Thread by @alexisofswords

#UPVencounters, #scarystories & #urbanlegends part 6: Ang Mga Permanent Residents sa Dorm

When I got the good news that I got into UPV, we immediately started to find a place for me to stay.

As a freshie, your most obvious choice would be a UPV Dorm and I so happened to end up—

in BK.

My mom’s friend who had also graduated from UPV wastes no time in telling me the following:

1) Don’t look at the old man if you see him from your room under the tree
2) Ignore the child running around in the hallways and don’t let them into your room. —

UP buildings are old, thus, with their age, their permanence invites things to inhabit them.

Students stay there temporarily, transitory until they graduate. Some things, however, arrive and tend to stay long after each batch that comes in leaves the campus.

The dorms have —

many stories, but I will begin with an interesting one… mostly because some of these entities do not find their way to the dorm on their own, but are brought back— proving once again that as the supernatural impacts us, we impact them in turn.

We’ll begin with the story of—

the little girl in Hall 1.

She’s a rather recent addition, with only some of the latest batches to report sightings of her.

Residents of Hall 1 will know that she likes to play. Her mischief include moving beds, shaking cabinets, misplacing things and pulling your covers—

away while you sleep. Sometimes, when she is angry, she drags your bed (with you in it) halfway across the room.

Unlike my previous stories, I actually know how she got there. Remember that friend from Part 2? The one with the third eye? That friend had this habit of taking—

long walks along UPV at night to clear her head. One of her favorite spots was Lover’s Lane.

It was on one of these fateful nights that she happens to come across a little girl, crying, asking for help to get home.

That friend, kind as she was, offered that the little girl—

come back to the dorm with her so that the staff on duty could assist with calling the proper authorities to get her home.

She never questioned why a young girl, less than 10, would still be wandering isolated UP grounds late at night.

When they arrived at Hall 1, my friend—

tells the little girl to wait with her at the lobby as she went to the counter to call the attention of the staff on duty.

When they turn to the back, the little girl was gone— no sign of her in sight. My friend goes outside, still nothing, and the staff on duty looks at her—

skeptically, but she swears she brought a little girl home with her that night.

Eventually she forgets about it, and she did lead the girl home like she promised: her new home in Hall 1.

—

The little girl’s existence can actually be explained in Panayanon mythology —

There are abandoned and isolated places here called “talonan” where aswang and other entities tend to leave the “spirits” of the victims they cannot consume to wander in a sort of limbo state between the physical world and the metaphysical one.

These (mostly children) become—

what is known as “batang talon”. The full folklore surrounding this is better researched and explained by @MinhanPairaya and what I provide here is merely a TLDR version of it to give readers a context of the cultural origin.

But if you have seen the area near Lover’s Lane—

the fields and the forests next to it, all the way to the back at CDMO, you would realize that this rather deserted area does make for a perfect “talonan”.

The sad part of this story is that this little girl is one of those souls stolen by an aswang and deliberately lost, never—

to be seen by her family again. No wonder she is so happy to find a home in Hall 1. For the student residents? Probably not so much.

—

The little girl, however, is not the only resident to inhabit the dorms.

Once, I heard the story of a batchmate who was on his way home—

passing BK on his route. Some rooms of BK face the road directly and if the curtains are open, one can see the inside.

He notices something strange. He said a person with long hair was lying still on top of the closets, watching the inhabitants inside.

He thinks this is a —

prank at first but a chill settles in his bones when he realized that this was the boy’s wing and all four of that room’s residents were either in bed or at their study table and no one seemed to acknowledge the thing on top of the closet.

The thing he saw seemed covered in —

dirt, with the hair disheveled and the clothes tattered. He wanted to call out to warn them but stopped when according to him, the entity looked straight at him and smiled.

He went home to Hall 1 after that.

—

Another instance is a story from a batch slightly older than mine—

where according to one girl who lived in BK, she woke up from sleep once to find that a shadowy entity was straddling her as she slept, putting it’s dark face close to hers.

She could not move anything except her eyes and saw in her periphery, one of her 3 roommates was still—

studying at her desk. Unfortunately she could not call out, her voice lost or suppressed by whatever was on top of her so she closed her eyes and prayed.

