I have always associated hauntings with old houses and buildings. Any structure that looked decrepit, abandoned, surrounded by overgrown weeds, crawling ivy and covered in moss just exudes this aura of being the abode of something no longer of this world. When you see places like that, you more or less know what to expect. You would hardly hear of hauntings in a modern high rise building and yet that’s exactly what people have experienced at this one office in Manila where I worked for a year in 2007.
The office is located in one of the prime buildings in the area, occupying ten floors in the high rise. since this office supports US operations, the place is bustling 24 hours a day. Most of the people start their shift at 9PM and ends at 6AM to match the working hours in the US. Because of their hours, there was no shortage of stories of hauntings from them. Our department was on the 35th floor – the apparent hotspot of the activities. On this floor, there was this one area right outside of where we worked where there’s a persistent cold spot despite the fact that there’s no vent installed in that location.
Being up on the 35th floor afforded us spectacular views. In the daytime, the blinds are always open. At night though, they keep the blinds closed. Occupants of this floor support the local operations and were on regular office hours so the whole area gets quite empty in the evening except for some unfortunate souls who had to work overtime. The one time I worked late, I asked them why they closed the blinds when the city lights provided such a wonderful scenery. They told me it’s because they kept seeing the reflection of this little girl behind them. They apparently often notice her standing behind them but when they turned to look, there’s nobody there.
As soon at the clock reads 7PM, my workstation buddy whips up his headphone and turns up the music when working on overtime. I noticed him doing this before I left for the night. I thought he just needed the music to help him focus on his work but apparently it was to drown out the footsteps they always hear
running up and down the hallway. These footsteps would often end right where our workstations were which dead end to a window. He said the headphones helped him drown out the creepy footsteps. I just looked at him rather oddly and bade him goodnight.
The following day, he told me this story.
Because of our big project, he had stayed quite late to catch up on some of the work. He told me that even though he had his headphones on, he could still hear the footsteps and could even feel the floor vibrate. He tried to ignore them as much as he could but it as really making it difficult for him to not pay attention to it. As always, they stopped somewhere behind him. He was glad that the activity finally stopped so he can finish his task but after a few moments he literally saw the hair on his arms slowly arise and felt as if someone was touching him. Needless to say, he quickly packed up and left for the evening.
This ghost apparently loves playing with the phones. I clearly remember this one morning when we all arrived at the same time at the office. My cube-mate asked our other cube-mate if she called his extension the night before. She said no but that apparently he called her, too. They just looked at each other with the understanding that someone or something had been messing with them again as they have left at the same time the night before and were the last ones to leave. On another morning, I was greeted by stunned faces of my co-workers as they were filing out of the conference room. I asked one of them what happened. Apparently they were all in the room for a team meeting. There were about ten of them in there at that time. All of a sudden the speakerphone rang. They weren’t expecting anyone to call in as everyone who needed to be in attendance was there. One person answered the phone but there was no one on the other line. They heard nothing but complete silence. They just looked at each other and hung up. A few seconds after, it rang again. Thinking that someone was really trying to get a hold of one of them, they answered the phone. Once again there was silence but only for a couple of seconds and then they heard this little girl giggle. Everyone in the room felt goosebumps on their arms and the hair on the backs of their necks stand. They hung up the phone and hastily finished up the meeting before they get more calls.
There was also this bit about this guy who was working quite late one night. He wasn’t in the one of the floors that housed the groups on the evening shift so his floor was already quite deserted at that hour. His friend who sat a couple of cubes away from him dropped by to see him before leaving. A few minutes after he left, the guy’s phone rang – and the caller ID showed that the call came from his friend’s phone a couple of cubes away. Finding it odd that his friend came back without noticing him, he pushed back from his desk and peered at his friend’s desk which he could clearly see from where he was. There was no one there; actually there was no one within his immediate vicinity. And yet his phone kept ringing with his friend’s phone number displayed on the screen; the call coming from an empty office with an empty chair that was slowly spinning.
The women’s restroom is one other hotspot. The restrooms there all have bottles of alcohol for disinfecting. My friend used the restroom one evening. She was opening one of the alcohol bottles while inside one of the stalls when she dropped the cover and rolled away from her. She tracked where it rolled to so she can pick it up later when this thing slowly rolled back over to her. Having gotten quite used to the goings-on by that time, she just uttered a word of thanks to the ghost, picked up the cover, composed herself as best as she could and pretended that nothing happened.
By far the scariest story I’ve heard were from people who have used the clinic in the facility to get a bit of rest when they felt ill or simply too tired due to the late night/early morning work hours. I have heard from at least five different people who had taken a nap in the clinic that they had experienced being held down and having difficulty breathing. They have felt hands holding their legs and a couple have told me that they had a waking dream where they saw this little girl with a menacing expression standing at the foot of the bed. With so many stories such as these surrounding the clinic, people go there only as a last resort for fear that the little girl will take them as her companion.
We have often wondered why a girl would be haunting the building when it would be more likely that a man who died during construction be the one walking the halls. The theory out there was that there was this superstitious belief that sacrificing a child would make the building stronger. Whether an offering was indeed made and if that offering was the child roaming the building was, of course, never validated but it really is quite odd that a child was the one making its presence known. The only thing that’s certain is that the activities were ever present and the experiences were quite consistent no matter who I talked to about these hauntings. I personally haven’t experienced anything other than the cold spot but all the stories pretty much corroborate each other. In fact, I had a conversation about these hauntings with a couple of people who were assigned here in the US from that location in Manila and both of them told me the exact same stories – same experiences, different people. Quite eerie when you think about it. Despite the fact that the building had been blessed, the activities still persisted. Maybe the little girl just wanted to get someone’s attention so she can tell her story. Who knows, maybe she was indeed sacrificed in the building while it was under construction a few years ago and she just wanted her identity to be known.