila. He and his friend Rudolfo Carmine were walking home from school across a large field one day, when Cornelio suddenly came to a dead halt. Slowly, he started to point towards a seemingly-empty spot just in front of a nearby brick wall. Rudolfo described Cornelio's eyes as 'almost bulging out of their sockets'. Cornelio said that she was beautiful. He was looking at a girl roughly his age, dressed in white with long blonde hair that reached down to her waist. Rudolfo was baffled, unable to see anything where his friend was looking.

The girl's bare feet floated above the grass as she gently moved to be beside Cornelio. Although she never opened her smiling lips, Cornelio would later say that he was able to 'hear and understand' what the strange girl was saying to him. When she touched his hand, he claims that he felt different - very light. His awareness of his surroundings faded. To Rudolfo's horror he suddenly seemed to 'disappear from sight'. It was only a temporary vanishing - and Cornelio said that he had no memory of what had happened when he was away with the girl. He eventually returned home, and chose not to tell anyone about the experience.

After this first bizarre meeting, the usually mild-mannered Cornelio started behaving 'like an animal'. He became sullen, angry and antagonistic - and would now regularly fight with his parents and refuse to eat food. His mother said that she was 'losing control' of him with each passing day. She gradually got used to his new behaviour, however, but this begrudging acceptance was shattered on one particular evening when he seemed to appear 'particularly flushed and sick'. The doors and windows of the house were locked, and yet Cornelio suddenly vanished from sight - disappearing into thin air right in front of his mother. She was horrified. Cornelio would later tell Maliwang that the blonde girl would appear to him often, and that when he was with her he felt that he was somehow no longer real despite everything around him still seeming to be normal.

His schoolteacher started to complain to his parents that he was skipping school, and his father was faced with no choice but the take his son's vanishings extraordinarily seriously. He even enforced accompanied marches to school, but even this could not prevent the strange girl from snatching him away from his classroom. The girl regularly appeared to him in school, holding out her hand and filling Cornelio's body with a strange 'sensation' before the only thought in his head was the need to go with her. He didn't have a choice in the matter. His family locked all the doors and windows at home, but this did nothing. He would continually vanish - if the door was closed, he would simply walk through it 'as if it were open' - before hearing the cries of shock from his classmates after he disappeared. Sometimes he would disappear for three days, having no concept of his own as to for how long he had been missing.

A photograph of Cornelio Closa

Cornelio hid objects around the house and stole money from his parents. He even leapt at his father in a wild fury and smashed dishes. Desperate, his parents resorted to sending him off to a national mental institution and then to a welfare center, but neither of these branches of mental health professionals had any ideas as to what was going on. Authorities assured his parents that he was just a normal boy, and said that he would be better off living with his parents before sending him home. Having been given no answers for their son's violent behaviour, they were faced with no choice but to bring him to a juvenile correction facility. There, he was so disruptive that he had to be tied down to his bed before finally being sent home once again. His parents had now resigned themselves to living with a 'monster' instead of their son.

There were regular disturbances at school, including punch-ups. His teacher, Mrs. Agospi, had previously found him to be a 'quiet boy' but now thought of him as a 'nuisance' that she didn't want in her class. He would fight with anyone at even the slightest provocation - sometimes being able to take on three or four boys much larger than him and never be held down by them. Agospi said that it was as if Cornelio had 'superhuman strength'. A few days after this bizarre fight, Cornelio was called up to the blackboard at the front of the classroom to give a presentation. He stood at the board for a few minutes before simply evaporating into thin air. He was solid, then transparent, then invisible. The entire classroom saw it, and the teacher immediately resigned. This turn of events, according to Agospi, caused Cornelio to laugh 'a hideous kind of laughter' that sounded as if it didn't even come from a human being, let alone a small boy.

