Thread by @alexisofswords

#UPVencounters, #scarystories & #urbanlegends Part 9: Hallowed Halls

Our schools have always been known to be hallowed halls of learning, places where young minds and experienced academics come together to share learning.

With a school as large as UPV, our buildings can be—

far apart, usually situated amidst old trees, colleges that are disconnected from each other.

Many who have walked the hallowed halls of UPV know its parts well. SoTech used to greet you at the entrance, CAS is at the back, slowly being reclaimed by the trees, meanwhile, Fish—

sits atop a hill and lends itself access to the sea and the many laboratories down there via 100 steps.

On most days, the school is full of noise and laughter, however, there are whispers that echo down these hallowed halls of things that lurk in the dark, of beings that—

walk these hallowed halls among us. These are those stories.

Now, CAS has its fair share of what I would call “common” urban legends. Someone crying in bathrooms, doppelgängers spotted in class when the actual student was back in the dorm, shadows in the corner of your eye—

What’s not common about CAS are its stranger inhabitants.

If you’re a CMS student, you’ve probably heard of your upperclassmen telling you not to stay alone in the ISBL, avoid it in the late afternoons or to never request that room if you are doing overnights.

You know the —

one— the one with the glass sound-booth for special productions. In fact, I do find it strange that classes are mostly scheduled in there on the mornings, not so much nearing twilight.

It’s in fact, rare, to find a single student staying there, solitary, unless it can’t be—

helped.

The reason for this, is because there is a Black Lady said to live there— one that knows when she is mentioned in media.

Once upon a time, a CMS student was in the ISBL doing a project. It was late afternoon and nearing the time to go home.

This girl packs up, —

tidying up the classroom for use the next morning. She starts inside the booth, gathering her things and making sure to turn off the light, leaving the room in the dark.

While she was making sure to leave the outer room tidy, out of the corner of her eye she sees the silhouette—

of someone staring at her from inside the booth, just beyond the glass. Tall, slender, with long hair, the shadow just stands in the dark, watching her.

She calls out, wondering if someone had gone in, too tired to realize she had been alone moments before.

Curious, she hits —

the light switch and finds that no one had been inside.

Thinking nothing of it, she turns it off again, and goes back to packing her things. Again, in the booth, the shadow of a figure is back, a little closer to the glass this time.

This time, the student retells, she’s —

nervous, but pissed. She turns on the light again and goes into the room.

A quick scan later, she realizes no one had been inside. Here, her fear comes full force and she leaves the light on while she rushes to pack up her bags. Whatever was in there, was probably still inside—

She finishes up and turns off the light a third time, relieved when she doesn’t see a figure anymore.

That is, until, she turns to leave the main door.

As she was fixing to lock the doorknob, ready to pull it closed behind her, she says the lights inside the booth flicker once—

illuminating the dark booth for only a second— a second that was enough to give her a glimpse of the tall, dark, long haired black lady standing in the center of the room, staring straight at her.

She doesn’t even remember if she locked the door after that. All she knew was —

that she ran straight out of there.

—

Hers is not the only story of the black lady. She’s fondly called the black lady of ISBL because she haunts that whole potion of HumDiv. Reports say that she’s also been seen in the faculty room or standing in the corner in a prod room, —

away from the bright production lights. Many CMS students have also tried to mention her in projects or create documentaries investigating her existence.

There are a fair few who report that files related to her suddenly get corrupted when it’s time for presentation, despite —

being fine before. Sometimes, a teacher’s copy fails on a rewatch or there would be production issues— like cameras not turning on— if the object should be her.

I cannot count the times, many CMS students would randomly exit ISBL areas due to there being “a very bad feeling”—

in the area.

==

Of course, as you may expect by now, she’s not the only resident in CAS.

People have long mentioned the existence of a Kapre in BioDiv, the creep factor of this one made even worse by the fact that there are specimens in glass jars that go along that—

whole hallway.

Sometimes, during overnights done in the opposite hallway, students have reported seeing a tall figure walking around in BioDiv, smoking a traditional rollup of leaves.

Once, I asked some of the UP guards if the Kapre is a joke. Much to my surprise, they —

seriously answered no.

“Oh, he’s real” they answer “you see, when CAS is empty, we’re still required to do rounds, to check if lights are working and if anything needs maintenance.”

The one guard nods to the other. “Between the two of us, there have been multiple instances—

where we would turn on the lights when it gets dark. On a second round, we would oddly find them off in BioDiv, despite no students having been permitted to overnight here.”