Years later, they have a mini reunion with their classmates and upon getting suitably drunk, that roommate of hers speaks up—

“I’m so sorry but I have to admit something…” she starts, crying “when we were freshies in the dorm, I saw something like a black figure climb on top of you.”

A silence fell on the table.

“I was studying but I was so afraid and thought you were asleep but I am so sorry—

that I didn’t do anything. I was just scared.”

“It’s okay,” she replies “unfortunately, I was awake and couldn’t move.”

—

Personally, I have also seen these entities. One is the little girl in BK. I saw her running down the halls in Wing C at 3am while I was studying —

for a math test. She sort of just disappears when she gets to the end of the hall and it took me a good second to realize: there aren’t supposed to be children here at this time.

I excuse it as her being the child of one of the caretakers of the dorm but when I mention the—

little girl to an upperclass, she says “Short hair and a kind of yellow dress?” She asks, not needing my description. “If that’s what you saw, yes that’s her. Don’t let her into your room.”

I could also tell you of the shadowy figures, both white and black that swoop outside —

the windows, or the crying in the CRs but the last, creepy story that I will never forget is a friend recounting her experience in the BK bathroom.

She was in the toilets when she hears a laugh, a cold, evil laugh and a moment later she looks up to see an entity with grey skin—

fingers tipped with black, reddish eyes, sharp teeth and disheveled hair peeking down at her from the stall next door. It never stopped laughing.

She screams but by the time other dormers were able to respond, the entity was gone and she was huddled in the corner of the stall.—

It’s important to note, that since UPV became less inhabited during the pandemic, you would be surprised to find that nature had reclaimed it so quickly. Paths became overgrown, dorms are darker because there were no students to keep the lights on.

These entities? They stayed—

It was during the middle of the pandemic season when one of my faculty friends invited me over for dinner at StaffHouse area. Another creepy part of UPV but more on that later.

After dinner I was craving some snacks and lung abuse so we decided to check whether or not the —

Hollywood street gate to UpVal was open so we could buy things from manang Susan.

At this point, it had been a year since the students went home for Covid and the campus was closed off from the neighboring homes and dorms. It was only the security guards who you’d see around—

From staffhouse to UpVal would take us, once again, by BK where I would see the lights on in one of the rooms that faced the road. It was only that single room lit among all the dorms.

“Oh,” I remark “there are still students stuck here, pala.”

My faculty friend who also has —

sensitivities to the supernatural doesn’t even bother to look at the direction I was staring at.

“Lexi,” he sighs “can you just ignore that, please? There’s no one there. No one’s been living in the dorm for months now. Something there is trying to get your attention, it’s —

better not to give it.”

I turn away, catching one glimpse of a shadow moving in the room close to the window.

“See? Nakita ka nya. Wag mo nang pansinin. Hahayaan ka lang nyan” (See? It saw you. Just ignore it and it will leave you alone).

We get to the gate to find it closed—

and when we head back, the light was off and the dorm dark again.

“Sabi ko na nga sa ‘yo, Lexi. Wala nang tao dyan. Pero oo, minsan naka on ang light sa rooms. Mostly ang room na yun. Minsan sa ibang dorm din.” (I told you, Lexi, no one’s in the dorms anymore. But, yes, —

sometimes some of those lights are on. Particularly that room. Sometimes in other dorms too.)

We don’t speak of that incident again, mostly because a lot of us here believe that if you keep talking about them when they’re nearby, they’ll follow you. And, I have seen lights on—

in the dorms again a few more times. Oh and that room? The one with the light on? That’s the one with the entity on top of the closet from earlier.

—

I am sure that there are FAR more stories about the UPV Dorms than I can count, heard of or can even begin to archive.—

So far, I have only spoken of Hall1 and BK. How much more BD and GD? The experiences of the staff where they encounter unfamiliar residents, headcount more than the usual inhabitants, or have done a room check and headcount in a room that was yet to be occupied.

Just know, that—

if you are ever a resident of UPV Dorms, you and your human classmates may not be the only ones who live there so sleep tight and make sure nothing can pull the covers away from you while you sleep.

And remember: don’t let the little girl in your room, please!

Author’s Note: just trust me when I say that if I did a thread on anything creepy around the dorm area, it would take hundreds and hundreds of tweets as I have barely scratched the surface so, we will tackle them in parts. There are many encounters in UPV! We will get to them all