Sleep had also become impossible for him - he would feel as if his clothes were burning when he tried - and then he would see the girl enticing him to follow as soon as he opened his eyes. According to the testimony he would give Maliwang, there were many times when he and the girl would float around the city. Together, they went to the cinema several times and visited the International Fair that was being held in the city at the time. He never felt 'exhausted or hungry' when he was with her, and nobody else seemed to notice them on their phantasmal sojourns around Manila. They would sometimes go to restaurants together, and vanish conveniently when it was time to pay for the food they had ordered.

There were occasions where the whole family would be in the front room of their house, with the children playing on the floor. While everyone was watching, Cornelio would vanish and leave behind a foul stench that caused the other children to start coughing and vomiting. When he vanished, his parents would be dismayed at their son's absences which would sometimes last for two days or more. He would reappear in his bed, seemingly sleeping peacefully despite the windows and doors having been literally nailed shut at this point.

The Exorcism of Cornelio Closa

With all this chaos unfolding - and obviously being reported in the local media - it was not long until religious leaders started taking notice. An Evangelical missionary named Dr. Lester Sumrall took a great interest in the case, and he visited Cornelio's home and talked to the teacher who had quit after his disappearance. She had apparently suffered a signficant mental breakdown as a result of having witnessed the event, and never recuperated enough after it to start teaching again. Sumrall also hired policemen and other investigators to verify the complete truth of the matter, and the policemen returned to him with sworn affidavits. Reverend HA Baker also travelled from the United States to the Philippines to investigate the case, contacting Cornelio himself as well as his parents, Mrs. Agospi and his neighbours. He wrote to Sumrall to confirm the latter's belief that the case was genuine - it apparently went on for a full year, getting worse and worse.

A photograph of Cornelio from Sumrall's
documentary

A Methodist preacher tried to help Sumrall, but said that the boy had disappeared right out of his hands. Sumrall decided to venture onto the front-line of the case and perform what was effectively an exorcism on the child. Cornelio was brought to an Evangelical service whereupon he was intensely prayed over by Sumrall himself. Lord Jesus, we plead Thy holy blood; be free in Jesus Christ's Name! These prayers brought the haunting to a grinding halt - and the next time Cornelio caught sight of the young girl, she morphed into a hideous being that seemed to be extremely angry. The girl vanished for good after this.

Uncrossing the Wires

Yes, my reference to a cross in that subtitle was a pun. This is the obligatory section of this admittedly-fantastical article in which I discuss the credibility of my sources. As you might've guessed with the sudden prominence of Dr. Lester Sumrall in the narrative towards the end of the article, an interview with him carried out by Christian author Michael H. Brown is one of my main sources for the information I have displayed here. Sumrall is an Evangelical missionary, and so of course has a vested interest in creating and promoting the belief in evil spirits for the purposes of soul-saving. This might've given him a motive to lie about what had happened with Cornelio, and my other source (trusted paranormal author Brad Steiger) lists some of the events as having happened differently to what was related by Sumrall. For example, Sumrall's description of the events seems to be one year ahead of when Steiger claims the events took place. Cornelio's age also varies by a factor of one year between the different sources. Steiger says that Cornelio's trip to the mental hospital was able to cure his bizarre affliction, but Sumrall says that this did nothing and that Cornelio actually had to be incarcerated afterwards. The only mention of anything resembling an exorcism included by Steiger is the brief note that 'two pastors' added to the curing of Cornelio's demonic affliction after his trip to the mental hospital.

Steiger also focuses much more on the disappearance aspect of Cornelio's case, while Sumrall (understandably) instead chooses to place the emphasis on the possession symptoms experienced by Cornelio. Then again, Steiger's mention of the case is in the context of a chapter on interdimensional travel and mysterious disappearances. A documentary on the case has been made by Sumrall, and although I must admit that I have not yet watched it, I highly doubt that he would promote it if it didn't support his claims. I think that Steiger was focusing on one specific aspect of a much broader case, and so - just this once - I am siding with Sumrall in terms of how the story should be told.

Sources

'The Awful Thing in the Attic' by Brad Steiger
'An Incredible Case of Possession' on spiritdailyblog.com