The other guard nods, continuing. “One time, I got frustrated and had just turned the lights on again—

when as I was leaving the hallway, They started turning off by themselves. In the darkness I saw a tall figure walking closer and a hairy hand reaching out to flick the light switch off.”

They’re somber, probably remembering the incident.

“There are actually many guards that—

don’t last long on night shifts or as UP guards in general. A lot of new hires tend to resign quickly.

There are many things here that we can’t explain. Sometimes, it’s classroom seats banging and sometimes we hear laughter in the halls at night.”

Later, more guard stories —

would come up. One particularly memorable story they would eventually tell me are of 3 beautiful girls coming from CUB.

They would tell the guard that they had practice for something— which was true as there was a group practicing a play or performance approved to overnight—

at the time.

The guard thinks nothing of it and tells them to go right ahead. They giggle and continue on.

It’s when they pass him to go up the stairs that sends a chill down his spine. As he watches them pass by, it strikes him that they seemed to be gliding over the ground.—

As they make their way up the steps, he gets an explanation for their strange movement: the three girls had no feet. Nothing about them was touching the ground at all.

==

CAS, much like the rest of UPV is a strange place. Often, UPVnians would joke about how it’s one strong—

wind away from falling apart.

It certainly feels like it, because the building is old and has cracks near the back, the walls crumbling even as we speak.

The official explanation is that it wasn’t the building’s original design. It was supposed to form a U, with the garden—

leading into the uterus and the whole front, horizontal part actually going to the back.

Something went wrong during construction, however, as reports say that the ground was suddenly unstable there and has been steadily declining in stability ever since. The surveys, however—

initially said that the building grounds would be fine.

Whatever the case, plans were changed and construction continued, not without its own fair share of griefs.

Locals of Miagao speak of the tragedies In construction, of strange events tied to the building almost being—

rejected by the land.

Many locals, some who have worked on the site or know people who have, mention that there have been many deaths of workers while CAS was being built.

Stranger still, are how they recount these tales.

They say the workers would be relatively healthy when—

they begin the work, reluctant but vocal about their opinions when unexplained things start happening.

They say that they would lay foundations, only to find them torn up they next day. They would install toilets, only to find that these would be ripped out of the bathrooms —

the concrete attached to them and all, and find them flung far from the build site, into the forest. Tools would break or get lost, mechanic engines refusing to turn on.

They would warn the project managers, it is said, that these are bad omens, only to go unheeded and told —

to continue. Many locals also quit, their superstitions taking precedent over work.

Many who stayed did not meet good ends. Their families and friends alive today would say their health would suffer.

Their nights would be haunted by nightmares, visions of malevolence—

threatening them to stop, to go away, else they would pay for their lives. They would be shown images of themselves covered in blood, without heads, torn apart.

Whoever had been in charge of construction had high attrition on their hands, forced to hire outsiders to replace —

the workers who have had enough.

Still, some continued on with the contract and, despite being healthy individuals one day, would simply drop dead in the middle of it all.

The locals who would retell me these stories would say that they had suspicions, that these deaths was—

not the work of natural causes.

So, in their own traditions, they would throw the corpses out of windows and find only the trunk of a banana tree outside. They would exhume buried bodies to find bundles of sticks in the coffins, or branches of local trees.

Even now, among the—

older generations who remember the construction of UPV, would tell that it was payment— the cost of unheeded warnings and a betrayal of the land on which they were born.

Many of them would say they would never find out what happened to the real people whose bodies were never—

found.

Whatever the case, there are actually those who have acquired a bad taste for UPV because of these incidents. That, among its other shortcomings, of course.

==

Schools have always been a hotspot for urban legends. It’s these hallowed halls where younger generations—

can often retell and misinterpret a story.

I will admit, however, that CAS does come off eerie at nighttime, the woods behind it too dark and quiet, even if lights were shone on them.

I can’t, however, explain why locals have their own stories about entities taking people—

that go way back to its infancy. I cannot explain why, even after all this time, these stories persist.

On this chapter, I leave you with one more rumor about CAS:

Locals have mentioned that the entities that live in that area don’t like CAS. They say it was never in the —

contract and it certainly is built on what seems to be uneven ground.

In hushed tones and whispers, they would say that the reason why CAS is falling apart, unable to be repaired, is that the forest is slowly eating it, that whatever owns the land wants it reclaimed.