The Ghosts of Intramuros

The old walled city in Manila has seen everything: love and betrayal, piety and ruin, life and the slow, steady creep of death. At night, its cobbled streets hum differently. The lamps cast their amber glow on stones that have absorbed four centuries of footsteps, prayers, and quiet cries. In the hush, the air thickens, and the wind carries whispers of ghosts, or perhaps of memory itself.

The One Night in Intramuros tour, led by Manila tour guide Benjamin Canapi, does not merely recount horrors for fright’s sake. It peels back the city’s ornate facades to reveal the true stories beneath.

The ruins of the Aduana rise again, history rebuilding itself brick by brick. Photo by Carby Basina/GMA Integrated News

I. The Lady of Memorare Manila

In Intramuros, the dead are never too far away. Within the Memorare Manila 1945 monument, there is a story older than the memorial’s own memory. Locals say a pale woman crawls across the grass at night, particularly by the left side of the grounds, her dress heavy with the soil of centuries.

Canapi brought us to the site one October evening. The air was damp, touched by the river wind. The tour guide started the story of the bronze figures – women, men, and a child frozen in agony brought about by gruesome massacres – before pointing to a quiet corner where stray cats sat watching.

He told the story of a house that once stood nearby, and of a woman whose name was Catalina.

It is assumed that the house of Governor General Alonso Fajardo once stood there. His wife, Catalina Zambrano, fell in love with Juan de Messa Suero, an ordinary person, a clerk, who had been a member of the Society of Jesus for some years at Coimbra.

The affair between Doña Catalina and Juan was exposed when Governor Fajardo, having been informed of his wife’s infidelity, pretended to leave the city for Cavite but secretly returned.

Before entering his palace, Fajardo was informed by a page, who carried the couple’s messages, that his wife had left the palace disguised as a man to go to Juan’s house, a guise she had often used before. The governor then proceeded alone to the house of Messa, where he arrived at the very moment his wife entered with Juan, allowing the governor to catch them in the act of adultery.

Alonso attacked Juan, who was clad in armor, piercing him through the neck with a mortal thrust, causing him to fall down the stairs where he was finished off by the guard. Alonso subsequently found Catalina hiding in an attic and stabbed her three times, at which point she requested confession. Alonso, acting “as a knight and a Christian,” then brought a confessor for Catalina before delivering three or four more wounds that caused her death.

The following day, Catalina’s body was wrapped in a shroud and buried by the Recollects of St. Augustine, while the body of Juan was left in the street all day for the public to gaze upon, later carried away at night by members of La Misericordia, without clergy, lights, or funeral ceremony.

That is not just a ghost story; that is recorded.

Diego Gabriel Torres of the Intramuros Administration affirmed, “The affair was real. It was written in an actual report to the King of Spain. You could actually find it sa ‘Blair and Robertson.’ The death of Catalina Zambrano, it's in the documents around the 16th or 18th century.”

He added detail that pins the event to time: “It was near Holy Week. Kasi they started the scene on Black Thursday.”

So the crawling woman became more than an image of fear; she is a braided remnant of recorded cruelty and private disgrace.

The city remembers in law books and parish records, and sometimes that remembering takes a shape.

Near the monument, the night wind blows cold with shame, and lanterns catch on damp silk. Whether or not the woman in white was Catalina, one thing was certain: there's someone there who wants to be remembered.

The gate of Fort Santiago looms as both entrance and warning. Photo by Carby Basina/GMA Integrated News

Intramuros, which literally translates to "within the walls," is a historic walled city located in the city of Manila. During the time of the Spaniards, it was considered the entirety of Manila, having been established as a fortified city shortly after 1571 by the Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. This historic walled city is now recognized as an urban district within Metropolitan Manila in the Philippines, strategically founded at the mouth of the Pasig River.

According to Torres, the haunting image of Intramuros is not born from myth alone but from centuries of upheaval.

“Madami kasing nangyari,” he said. “From political upheavals, wars, and the earthquakes that destroyed much of the city.”

Over time, the landscape of Intramuros shifted – churches became schools, hospitals became offices, sacred grounds were built over and renamed. Mapua University, for instance, occupies the site of the old San Francisco Church.

San Agustin at night is a solemn sight. Photo by Carby Basina/GMA Integrated News

But within those centuries of splendor were centuries of violence. Torres recalled the dungeons of Fort Santiago, where revolutionaries and political opponents were tortured, as well as the murder and hangings around San Agustin Church and its old plaza. Yet nothing, he said, could compare to the devastation of the 1945 Battle of Manila, which destroyed nearly 90% of the walled city.

“The Battle of Manila,” he said, “was the single most traumatic event. Within that, you have massacres across the city. And every now and then, lumalabas ‘yung connections with that past.”

