When walking one person in field, and person finds one mound, what must be done is don't touch it , avoid because it may be house of person earth. She first learned it when she was around eight years old and visiting the family farm in Bulacan, Philippines. The year was 1937, and tenant farmers renting the land would tell her this whenever she would go out to the fields to play with her friends. She said that perhaps the mounds of today are mere anthills, but in the past people respected it because they really thought it to be true. A person is bound to be cursed and likely to contract a fever once he or she steps on a mound which is the house of the nuno.
Many people can die as well.
Deep down, however, she does not believe in it because she says she is a devout Catholic and this is just a pagan belief. It may be that this superstition came about to explain illnesses in the provinces during the past and up to the 1940s and 1950s in the Philippines, when there was still a simple, non-modern existence. Also in those times, a person was taught to respect one's place in nature and there was an awareness of one's surroundings that are no longer as strong these days. There was a greater reliance on the earth in terms of it being the source of food. Therefore, if a person violated some part of nature, that would be enough to cause sickness.