Ghost stories from Philippines

The Hollow Thud

I was seventeen, living with my mother in a cramped apartment above a 24-hour laundromat in the bustling heart of Quezon City. Our building was old, a relic from the...

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The Key in the Dust

The house on Cedar Lane sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, its paint peeling like sunburned skin. I hadn’t seen Mira in six years, and when she invited me...

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The Salt Harvest

The bus groaned up the winding mountain road, its headlights cutting through the dense fog that clung to the pine trees. I pressed my face to the cold window, watching...

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The Lantern at Kilometer 41

We arrived at the small mountain town of Karsang just after nine in the morning, the air so thin and cold it felt like breathing ice. The lodge, a creaking...

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The Third Floor Landing

In the autumn of 2009, I found myself crashing at a sprawling Victorian house in the countryside of Vermont, owned by my friend’s estranged aunt who had left the country...

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The Seventh Seat

The bus groaned to a halt in the dusty terminal of Vigan, its brakes sighing like a dying animal. It was past seven, and the old city had already cloaked...

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The Last Seedling

The van groaned as it climbed the final stretch of gravel road, the mountain’s flank a wall of green and gray. We were the first to arrive at the meeting...

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The Fading Loop

In the dusty attic of our old house in the outskirts of Prague, I found a forgotten toy. It was a miniature carnival ride, a plastic Ferris wheel of sorts,...

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The Third Door on the Lower Ground

Mara had always been drawn to old buildings, their creaking bones and peeling paint whispering stories of lives lived and lost. It was a fascination she shared with no one,...

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The Digger’s Debt

In the sweltering summer of 2011, our family farm in the outskirts of San Miguel had become a focal point of quiet desperation. The land had been in our family...

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The Weight of the Desert

For a man of science, I’ve always prided myself on my ability to explain the world through logic and reason. Two degrees in engineering, a career built on precision, and...

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The Photograph in the Garden

The sun hung low over the clapboard house when we moved in, painting the peeling white paint in shades of amber and rust. Old Man Jenkins, the previous owner, had...

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The Salt on the Wind

The first time I felt the wrongness was the smell. Not the usual brine and fish guts that clung to the trawlers, but something else—sweet and rotten, like flowers left...

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The Lantern Room

The weekend had been a long time coming. Liana, exhausted from weeks of deadlines, had jumped at the chance to reconnect with her two best friends, Maya and Theo, at...

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The Man in the Blue Overalls

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been drawn to ghost stories like a moth to a flame. My grandmother’s tales of the aswang and the white lady thrilled me,...

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The Ceramic Cascade

In the heart of Cebu City, my older sister, Mara, and I rented a small two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a dilapidated building. The paint was peeling, and...

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The Bone Room

The first time I saw a ghost wasn’t in some haunted mansion or a crumbling asylum. It was in the cramped, dust-choked storage room of our quadruplex in a quiet...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Ledger

The inn at Greyhollow Pass had been in our family for three generations, but it wasn’t until my grandfather’s death that we inherited the key with the iron ring. The...

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The Glowing Sill

Marta had always been the quiet one, the one who noticed the way dust motes danced in the afternoon light or how the floorboards creaked in a particular rhythm before...

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The Lantern Keeper’s Debt

The summer I turned nine, my family sent me to stay with my grandmother in the town of Ashwick, a place where the hills swallowed the sun by four in...

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The Pale Visitor at Dusk

Two years ago, in the autumn of 2021, I moved into a small apartment in the industrial district of Mariana, hoping to shorten my commute to the textile factory where...

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The Guest at the Balete Tree

It was the summer of 2019 when I found myself in the sleepy coastal town of San Vicente, Palawan, for a survey assignment. My colleague, whom I’ll call Mara, and...

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The Cicada’s Last Call

The heat of the afternoon clung to the narrow streets of San Isidro, a small town nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Madre. My cousin, Diego, was leaving for...

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The Hollow Staircase

It was the first time in nearly a decade that I allowed myself to relive that night. The memory had been buried beneath years of noise, but the silence of...

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