The most haunted places I've ever been to (and yes, experienced first hand)
The San Lazaro Hospital -could be the oldest hospital in my country. According to Pampango historian Zoilo Galang, the San Lazaro hospital was established in 1578.
I find truth in this, coz it's on a frickin stone tablet at the front of the old building.
This hospital is the center for infectious diseases today, ranging from Dengue, Malaria, Meningococcemia, Leprosy, Venereal (HIV, Syphillis, etc.), and Tuberculosis, to name a few.
Judging that this hospital has been around since hispanic times (and run by
frailes) and in the Philippine-American war (the NAMRU --
U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit) and WW2, a lot of anguish and pain has been around for centuries.
I was sent there for a six-month laboratory internship, one that I would never forget for the rest of my life.
We were warned by the medical staff about the wandering spirits there, but since my buddies and I had this principle of
If I don't see it, it's not real, we dismissed it as an old wive's tale.
Come our first night duty.
We were genuine slackers, yes. My co-intern
Lois (said as
Luis ---one of my best friends, who is actually Fil-Am from Houston) and I decided to
sleep on duty in the microbiology lab, which is in the old NAMRU lab building. I was assigned to Microbiology unit then and had the least night duty work (watch bacteria grow or something), so we had a plausible excuse.
The NAMRU lab building is separate from the main hospital.
Lois was assigned to phlebotomy duty, meaning that he was going to do hospital rounds to collect blood samples.
I agreed to wait for him, so that we can help each other move the couches in the old lab.
I chatted with some other friends for a while before I went to the restroom (in the new lab, where everyone else is) to wash up and basically brush my teeth before I go to sleep.
Then the most bizaare thing happened.
When I went back to the Lounge, I saw Lois there, a lot of my co-interns and the supervising medical staff were talking to him.
His face was pale white, and he looks like he just freaked out on something.
When asked what happened,
He said that he finished his phleb duty early and returned to the Lounge, a few minutes after I went to the restroom. He asked the guys at the reception as to where I went.
The other co-interns told him that I went to the restroom to wash up or something.
He interpreted that as
I went to the old lab already and washed up in the restroom THERE. He left for the old lab. Alone.
When he got there, there was someone (
something) in the restroom (which was lit), the sound of running tap water was resonant in the claustrophobic corridor.
He said he joked around and talked to
me, ranting how I broke our agreement and went there on my own. The sound of someone brushing his teeth was what he was hearing.
There was no reply.
He decided to pull a prank on me and
scare me by suddenly opening the door.
To his amazement, the door DID open.
To his shock, NO ONE was there. The sink was dry as if no one even used it, and here's the catch... we found out that that faucet doesn't really work (and no one bothers to report it for months then).
In short, Lois was terrified, and never went to rounds on his own anymore.
We then learned of the ghosts in the hospital. Jesus Christ, the WHOLE HOSPITAL COMPLEX is haunted.
But being genuine dumbasses, we decided to test it.
Three night duties later, Lois and I brought one of our buddies to the old lab,
Ern, who was deathly afraid of the old lab ghost, was in coward mode all the way. The three of us decided to sleep there.
Well, it was a ridiculous strategy. If the ghost would show, one would run away to tell the others, one would be a secondary witness, and one would... well... be the victim
We were scaring each other half the night, in the microbiology lab.
That moron Lois did the unspeakable: HE CALLED IT OUT.
To translate what he shouted on that infamous night:
Since there are three of us now, you motherf*cker, go ahead and SHOW YOURSELF. Ern was shivering like a cat left in the cold, and he was begging of Lois to stop it.
I was like,
Dude, that's dumb, we don't know what's out there...
Nothing happened that night, and we dismissed it.
Nothing happened... there.
The thing followed Lois home.
He started to see it in his bathroom mirror, in his room,
His brother started to see it too.
His brother's classmates started to see it too whenever they came over to his house.
It was a woman with disheveled hair, whose face Lois can only describe as
cloaked in shadow. It never talked, but it kept on moving stuff around... or running up their wooden stairs... slamming doors occassionally...
I've been to Lois's place. I experienced the
running issue firsthand.
This is one of the myriad of experiences I had in that old hospital.
I'll be posting the rest after this (or another venue).