National Capital Region
Horror Stories from Metro Manila
Metro Manila produces a particular kind of horror story: one told at speed, by someone who is working. Its ghosts turn up in taxis and jeepneys, in stairwells of buildings that never fully emptied, on stretches of road that are busy at six and abandoned at two.
It is also the address of the country's single most famous ghost — the White Lady of Balete Drive in New Manila, Quezon City.
Why the city's stories are road stories
Metro Manila runs on shared transport, and shared transport puts a driver alone with strangers he can only see in a mirror. That is the exact configuration of almost every local ghost story: the passenger who paid but was not there at the end of the trip, the woman standing at a bend where no one waits for a ride.
The city's other recurring setting is the building that outlived its purpose. Manila has a long list of structures locals treat as haunted — among them the Manila Film Center, whose reputation dates to the 1981 collapse during its rushed construction. We mention these as reputations, because that is all they are.
What we cover here
Most of our published catalogue is set in the capital. The workplace legends — Junjun on the call centre floors, the snake-man under Robinsons Galleria, the MRT ghost train, the 2:13 AM office — sit alongside the named addresses: Balete Drive, Malacañang, Manila City Hall, the Manila Hotel, Starmall Alabang.
Two entries here are documented history rather than folklore: the Ozone Disco fire of 1996 and the Battle of Manila in 1945. They are labelled as such on their pages, and the 1945 battle is the reason so much of the rest of this list exists.
Stories Set in Metro Manila
Junjun — The Call Center Ghost
Every BPO floor in the country has heard the name. Nobody agrees on which building it happened in.
Starmall Alabang
For years it was Metro Manila's default haunted mall. Then it burned down and was rebuilt under another name.
Ang Babae sa Balete Drive
Taxi drivers still avoid the street at night. She is the reason the whole country knows its name.
Robinsons Snake-man
The country's most successful corporate rumour: a fitting room, a trapdoor, and something in the basement.
Ozone Disco
162 people went in for an ordinary night. The fire was not the worst part — the exit was.
The Ghosts of UST
Four centuries of campus. A friar on a garden bench, and a nurse with no face in the lift.
Ang Multo sa Malacañang Palace
Presidents, their families, and their security detail have all reported the same corridors.
Ang Huling Byahe
A fully loaded train, running the line with its headlights off, hours after the power was cut.
Jaka Tower
Two decades of unfinished concrete on Ayala Avenue. They say not every worker left.
Intramuros Campus
Letran, Mapúa, Lyceum. Before your next late review session, check who is sitting behind you.
Nightshift — Ang Multo sa 2:13 AM
The office is dark and you are the only one awake. So who is typing at the desk behind you?
The Manila Film Center
A building rushed to a deadline, a collapse in 1981, and a death toll nobody ever settled.
Ang mga Kaluluwa sa Manila City Hall
From above, the building is shaped like a coffin. Nobody wants to be the last one inside at six.
The Manila Hotel
One of the country's grandest hotels, and one floor the staff talk about carefully.
Battle of Manila 1945
Over 100,000 civilians died in thirty days. The city was rebuilt. The ground was not replaced.
The Legend of Junjun
They say a boy was left in an office lobby. This is the part of the story nobody tells first.