Haunted: The Manila Film Center

In searching for topics outside of the United States, I was sent a suggestion with not much of an explanation. As you know, places such as these are exactly what I'm looking for, But I had little idea of how deep the story would go, in that government, censorship, ambition, corruption, and international celebrities would be involved. This mystery is horrifying and it might take you a bit to believe it. Just follow along as we revisit one of the Philippines' most haunting mysteries, the haunted Manila Film Center. My name is Edwin. Then here it's a dark memory. Ferdinand Emmanuel Edrilin Marco's Senior was the name of the tenth President of the Philippines who ruled from nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty six. I say ruled because based on his style of government, it was classified as constitutional authoritarianism. His legacy is stained with brutality, corruption, and extravagance. In fact, I found too many articles in conflicting information about him. Some were defending him and some were very against him. But there was a consensus, and that was about how much him and his wife were able to steal from the Philippine citizens. In fact, it was the billions of dollars, but it was his wife, Imelda Romualdees Marcos, the one that was responsible for the event I'm talking about today. It was her edifice complex that would lead to the creation of the Manila Film Center. She would take money from the government and build these grand structures to make them feel important and like they were doing something for society. I know this might sound mean, but this anger will start making sense in a bit. They would take this way too far. It was Imelda's idea to make this magnificent film center like a theater slash film archive location. They got consultants from Munesco to come by and help with the design to be able to get this thing to preserve films for thousands of years. The Philippines didn't have one of those, so Emela took over and started coming up with everything. The thing was supposed to have a three hundred and sixty degree theater, a film loan program, a film database and information system, a laboratory, and everything to try to make this a state of the art location. The government set aside the equivalent of twenty five million dollars to make it happen, which some people opposed to while others were excited about it. Someone was going to be siphoning money out of the project, one way or another. So in nineteen eighty one they had a plan and a goal. You see, there was going to be an international film festival and that building needed to be ready very quickly. So they worked around the clock, twenty four hours a day, and the work was spread among four thousand laborers. One thousand of them worked on the Grand Lobby, a project that was supposed to take a month and a half, and they said that they finished it in seventy two hours. Working at such pace was the disaster waiting to happen, and it did. On November seventeenth, nineteen eighty one, at three in the morning, scaffolding on the fourth floor collapsed. Workers fell to their deaths, some impaled by metal rods and beams, others trapped in the quick drying cement. It was later discovered that cement was poured without giving it enough time to dry, and due to the weight miscalculation, the floor couldn't hold itself up. One hundred and sixty eight workers tragically died. Some bodies were recovered, some were recovered in pieces, and others remained buried in the quick drawing cement Samantha had already hardened. The authorities ordered a media blackout and not enough help was given in order to help those that were hurt. Some articles say that the responders were only allowed nine hours to the site, even that was on a tight schedule. There were also some gruesome details they see that workers talked of jackhammers, striking bodies and exploding with blood. Arms, hands and legs could be seen sticking out of the pavement. With the news channels being blocked off and a tight deadline to meet Betty. Beneath this, the supervisor overseeing the entire project ordered the workers to tape her off the area and just continue building on top of everything. And this is something that would happen often. Hemanta Markles was known for this, you know, for going nuts about building things to make herself in the government look good while theft was going on behind the scenes and tough to watch footage. I found that there was a man half buried in the concrete who battled against death for hours, but unfortunately did not make it past the tenth When it was finally pulled out, the haunting chants of Christmas songs were heard throughout as they tried to get him out, all in an attempt to keep his spirits up. Instead, they carried his dead body out. The legend says that just like him, there were hundreds of others buried in the rubble, covered in quick dry cement, serving as part of the structure themselves, the very structure they were trying to build. And even before the building was completed, it was being prepared for the film festival, and that's when the strange occurrences started being reported. Amulets were being handed to the officers of the project to protect themselves. Attempts to cleanse the place began because that team that was preparing the place for the film festival started reporting smelling something odd and