By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
The eerie feeling in the dead of night. A slight cold wind. The unmistakable presence of somebody, but no one’s there. Your hair stand, and you are so scared.
Such is the typical account of those who went through it. You can hurriedly leave the haunted place. But the experience, never to be forgotten.
In a Philippine university compound, the gym was used by the Japanese as a jail for prisoners of war. Some parts of it were utilized as torture chambers. After almost a hundred years, workers there who had to stay late in the night experienced sounds of a person moving inside, of doors closing and opening, lockers or drawers opening or closing. Yet no one was there. One worker mustered all bravery he had to go where the sounds were coming from. And no one was there. It was good he had the presence of mind and energy to run outside, far from the place where he could feel safe. But in the dead of night?
Nearby was a big building. There is a computer shop in the basement. Late in the night or so early in the morning. The eerie feeling was experienced by some students who had to stay out that late, or go there that early, to have their papers printed to beat a deadline. Then the unmistakable presence of somebody else who could not be ween. Your hair stand, You are scared to death.
It is near that gym where the Japanese tortured suspected Filipino guerillas. Are those unseen characters making their presence felt but could not be seen, the souls or mental bodies of those who suffered and died in that World War 2 Japanese concentration camp?
About half a kilometer away is the women’s dorm. There is a part of the complex that was haunted. The accounts talk of the typical cold wind even if the windows were closed. The eerie presence of one you could not see.
Rumors have it that a young lady occupant of one room there committed suicide. She must have been in a very confused or problematic state with nobody to turn to. Did she suffer a terrible broken heart?
Moving eastward from that place, about a kilometer away is a bridge spanning a river. You could hear when walking on it the distant sound of flowing water emanating from deep under. Above one end of the bridge is a hospital where, for sure, many people died in pain.
As some accounts put it, the bridge became a never ending one in the dead of night. You just could not reach the other end. I don’t know how the experiences ended but those who went through it were somehow able to get out of the bridge. It was not endless, after all.
And the ghosts involved here seem not to have had any intention to harm. But one could die of a heart attack due to extreme fear.
The commonality in these events was the suffering of some terrible pain. Were the ghosts trying to communicate what they suffered but could not due to lack of a human physical body.**
