Meet the LightSeers, A Group of Filipino Mystics Reinventing How We Deal With the Unseen

The LightSeers trace their roots to one of the country’s best-known paranormal collectives: the Spirit Questors, founded in the ’90s by writer, professor, and all-around mystic Tony Perez. Back then, the Spirit Questors were synonymous with (free) paranormal investigations. Some of their most famous "Quests" include exploring one of the country's most haunted sites, the Manila Film Center, and the remnants of the Ozone Disco, the site of what is acknowledged as the worst fire in Philippine history.

When Perez and his council went on hiatus in 2011, the hauntings didn’t. And so, a few years later, three former Questors—husband and wife Ryan and Peachie Dioquino-Valera, and the late Juno Olimpo—picked up where the work left off. With Perez’s blessing, they formed the LightSeers, continuing the mission of demystifying the supernatural and bringing peace to both the living and the dead.

Much like the Questors that came before them, the LightSeers operate under a strict moral code, ensuring that their gifts will not be used to take advantage of the people (and spirits) they want to help. They never charge for their services. They only go where they’re invited. And they never provoke or exploit whatever presence they encounter.

"We're not paranormal investigators who actively look for places that have hauntings and actively provoke what it's in there just to be able to, you know, elicit a scare," clarifies Ryan. "We always aim to help the people and the beings living there to resolve issues."

At the heart of their philosophy are three tenets: free will, unconditional love, and peaceful coexistence. "No case can operate on bias, judgment, or hatred. We try to expand our understanding, not just of people but of other beings as well," says Peachie.

TL;DR: These principles view the unseen not as evil, but as misunderstood. This is what sets them apart from typical ghost hunters. They don’t provoke or exorcise; they listen, mediate, and help both parties—human and spirit—find closure.

“We believe humans aren’t the penultimate masters of this world,” Ryan adds. “We coexist with spirits, animals, and elementals—all of us share this plane.”

The work the LightSeers do sounds otherworldly and is, quite frankly, outside of my wheelhouse. To understand their process, I attended one of their workshops: Psychism 101, a full-day class that introduces the foundations of their practice.

Held in a quiet meeting room, the setup was simple: chairs were arranged around a conference table, and a projector displayed slides. About 20 or so attendees sat in anticipation—students, professionals, small business owners, longtime followers of the group. There were no candles, crystals, or spooky décor—just an air of curiosity. Seated among them were Peachie and Ryan, joined by several LightSeer trainees.

The day began with theory. The LightSeers explained psychism—the study of psychic sensitivity—and how they align their work with both psychology and science. The tone was grounded, not oversensationalized and mystical. During their talk, the LightSeers made one thing clear: they do not discount that there are logical, explainable reasons for an event, but they emphasize openness to the possibility that unseen forces could be influencing it.

"The unseen can co-exist with science and reason. Just because something is invisible, that doesn't negate its existence," says Peachie. "The mere existence of sightings and paranormal stories around the world, that every nation, every tribe, and every generation has its own stories, makes me theorize that there may be something to it."

Then came the hands-on exercises.

Each of us was given a pendulum, a small pendant suspended on a chain. Our challenge: make it move using only focus and intent. Skeptical but intrigued, I gave it a shot. To my surprise, the pendulum swayed—first hesitantly, then decisively—answering my yes-or-no questions with almost unnerving accuracy. I asked it questions I knew the answers to, asked it repeatedly throughout the activity, and yet it remained consistent. I even asked it a deeply personal question I needed clarity on, and somehow it had an answer for that, too.

According to the LightSeers, this wasn’t magic but micro-movements—subtle, subconscious motions that reflect intuition. They linked this to the collective unconscious, “the source of all knowledge,” suggesting that our minds already know more than we realize.

Next came psychometry, or the reading of objects' energy. Participants placed personal items—a ring, a pen, a keychain—in a bag, drew one randomly, and tried to sense impressions of the owner. Some readings were vague, others strikingly specific. One participant mentioned seeing letters after touching a ring; the owner later admitted those were the initials of someone she still held anger toward. Another sensed grief, loss, and longing from a pencil once owned by another participant's ex-lover.

The skeptic in me couldn’t help wondering if there was more to it—had they been chatting earlier and unconsciously picked up clues? But that thought took a back seat during the day’s closing activity, when I gave an impression about an item the LightSeers had placed inside a box. I don’t exactly know how I came up with the words "fragile" and "delicate"—they just surfaced the moment I touched the box. I also mentioned that it felt heavy—not the box itself, but as if something weighed it down. When it was finally revealed, the item inside turned out to be an old, fragile doll that functioned much like a dreamcatcher. “Maybe what you felt as heavy were the negative energies it carried after much use,” Peachy explained. “Trust your gut. Don’t edit the impressions,” she reminded us earlier. So I did.

Throughout the day, Peachie and Ryan mostly observed, stepping in only to offer reassurance. While the activities let participants experience the mystical, the two never played the part of all-knowing magicians guarding secrets. Instead, they tried to unpack what happened—blending science (or pseudoscience for the skeptics) with mysticism and grounding it in their own experiences with the techniques.

