Scary Stories as told by Filipinos

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Everyone has heard a ghost story at least once in their life. One Pinoy Urban Day I drove past my old office building in Makati and remembered the ghost stories I've heard associated with it. I also started remembering some good stories I've heard throughout the years. Here are some of the best that I'd like to share with you.

Gate To Hell

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This is a story I heard from a friend during a High School Retreat (I think). It creeped me out as hell (no pun intended) back then. The story goes like this:

A little boy found out that the closet to his room is actually a gate to hell. The devil told him "I would let you go back but you have to promise to never tell anyone about this gate, you naughty boy". The boy, completely terrified at this point, agreed and he was let back to his family and lived up to be a fine young man.

The man married the girl of his dreams and started a family of their own away from his parent's home. One day the family decided to have a vacation and visit the man's parents. He took his wife to his old room to kind of show him his life before meeting her. He saw the old closet. It has been such a long time and he cannot remember if it really happened or if it was just a dream. He called his wife and pointed to the closet and said: "When I was a kid I had this weird dream. I dreamt that the gate to hell".

The husband and wife shared a laugh over the story. Then the wife looked her husband straight in his eyes and said: "I told you to never tell the story to anyone, you naughty boy".

Black Man in UPLB

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One of my favorite shows when I was a kid was Magandang Gabi... Bayan over at ABS-CBN, especially around Halloween when they had specials devoted to occult stories. One of the most memorable was the episode about ghosts in the University of the Philippines - Los Baños (UPLB) campus in Laguna. Here's a YouTube link to the episode and forward to the 5:15 mark of the video. This was the first time I've heard about this black man roaming around UPLB.

I was an active member of Youth For Christ (YFC) when I was teen and we had these conferences during the summer. The First Metro Manila conference was held in the Boy Scouts of the Philippines jamboree site in Mt. Makiling, Laguna. At the foot of the mountain is the UPLB campus and girls in the conference were to sleep in the housings within the campus. One of girls in our group is able to see supernatural beings and she freaked out as their van was traversing the road within the campus. She said that a black man was running after them, intent on catching up to them. 

Ghost in the Fourth Floor of a Bank's headquarters in Ayala Avenue

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I worked for a Universal Bank that had it's headquarters along Ayala Avenue. It was a very old building, older than the company itself since it used to be the office of another bank that our bank acquired. There are stories of ghosts in the 12th and 4th floors, but since our department was in the 4th I'll be focusing on that. 

Our department had a weird design. It was like working inside an oversized closet. I swear. To get to it you need to pass by the Accounting Department and there would be a heavy wooden door with the sign "Credit Department" above it. If not for that sign, you would seriously think it was the door to the broom closet or something. But most of the ghost stories seemed to come from here.

People attest to a little girl running around at the back-end of the office, near our pantry. The ladies that sat near there say that they have felt someone touch their hair. A couple of ladies swear they saw a little girl run from the pantry to the rest room one afternoon we were huddled together for a meeting. I personally had a run-in one late night I was working overtime. My computer was separate from my desk, on a computer table that had space upstairs for a printer. I had neatly placed folders of the account I working on on this space, OCD I guess. I was alone since I was going on a week-long leave and wanted to clear all my work. As I was typing, a folder from the top of my computer just fell and landed in front of my computer screen. Needless to say I got our of there fast.

There's also a story about a night guard who received a phone call at dawn. He locks everything when everybody is already out of the office, so he was surprised to receive a call at this ungodly time. It was a girl from the department on the other side of the floor who said that she fell asleep in a room and got locked in. The guard panicked, his job will be on the line once this news gets out. He rushed on over to the room, unlocked it, opened the lights, and shouted for the girl but got no answer. He looked around for a while but found no one. Confused, he once again closed everything down and walked back to his desk near the elevators. As he got back his phone once again rang and the same girl's voice said: "Thank you for letting me out..."

Red Eye

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No, it's not the last minute flight you take when you really just have to get somewhere important. I'm referring to a story about a night guard's experience in a dorm. 

There's this room in one of the upper floors of the dorm where the landlord has forbidden anybody to go to. It was locked from the inside and he does not rent any of the rooms in the same floor. The dorm has a strict curfew and the main door would be locked after that time. A new night guard, on his first night on the job, was told that he will still need to check all the rooms up on this certain floor to make sure no students were doing anything funny in there. He was also told that this room would be heavily locked and he should not try to open it or anything.

As he was making his rounds, his curiosity got the best of him. He stopped in front of the infamous room's door and wondered what was inside. He noticed that there was a small hole on the top part of the door that would be hard to get to unless you're above average in height. What he saw inside was just a bed, a lamp, and a long-haired girl in white sitting bent over at the end of the bed. This freaked him out so much he just bolted back to his front desk.

The next night, he mustered enough courage to take another peek inside the room. This time the girl was standing and pacing slowly around her bed. This went on for a few minutes so he just walked away, still weirded out by all of this.

The night after that, he once again peeked inside the room but this time the girl was just standing inside. This time though he was able to see her face, particularly her eyes which were fixated at the direction of the door. Her eyes were bloodshot red and unblinking. He felt fear creep over his being this time and he once again ran to his desk.

What he saw the night before was gnawing at his thoughts. He was scared at what he will be seeing if he peeks through the hole again but he can't help it. After finishing his rounds, he gingerly went up to the door, went to the peep hole, peeked in, and saw nothing but red.

Hospital Elevator

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A doctor had to go to the basement of the hospital late on night to get the results from the laboratory that was left there for him. He didn't really want to go there now since the hospital's morgue was also in the basement. But he had to see the results immediately and since no one else around was available to get it for him, he had to go himself.

After getting the result, he walked briskly to the elevator. Thank goodness it was already open and a pretty girl was inside. She said she accidentally rode the elevator going down from the lobby and she was also going up. The doctor thought she must be a bantay here to accompany a patient spend the night in the hospital. 

He saw a another girl in white step out of the morgue and start running to the elevator. The doctor quickly and furiously pressed the "door close" button. It closed just in time before the running girl got to there.

"Why did you close the door? That girl was trying to catch the elevator!", said the pretty girl. He told her he knew that girl, that she was his patient and that she had died early today. He pointed out that she was wearing a red tag on her wrist which indicates that she was already dead and should be kept in the morgue.

The girl quizzically looked at the doctor and held up her wrist with a red band on it. "You mean like this?"