Thread by @alexisofswords

#UPVencounters, #scarystories & #Urbanlegends Part 7: The Hauntings in Banwa Dorms

So far, we've only explored stories that occur mostly on UPV soil. For those of you who have tweeted about staying in the banwa, instead, I have some bad news for you.

Whatever magic falls--

over UPV, bleeds and courses through the veins of Miagao town itself. UPVnians aren't the only ones who have experienced scary things, after all. We're not the only ones who have places to avoid.

This next encounter happens in one of the houses we used to rent in the banwa.--

weird things that kept us up at night and on our toes. The house we rented before was large and old. It's style was that of an older Filipino home, with two floors and those sliding wooden windows.

We were actually subletting the house from a family. The agreement was that we --

could have two rooms upstairs, share the bathroom downstairs and they would inhabit only a portion of the house -- something that we should have been wary of early on.

This way, the house would remain largely empty. The living room downstairs would remain empty and so would one-

of the rooms. The kitchen we would share with the family and it had this weird, large, concrete slab to the side with a drain by its side. Remember this. It will come up again later.

Bathroom was additionally strange as it just had walls built around a sink area, like a late--

addition to the house and the walls were only slightly taller than your average height.

There were four of us who were subletting officially, but since the space upstairs was huge, the rest of our friend group made it a habit to come over and stay with us instead. --

The first, real creepy incident happened to one of us -- the subletters. She storms up the stairs, angry, yelling "HAHA, very funny guys. You all suck."

We don't look up from Tetris Battle, as all of us were in the middle of a round.

"What's funny?" We ask. She's fuming.

"One of you bitches were playing a prank on me. Someone was whispering my actual name while I was in the shower and laughing."

We all stop playing and look at each other. She was right to suspect us as she had used a shortened version of her name to the family downstairs.--

She looks at us, accusing. "Babe," we tell her "no one went downstairs. Just you. We were all playing."

The realization dawns on us all and since then we made it a point to have a buddy outside of the shower every time.

--

The second phenomena happens a few months into our --

stay. A blackout occurs in the middle of the night. One of us had her boyfriend over, also part of the friend group. This person had the second, smaller room to herself which she shared with him when she was over.

This room connected to the bigger room we were allowed to use --

via a small closet/storage space so we could actually see each other. Both rooms, of course, had doors that led to the living area outside but we kept this closet space open to stay connected.

A blackout happens and one of us subletters, I tell you, is a scaredy cat so, --

great friends that we are, decide to scare her. The guy friend we had over puts a sheet over his head, stands in that dark closet space and makes spooky sounds. We laugh as she insists to stay between me and our other friends and keep teasing her until we get tired. --

We were using candles, then, and decided to keep one lit in each room as the blackout showed no signs of ending anytime soon. We also kept the closet space open.

The couple goes into their room to get some sleep. The three of us decide to chat a bit to calm our scaredy cat --

friend down as we were laying in bed, trying to sleep. Suddenly, she look up and yells.

"Very funny, you can stop now."

We look towards the closet to where her gaze was and see, in the shadow where the lights don't reach, our friend was back with the --

blanket over their head. We were quite tired, and we had agreed to get some sleep some time ago already so the prank was getting old and was starting to creep us out when he was just standing there, quietly staring.

We also chime in, all three of us now telling --

him to stop -- YELLING at him to stop when suddenly, he slowly turns around towards the room. The very next second, he stomps towards us angrily, very clearly just woken up, no blanket. "What's the matter with you guys? Can you keep it --

down? We're asleep."

The three of us look at each other. "If you just woke up..." I start "then who has been standing there for the last few minutes?"

--

This isn't the only time we see this entity, as apparently it hangs around. During the times me and the girl from the --

bathroom incident would go home to the city, our scaredy cat friend would see that same figure just standing in the corner of the second room, watching our fourth friend.

She never noticed and the scaredy cat in our other friend left it be, afraid of the consequences should --

she acknowledge the existence of it.

As the last, creepiest of our incidents, happens again on the night of a blackout when it was only me and the girl from the bathroom incident awake.

We had teased scaredy cat friend earlier so she ended up sleeping right on top of both--

of us, trying to squeeze in between. She literally had us pinned down and we could not move. We had also made sure to close the closet space this time around.

We weren't really sleepy yet and scaredy cat friend's weight was keeping us awake so we were just chatting, laughing at-

the situation when we suddenly hear the sounds of wind crashing into the window and something heavy landing on the floor in the living space outside.

We quiet down and look at each other, me and the only other person awake and whisper to each other, asking if we had locked the-

door.

The wings outside stop flapping and the next thing we hear are what sound like claws, dragging itself across the floor, down the stairs and back up again.

Our friend's weight kept us from moving and we were frozen in place hoping we did have the room locked.--

we heard whatever it was explore the outside and nearly stopped breathing when we heard it scratch across the floor to the door and nudge it.

Thank god, it was indeed locked.

Sometimes, I forget why I hate old houses. Walls and floors are made of wood, so you can hear --

every single sound.

Eventually the wings flap again and we hear it leave through the window. Trust me when I say that based on its weight as it thudded up and down the stairs? It was not a bird.

--

It's not until a few months later when an underclass friend of ours comes --

over to hang out that we find out some things about the house.

"Grabe, ate" he remarks "it's amazing that you're not afraid to live here, noh?"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Wala lang," he replies "this house is old and used to be a makeshift hospital during the war." --

"If patients passed while they were here, they'd usually keep the bodies downstairs before they went to the morgue. Eventually, due to the lack of hospitals here, they even started the embalming process here, too."

We stare at him, dumbstruck.

"Did you never wonder what the --

concrete slab with the drain beside it was for?"

His story is confirmed later on by the family downstairs. There was a reason why they never occupied the first floor. They spoke of shadows sitting at the dining table, people calling their names.

Neither the family or us, --

stayed long in that house.

Eventually, we moved to another house and another after that. Both have their fair share of creepy stories, one I will never tell and the other is for later.

I try to be rational, but think that places and homes absorb memory and energy. It becomes--

part of the space, so, even when you can't see entities, places may be weighed down by its negative aura, affecting everyone inside. Many unhappy stories come out of the house I just spoke of.

So if you think the banwa dorms are safer, think again. Ask outside dormers about --

some dorms where the lights, again, seem to burn out fast. Where some shadows form humanoid figures in the dark, where hairy hands turn off the lights, where dormers and visitors pass by, but when you turn around they are no longer there and you never see them again. --

If you think whatever spell takes hold of UPV doesn't involve the rest of Miagao? Think again. There is just something truly... magical... about this place.