Ghost stories from Philippines

The Tin Roof Psalm

The boarding house in Dumaguete wasn’t much to look at—a squat, two-story structure with peeling paint and a corrugated tin roof that sang with every rain. My room, shared with...

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The Cane Thief’s Bargain

Every summer, my cousins and I were shipped off to our grandmother’s farmhouse in the dusty heart of the plains. The house was a rambling structure of whitewashed walls and...

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The Lace Curtain’s Bargain

It’s been nearly a decade since those nights in my grandmother’s farmhouse, and still, the memory of that stale lavender and dust clings to me like a second skin. I...

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The Gatekeeper’s Grasp

I was four when we moved into the cul-de-sac, a brand-new development carved from what had once been a swamp. The houses were all the same: vinyl siding in shades...

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The Hollow Fare

I never believed in ghosts until that April morning in 2019, when the city of Mandaluyong was still wrapped in the gray blanket of pre-dawn. My name is Clara, and...

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The Keeper of the Undergrowth

The house sat at the edge of the Dhawis, a vast tract of dense forest that locals spoke of in hushed tones. To a child, it was a wonderland of...

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The Unfinished Track

It has been twelve years since the night we nearly lost ourselves in the old Van Der Meer place, yet the memory of those final minutes still claws at my...

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The Last House Light

By the time the power surge hit, the old Riverview Playhouse had already swallowed the last of the afternoon sun. I was up in the catwalk, adjusting the barn doors...

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The Painted Cracks

After our daughter Maya was born in 2019, my wife Elena and I moved into a first-floor unit in a newly built complex near the bustling intersection of Avenida Central...

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The Wet Apron

I moved to the coastal town of Windlass Point three months ago for a job at the old cannery museum. The apartment I rented was above a shuttered bakery, and...

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The Toy Room Incident

My grandfather, Lolo Ben, had a workshop at the back of our house in a small town in Ohio. He was a carpenter, and the place smelled of sawdust and...

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The Ironing Table

I was eleven when we moved to the outskirts of Cebu City, into a narrow lane called Sitio Lumad. Our house was a cramped two-story affair, but it was ours....

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The Static Between Keys

The humming of the air conditioner was the only constant in my small room, a low drone that seemed to soak into the walls. My computer, a bulky beige tower,...

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The Unfinished Corner

I was nine when we moved into my lola’s old house in the province, a squat concrete structure with a rusted tin roof and a yard that turned to mud...

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The Grip of the Unfinished Play

I’ve never been one to dismiss the unseen. As a stage actress, I’ve learned that the most powerful presences are often the ones you can’t see. But what happened three...

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The Glass of Teeth

My grandmother’s house sat at the edge of a salt marsh, a three-story Victorian that had weathered a century of storms. It was the only house on that stretch of...

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The Cold of the Meat Drawer

I was eight that summer, and our apartment in Quezon City was a box of heat and tin. The whole building seemed to bake under the sun, the walls sweating...

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The Pruned Side

The milky pre-dawn light was the worst part about finishing the night shift at the depot. Marcus always felt like he was a ghost returning to a world that had...

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The Hollow Hour

Every evening at six, when the tropical dusk swallowed the last of the day’s heat, the village of San Lorenzo would hold its breath. The generator sputtered and died, plunging...

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The Saffron Jacket

It was the summer of 2009, and my cousin Celia had just turned nineteen. Her family had rented a rambling, creaking farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields...

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The Lamp at Kilometer 17

The night was thick and wet, the kind of damp that clings to your skin like a second layer. I was thirteen, old enough to know better than to ask...

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The Grain of Red Light

The Kettering farm sat at the edge of the Morrow Valley, a patch of stubborn land that yielded just enough to keep us from starving. My father and I worked...

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The Lantern in the Hall

It was dusk on the second of November, and the small town of Ashford was quiet. Nine-year-old Lily sat cross-legged on the living room floor, her nose almost touching the...

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The Headless Lantern

The town of Ashwick had a way of keeping secrets, but the murk of the marsh that bordered it was worse. It swallowed sounds, swallowed light, and on certain nights,...

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