Ghost stories from Philippines

The Rain on the Capiz Shells

I was eleven when I learned that the old house on Mendoza Street kept its secrets locked in the rain. It wasn’t the house my grandparents built, the one with...

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The Constant in Yellow

For most of my junior year, I lived in a fog of formulas and prime numbers. My tutor, Mr. Aldous, was a wiry man with glasses that magnified his eyes...

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The Unseen Cold

It was a Tuesday evening in the small town of San Isidro, where the heat of the day clung to every surface like a second skin. I sat alone at...

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The Ninth Floor Passenger

I clocked in at 6:47 AM, as I always do, to the Marrow Building. It’s a squat, brutalist structure squatting on the edge of the industrial district, and my office...

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The Last Quarter

The shift at the Calloway Processing Plant always ended at five, but the rain that afternoon had turned the parking lot into a mirror of pale concrete and bruised sky....

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The Lament of the Ironwood House

In the remote village of Ashford, nestled deep within the ironwood forest, stood a house that had weathered a hundred winters. Its timbers blackened with age, its windows like hollow...

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The Night Counter

The automated doors slid shut behind me with a soft hiss, and the fluorescent hum of the bank’s main lobby gave way to the thicker silence of the back offices....

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The Cane That Taps Twice

My name is Elias, and I don’t usually talk about what happened at the old Riverton Exchange. But I’ve read enough stories on this forum to know that some things...

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The Jar of Brine

The first time it happened, I was at a cookout at the back of an old fish cannery that my friend Diego had rented for the summer. We were all...

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The Ledger of the Untethered

I never expected to encounter them, not in the way I did. Most people think of ghosts as the spirits of the departed, lingering restlessly. But I know better. They...

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The Window of Unseen Faces

I was nine years old, living in a cramped shantytown that clung to the edge of a sprawling city like a barnacle on a sinking ship. Our home was a...

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The Idle Bell

In 2009, I had just bought a second-hand courier van, a battered gray Mitsubishi L300 that I’d converted into a makeshift camper. I spent most weekends driving the winding mountain...

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The Hollow Floor

At twenty, I was about to start my on-the-job training at a steel fabrication plant in the industrial district of Calamba. The two-month program promised to immerse me and four...

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The Cobwebbed Ledger

The argument with my brother over the inheritance had been dragging on for months. When he finally slammed the door, I thought the silence in the old house would be...

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The Room That Watches

The old farmhouse sat at the edge of Morrow Valley, a place where the soil remembered more than it grew. When my grandmother, Elara, passed, the house didn’t mourn—it waited....

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The Last Patient of Ward 9

In the waning days of autumn 2012, the small coastal town of Greyhaven held its breath as the sea fog rolled in, swallowing the streets in a damp, grey blanket....

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The Hollow Palaver

In the outskirts of Silang, Cavite, where the fog crawls like a living thing and the houses cling to the hillside, I found myself at the estate of the Villanueva...

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The Paper Ghost

It’s strange how you can live in a place for years and never notice the small details until a single event pulls them into sharp focus. For me, that event...

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The Static Room

The summer of 2006 was supposed to be a break from the sweltering heat of our cramped apartment in Muntinlupa. My younger brother, Paolo, and I had been shipped off...

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The Crayon Drawings

The last time I saw my cousin’s husband, he was laughing at a joke my father told, his wide grin showing teeth stained by years of coffee and cigarettes. That...

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The Stubble Field

My grandmother told me this story, and it’s haunted me ever since. She was never one for tall tales, but she swore every word was true. It happened in the...

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The Last Candle on the Windowsill

In the autumn of 2018, I was sixteen, living with my father in the remote town of Gray Hollow, nestled between pine forests and a cold, black lake. My mother...

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The Unseen Guest

In the humid coastal town of Malaya, where the sea breeze carried whispers of salt and decay, Lorna knew something was wrong the moment she felt the strange fluttering in...

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The Lamp Post’s Guest

My cousin and I were spending the summer at our great-uncle’s farmhouse in the rolling hills of Batangas, far from the buzzing streets of Manila but close enough for the...

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