Every regular school day, De La Salle Lipa (DLSL) is home to an approximate number of 12,000 people of students and employees, each going about their business all around campus. But despite all the busyness happening, there are experiences that only those who remain late inside the institution get to share. There are stories and suspicions about the unseen-yet-felt entities whenever it dims.
Numerous accounts of these mysterious encounters have been circulating around DLSL for decades, told in hushed whispers, passed on by word-of-mouth. With this, Lavoxa anewed another set of conversations with some Lipasallians who have been unfortunate enough to be acquainted with these ‘other’ entities.
Here are the accounts of their experiences that you, if you stay later than you should, might get to encounter too.
The unending hallway
There’s still an unsolved puzzle that Yvann Saculo, a college freshman, shared about his junior high school experience while entering the campus at five in the morning. With no one but the two security guards at Gate 6 (more commonly known as the ‘side gate’), he would have thought that entering campus would just be the start of another regular day in DLSL.
However, just right after entering and greeting the guards, he said that a strong wind suddenly hit him which made him lose his mindfulness of direction and he suddenly got confused with the layout of the buildings despite having been a student of DLSL for eight years already.
To avoid panicking, he roamed around trying to figure out where he was until he decided to sit down on a bench with his eyes closed, thinking if there could be anything wrong with him.
As the school was still empty at that hour, there was no one to call out to for help. Suddenly, a maintenance personnel happened to come by, but he kept going, as if there wasn’t anything strange happening at all. Then shortly, he realized that he was only a meter away from the St. La Salle (LS) building which he had been searching for. This was surprising given that he wandered around the campus for quite some time, only to find out that it was just near that same bench–and it wasn’t supposed to be.
He then doubled his footsteps towards his room, where he and his group mates agreed to meet at regarding a school project, but he noticed that he was again passing by the same places and the same St. La Salle’s statue near the audio-visual room where he had already crossed three times, as if he was trapped in a dimensional puzzle.
Nonetheless, when the building began to be filled with its daily crowd, he continued to walk into his room–a walk which shouldn’t have taken as long as it did–and finally got there for their group work. No one else knew how perplexed the building was for him.
Mother and child
Joma Rosales, a maintenance personnel, recounted his terrifying encounters with what he called ‘spirits’ that bothered him while he was finishing his cleaning tasks at about 8:30 p.m. at the CBEAM Building.
According to him, while he was locking the doors of the rooms at the third floor, the knobs clicked back and forth as if somebody inside was preventing him from locking them. Confused and frightened by this strange experience, he hurriedly turned away and decided to go about cleaning the restrooms at the other end instead.
However, when he entered one of the cubicles, the bidet suddenly sprinkled high-pressure water on him, while the toilet flushed rumbly as if operating on its own. Terrified by what he just witnessed, he immediately decided to go down to the second floor to pack his things and leave the building.
With his feet in a hurry toward the maintenance lounge, right after passing by and glancing at CB-202’s glass opening, he saw two figures resembling a mother and a child gazing at him with red eyes and distorted faces. According to Rosales, blood was dripping down the face of the mother who was seemingly weeping over the kid’s death as she caressed the pale-black shadow of her child.
After that night, he said that he would often hear shrieking voices or chairs screeching against the floor inside the rooms even though there was no one around but him and that doors would sometimes fling open in spite of having no strong winds to cause them to do so.
Athlete’s playmate
A college taekwondo player, Gabrielle Samson, narrated her contact with a disturbing companion while going down the stairs of the Brother Benilde (BB) Building to leave the campus at almost 7:00 in the evening after their training.
She said that there were only three people left on the roof deck including her and her fellow athletes who at the time were already spooked out as they were aware of the stories about the entities supposedly roaming around the vicinity.
As the three of them were rushing to get down, she heard a metallic tapping coming from behind. She thought that it was just one of her friends who was trying to scare them but then her two other companions were ahead of her and she was coming in last. Afterwards, she felt a heavy pair of hands brushing against her back that left her frozen and speechless. She, however, endured her fear in order for her co-players to remain calm and steady while descending the floors.
The lady in the MB building
Dusk had blanketed the campus but school work did not stop for a group of communication students who at that time was in their last academic year.
According to Gabbie Monsod, one of the group members, they had to prepare for a national coverage first thing in the morning so they decided to ask for permission to spend the rest of the evening in the Media Center at the Mabini Building (MB) 408, to take care of the preparations.
At about one in the morning, they were awakened by the sounds of heavy footsteps dragging across the hall. The students left the room to check whether it was the guard on duty or possibly some other student who were also having an all-nighter just like them. When they looked however, no one was there.
They took turns using the restroom but while one of them stood waiting for his companion, a cold mass of air touched his nape. When he was just about to turn around, he saw, standing in front of him, a lady in white with bloody red eyes and tangled stems branching out from her neck who made a high-pitched laughter that drilled against the ears. But as the other also witnessed what was happening and was about to scream, she said that the entity vanished in a blink of an eye, and they had to make their way back with trembling knees.
The spectator
Only a year ago, during a Lasallian Cup dancesport rehearsal, CBEAM representatives together with their coach, had a tango with an unknown being while practicing their routine. It was almost nine in the evening at the CBEAM Function Hall and the the tutor had just demonstrated a slow and wide spinning sequence when she claimed that the hall suddenly went dark.
Curiously, the hall went dark only for her, while the other people in the room continued with the routines. Suddenly, there was a rather pungent odor and then a tall dark figure appeared motionless between the dancers. The dance coach, who declined to have her name mentioned, described the man as someone who looked like a 1900s Japanese soldier with a slender physique, hands covered in blood, watching her tutees’ dance moves. The tutees all this time, were unaware of the apparition that their coach could see, as she was said to have an active third eye.
The coach said that the shadow remained with her students for a while more, watching them intently. She opted to keep quiet until it disappeared on its own. With this experience, the coach stopped scheduling their practices at the night. Rather, they danced during the daytime when anyone could watch. She said that at least it was not the one with the bayonet.
The sixth sense
Claiming to have her third eye opened, a Grade 10 student, who also declined to disclose her name, testified that there were indeed many horrors in the institution.
One of her numerous contacts was when she spent her vacant schedule in the Home Economics (HE) room of the Mutien Marie (MM) Building. After finding a comfortable spot, a little girl with long black hair with a face that was shrouded in darkness suddenly came near her as if seeking company.
She then felt a cold kiss along her nape which she believed that it also came from the ‘shadowy’ being, making her leave the room without a moment’s hesitation.
Likewise, she added that her ability to see such concurrences was her greatest fear – not because of the entities themselves whom she is already aware of, but because of ‘normal’ people who might distance themselves from her if they knew about her peculiarity.
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For whatever purpose these entities have to to cross our borders of time and space, whether they might have experienced first-hand tragedies or have unfinished businesses in this realm; and regardless of the fear they conjure among us, we–the living–must respect and consider this enigma as part of our shared existences.
(with reports from Yeshua Josiah Florentino)