According to the LightSeers, about 90% of what’s taught in the workshop mirrors what they use in providing their services. Psychometry, meditation, and using tools like pendulums and tarot cards build focus, empathy, and intuition—skills they see as essential to spiritual work.

The workshop, I realized, was a rehearsal of sorts—a safer, quieter version of what the LightSeers do regularly—their Quests, as they call them. In Psychism 101, energy and emotion were explored in theory; in the real world, they unfold in real time. As I was a first-timer, barely familiar with my psychic senses, I didn’t get to experience a Quest first-hand, but lucky for me, Ryan and Peachie indulged all my questions, feeding the curiosity I’ve always had.

The LightSeers receive a lot of inquiries, mostly through social media. These range from households dealing with hauntings, families seeking closure, to people hoping to reach loved ones who’ve passed on. Each inquiry starts the same way—with listening. Peachie conducts the initial interview, noting what’s happened, when it started, and whether there’s documentation, such as photos or videos. She and Ryan then decide if it calls for a full quest, a remote reading, or referral to an allied group. This screening is important to manage the team's headspace and schedules.

Once a case is decided to be a quest, it's usually scheduled on the weekends—they all have full-time jobs outside of being a light worker—and at night. Not for any other reason except that the quiet and darkness allow everyone to relax and heighten their senses.

Every quest follows a structure rooted in the same principles they teach in their workshops. They start by scanning the area in silence, allowing each member to sense changes in energy or mood. Only two members know the full case details, so impressions come unfiltered. Once everyone has recorded what they felt, the team regroups for a circle—a meditative exchange that allows messages or emotions from the unseen to surface. The goal isn’t to prove anything supernatural, but to restore peace.

"Think of a quest like a court. Madalas mayroong nagsasabi ng mga case nila, ng side nila, and our task is to mediate, be like peace mediators. For others, it's an opportunity to talk to their dead loved ones and have both parties arrive at closure," Peachie explains.

One case that still lingers with Peachie involved the spirit of a young woman whose death had been staged as a suicide. When they arrived, the energy in the house was thick with grief and confusion. Through the circle, the LightSeers sensed that her passing wasn’t self-inflicted but was a violent cover-up for a terrible crime.

“We couldn’t tell the parents everything without affecting the ongoing investigation. The results from our Quests won't hold up in court anyway,” Peachie recalls. “We simply told the family what the spirit told us to say, even if we saw it all." Although the LightSeers didn't necessarily bring the perpetrators to justice, for Peachie, it was enough because they brought the family closure and provided guidance to help them make peace with what they now know.

"As long as the quest ends with the querant's objective achieved and all the tenets of the LightSeers intact and not violated, then that's a good quest," says Ryan.

It’s hard to imagine how Peachie, Ryan, and the rest of the LightSeers decompress after a particularly harrowing Quest—especially when just hearing about it secondhand already leaves me feeling heavy and unsettled. Many of their cases deal with unresolved emotions—grief, anger, guilt—that linger in spaces or people. But for Peachie, that weight comes with the territory. “When it’s a particularly hard case, I give myself a little pep talk,” she says. “I tell myself, ‘I’m doing this because there’s work to do—and I need to do it.’”

"At the end of the Quest, when we've given our help, we have to tell ourselves, it's not our problem. We, as LightSeers, have to have a separation between the agent (client) and us," Ryan says adamantly. "We do not entangle our lives so that we also don't get pulled down by what is happening. We have to actively seek a logical break of emotion and separate the things we go through from what our agent goes through."

"In my first few years as a trainee, I always cried, but part of our training is also learning to sit with your emotions," Peachie adds.

After spending time with Ryan and Peachie, I still don’t know if I’m a 100% believer in the unseen, but to the LightSeers, that’s just all in a day’s work. “Skepticism is very healthy. It forces me to know more about what I believe so that I can share it in a much better and clearer way,” says Ryan. Through workshops and speaking engagements, Peachie and Ryan hope to open the floor for discussions and dialogues about dealing with the unseen unknown. After all, if there’s one thing I learned after spending the day with them, it’s that everything they do is rooted in respect and empathy, not just for humans and spirits, but also for the craft of Questing. “There’s a big part of me that wants to continue the advocacy as long as I still see that there’s stigmatization over these kinds of things,” says Peachie. “For me, I will only stop as soon as I can confidently pass on the training and teaching to the next batch,” Ryan adds.

What struck me most was that the LightSeers never claimed to have all the answers—and that’s exactly what made their approach feel genuine. When you’re dealing with the unseen, uncertainty isn’t a weakness; it’s part of the work. Rather than pretending to know everything, they help you make sense of the experience as best as anyone can, sharing insights and tools so you can explore your own psychic senses, which you can then use to make sense of the world around you. That humility in not knowing is, ironically, what makes them feel the most credible.

I left their workshop with more questions than answers, but maybe that’s the point. The LightSeers never claimed to offer proof—only perspective. I went into this looking for signs, but what I found was wisdom in the unknown—that belief doesn’t always equate to certainty. To them, mysticism and working with the paranormal isn’t about convincing anyone of anything; it’s finding steadiness, even and especially in a world that isn’t as solid as we think.