Almost traditionally now, Nov. 1 inspires media to recall frightening footages in an abandoned hospital here, YouTube videos of translucent ghosts walking to and fro inside an office of a now demolished building and, orbs floating over the rows of crosses in an American cemetery near this freeport’s main gate.
But only insiders yet know about the hauntings in the rows of “barn houses” that used to be homes for US Air Force officers.
The spacious white houses are of wood yet impervious to termites. The old barn houses were converted into offices after the Americans left Clark in 1991.
But they remained witnesses to many American family lives – and deaths – for decades since the US Infantry established a foothold here in 1901. One of the houses is now the Bale Balita (House of News, literally) office for journalists.
“At times, we see a lonely black American sitting at the dining table. He just stares nowhere then vanishes,” said Josie Gilbert, 42, an Aeta who volunteers to help serve guests during Friday forums of the Capampangans in Media, Inc.
Gilbert, whose father and other relatives had served as forest guides to US soldiers at Mt. Pinatubo, said ghosts at the Bale Balita could also take on the physical forms of living people who frequent the building.
“There were cases where we saw Precy (personnel in charge of the Bale Balita building) at the conference room, just standing there. But all the while, Precy never left her office on the other side of the building,” she recalled.
Four barn houses away, at another house, converted into an extension office of Mabalacat City in this freeport, various ghostly manifestations are also being reported.
Deng Pangilinan, president of the Pampanga Press Club who had held office in the building as consultant of former Mabalacat Mayor Marino Morales, said he himself had heard ghosts even saying “Damn it” even when no one else was in the building.
“Doors would loudly bang shut, the toilet would flush by itself, and loud steps on the wooden floor would disturb meetings,” he said.
Just two blocks away north from the rows of barn house is a three-story concrete building that provided offices for the former US Air Force officials.
It is now occupied by the state-owned Clark Development Corp. whose personnel fear being caught by darkness on the third floor.
“There have been many. many testimonies of people seeing translucent ghosts standing and just staring at them in the toilet in the west. Knocks are also heard on doors of offices on the same floor,” said one CDC worker who asked not to be named for lack of authority to provide information about hauntings in this freeport.
In the past, officials of the CDC, the government arm which manages this freeport, had barred its personnel from talking about haunted areas here, for fear this would drive away investors.
But other sectors interested in parapsychology have maintained that haunted places would even attract tourists, in the same way that haunted places in the US are being promoted as tourism destinations.
“Also, not all spirits haunting places are evil. Some are good and could even be of help to the living if they are prayed for,” said Pangilinan.