Urban congestion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to monuments being worn down or replaced, and the moat surrounding the site was filled in 1905. Today, Intramuros is one of the six administrative divisions that comprise the 17 districts of the city of Manila. Although reconstruction has proceeded slowly, distinguishing features such as the pentagonal walls, seven gates, and small plazas have been restored.

Intramuros remains renowned for the ruins of its old walls and Fort Santiago, as well as for the 16th-century San Agustin church – a city both rebuilt and haunted by what it once held.

II. The Ghosts of Lyceum

At the Lyceum of the Philippines University, classes end with laughter and the clatter of shoes on polished floors. But once the corridors are empty, an unease sets in. One that generations of students have whispered about.

They tell of nurses in bloodied uniforms, running down the hallways, their faces pale, cries muffled as though submerged in water. When chased, they vanish into walls.

By the time Canapi's tour reached the university premises, night had already draped Intramuros in deep shadows. The only light came from the glowing windows of classrooms, the dim lamps of nearby stores, and the quick silver flashes from students’ phones as they took photos before heading home. It was still crowded – laughter echoing, cars rumbling by – yet there lingered a feeling of being alone.

Canapi pointed to the building and spoke softly. “Lyceum is one of the two schools that were established inside Intramuros after the war. The other one being Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila. These two, joined by Mapua University, formerly referred to as Mapua Institute of Technology, which moved from Quiapo to Intramuros in the '50s also. The three schools join the Colegio de San Juan de Letran.”

He glanced back at the building, where the classroom lights shimmered faintly against the glass. The story of the nurses came up once more, those fleeting figures in white said to appear long after curfew, forever running as if trying to save one last life.

“The first time I heard this story, I was like meh. Ano ‘yan, parang batang nagsulat sa Wattpad. Parang gano’n. Makikita mo sa ‘Filipino Frightening Stories Vol. 26,’ mga ganiyan. The thing is nga lang, one aspect of that anecdote that I like because it connects to the history of the location. The fact that they used the profession of nurses. If you’re trying to create a ghost story on a college, students or teachers ‘yan normally eh. Again, it connects to the history of the location, not the building. The location.”

Long before it was an institution of learning, the Lyceum of the Philippines University was home to the Hospital de San Juan de Dios, one of Manila’s oldest and largest hospitals.

Established in the 1600s, it had experienced being managed by priests. Torres recalled that in the 1930s, the hospital housed around 200 beds and cared for countless patients. And when the Battle of Manila erupted in 1945, it became a makeshift war infirmary, a sanctuary, and a tomb all at once.

“San Juan de Dios Hospital, before the war, was the largest private hospital sa city of Manila. Meaning maraming pasyente doon. So talagang if you see nurses, if you see patients, it's because it was–ang susunod na mas malaki sa kaniya was [the Philippine General Hospital.] And PGH was the largest state-owned hospital,” Torres said.

Thousands of wounded soldiers and civilians filled its wards, and when the bombs fell, not many escaped.

Even now, as Lyceum’s students pass through its halls, perhaps the walls remember. The war left its imprint not just on stone but on silence.

Across the street stands the old Aduana, its facade dark and skeletal against the night sky. Somewhere between those two buildings, the air carries a faint chill.

And the stillness of night, if you place your ear to the cold stone, you might just hear it: the faint jingle of a nurse’s keys, the echo of a prayer whispered between bombs, and the soft voice of a healer who never left.

The rebuilt Manila Cathedral towers over the city. Photo by Carby Basina/GMA Integrated News

Filipinos have a love for drama and horror stories. The idea of the supernatural rests easily in the Filipino imagination, often told through stories of multo, white ladies, aswang, and restless souls who linger not out of malice, but memory. Kids whisper of having "third eyes." Lolas warn about dwarves living under trees.

And if there is any place where these kinds of stories are thickest, it is Intramuros. Built in the late 1500s, the Walled City is the oldest existing part of Manila – a city within a city, its bones formed by centuries of conquest and war. The Manila Cathedral, rebuilt in the 1950s, had already fallen multiple times before. In the Second World War, Intramuros was nearly erased, its churches and convents flattened.

As historian Benjamin Torres explained, “It’s no wonder na madalas siya kasama doon sa mga list of supposedly haunted places kasi due to the age of the place. It is, after all, the oldest existing part ng Manila. In terms of the physical city, Intramuros is the oldest part of the city. And due to its age, certain parts may seem different for most people – like the churches, the walls, the fences.”

Different, yes – and haunted, not necessarily by ghosts alone, but by the weight of time itself.

Torres called this “the trauma of the place.”

“Due to the Second World War, you do have ‘yung product kumbaga na human history. Kaya given that history, it’s no wonder.”

For those drawn to historical drama, to the tangible presence of sorrow, Intramuros offers a setting unlike any other. Its massive stone fortifications, twenty feet thick and once surrounded by a moat now long filled in, create an architecture of confinement. 

At night, when the tourists and students have gone, the city changes character.

“Usually, ang isang city, iba siya ‘pag umaga, iba siya ‘pag gabi,” Torres reflected. “In terms of Intramuros, may ibang layer siya ‘pag gabi. ‘Pag sa panahong wala na ‘yung mga nagtatakbuhang mga bata, ‘pag wala na ‘yung marami mga turista, nag-iiba ‘yung karakter niya.”

People still come at night, Torres said, “to experience a different way.”

“People do want to go there sometimes. Takutin ang sarili nila. To put it simply. Or just experience it on another level.”

Intramuros lives on in many layers: as shrine, as ruin, as living ghost. To know it by day is to see a museum of heritage.

To know it by night is to feel a history that never fully sleeps.

III. The Man with the Hat

At Casa Manila, the stories shift from the tragic to the uncanny, its yellow windows glowing faintly like eyes watching from the past. The building, patterned after a colonial bahay na bato, stands proudly across from San Agustin Church. Even from the gate, there’s something peculiar about its stillness, as though the air itself hesitates to move.

By morning, it is a museum of old-world grace: chandeliers glinting over polished wooden floors, furniture arranged in perfect order, sunlight spilling through capiz windows. But when the last visitor leaves and the doors shut for the night, silence settles like dust–and the house begins to breathe again.

People have screamed that they saw a woman leap from the roof, a sudden blur followed by a heavy, unseen splat. Others swear they’ve seen a tall European man roaming the living room, always wearing a wide-brimmed hat, his shadow long and deliberate. They call him “the Man with the Hat.”

During the night tour, Casa Manila felt different – colder, heavier. Having seen it before in daylight, the contrast was striking.

The courtyard alone carried a strange stillness. The lamps cast soft, uneven light against the stone walls, and the faint echoes of footsteps from outside seemed to linger too long before fading. From where we stood, the upper windows loomed dark and watchful. As much as one might want to avoid looking up, it felt impossible not to. 

When asked about the stories surrounding Casa Manila, Torres smiled knowingly.

“Nanggaling 'yan sa isang issue ng Gaceta de Intramuros, I think 1990s. And it was an interesting piece na ginawa,” he explained, saying it was meant to draw interest.

“Casa Manila is a new building. It was built in the 1980s. There was no building like it on that spot. The building that once stood there was a two-story building. Stone and wood, bahay na bato construction from before the war,” he said. “So walang three-story building doon. Parang ginawa lang talaga ‘yung write-up na ‘yun to create something interesting para doon sa Gaceta to bring people sa Casa Manila.”

Yet even fiction, it seems, can leave traces of truth.

Per Torres, the sounds people hear – the footsteps, the rustling – are often near the antiques.

“Remember, these are objects once loved by those who owned them. They could have imprinted themselves on the mirrors, the benches, the bed, the sofas.”

When the last light flickers off in Casa Manila, the hallways hum faintly. The antique mirrors glint as if remembering faces once reflected there. 

Museums are busy places by day, but what happens when the crowd is gone? Who moves the curtains? Who brushes past the tapestries?

No one knows. But in Casa Manila, the silence has weight, and the air smells faintly of old perfume.

The Muralla walls in Intramuros hold the weight of centuries. Photo by Carby Basina/GMA Integrated News

In the end, Intramuros is not haunted by horror but by memory. The walls remember every prayer, every scream, every step that echoed within their stones. And perhaps that is why, even now, they hum with life after dark.

When asked what he thought of these tales, Torres said, “Believe in what they want to believe. They're welcome naman to conduct whatever they do. But know their history. First and foremost, let us use this as a bridge to know about history.”

He reminds visitors that Fort Santiago, for instance, is a shrine, a resting place for unnamed victims of war. That respect must always walk beside wonder.

For Canapi, if the walls of Intramuros could talk, “it will definitely want to tell you that to never forget it, that it was once the center point of culture and influence in the city, that it once was one of the more powerful and influential and important cities in the world. And it would be screaming at us to not forget it, to try to bring back some of that legacy.”

“When you think that this is just the remnants of a far more important, far more impressive city, it really does break our hearts. If the walls of Intramuros can talk, it will be compelling you to look back, remember, and rebuild.”

The walls of Intramuros have stood for 450 years. They have seen love and loss, war and rebuilding, life and death.

And through it all, one truth remains: the dead are never too far away. —JCB, GMA Integrated News