feeling cold air at random times. But like the model had been all along, the show must go on, and it did until finally the night came. Guests, over three hundred of them arrived, George Hamilton, Priscilla Presley brookshields, and expensive bottles of champagne. There were also women wearing fancy evening gowns, which, by the way, ended up getting stained by wet cements sometimes and also paint that hadn't dried up yet. They said that the workers were finishing up the work up to one hour before the event was about to begin. What I find so dark about this is that they were laughing and having a good time while somewhere underneath them, still in the concrete where the bodies of those killed in the accident. By that time, it was too late to do anything. Strange things started happening, and rituals from different beliefs took place in order to help with the disturbances that were being reported. They would feel strange wins, cries, and see shadowy figures inside the building. The film center was cursed, and soon the signs started becoming even more obvious. Became known as the Philippines's largest tomb. Several accounts of this incident were given by various notable journalists and writers, including insiders that had direct access to information from the government at that point. Most of the works that I have gone through, though not read, completely, criticized Imelda for rushing everything, even the way she kicked out tens of thousands of squatters to even begin the project, to who was contracted to make it happen. In all of the accounts, though when the question isn't ignored on purpose, this pops up. Are there really corpses in that building? Thanks to the world of design culture, I was able to find an enormous amount of sources about this, including several books like the one by journalist Beth de Romulo called Inside the Palace, The Rise and Fall of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. In it, she gives a chilling account of what happened. As usual with their last minute projects. The building was still under completion when it was nearing the time for the festival, and construction was rushed round the clock. The cement was not given the time to drive properly, and entire flora collapsed and caved in on the floor below. According to the Marcos controlled press, twenty eight workers were killed in the accident, Rumor had it that one hundred and sixty eight had died. Beery Benitez, wife of Imelda's assistant minister Conrado Benitez, who was in charge of the project for the first Lady, was called to the scene. The mothers and wives of the men who died had come to the bodies, but the building was due to open for the festival, and Betty ordered poor the cement. The bodies of the dead workers were thus covered over so that the relatives could not claim them, and the women put a curse on her. That's from that book from beth Day Bromilo, and that may have actually happened. I mean, Imelda eventually was tried and ended up taking asylum in Hawaii along with her husband, and people found out about all the money she stole while they held power in the Philippines. Do you remember the supervisor of the constructor Betty beneath this while out with Od Corpus, a president of the University of the Philippines, and heading to Tagete, which by the way, was already suspicious because they were both married and were driving in the middle of the night. But that's none of my business. I guess they ran off the road and smashed into a tree. Od survived, but Betty died. In another book by Catherine Ellison called Imelda Steel Butterfly of the Philippines, again found in a page by design Culture, spiritual advisers were at one point called in to perform an emergency exorcism at the Film Center. They blame her impatience and work that was less than optimal In one account by Beatrice Romaldez Francia, who was very close to Imelda. We can read a terrifying account of this. Just a warning, this part is a bit graphic, although necessary for you to get an idea of just how little they cared for the workers, but feel free to skip ahead. Immediately after the accident, when the floors collapsed and people were being taken out of the cement and brubble, Emelda went to the site to compensate the families of the workers, and the cleanup and repairs took two weeks, but Emelda wanted the project finished for her international film festival, and Betty Benitez was committed to its timely completion, so they drilled out the corpses of several workers, even having to saw arms and legs off of some of them. For the parts that they couldn't recover, they simply poured concrete over them. The Alternative Press has photographic evidence of this and lots of testimonials of people describing the smell of the running corpses that lingered for weeks, and that's only up until the construction. In the event, there's details of ghostly experiences immediately after it was opened. Experiences that started the way they should actually end with death, and going through the story from start to finish, I found a peculiar fact. The Guinness Book of World Records mentioned that the government was holding a record for the world's largest theft by a government at five to ten billion dollars. When you look at the building, it looks like the Parthenon, grand and solid, but inside there are bodies like bricks, the very same building they were working on. But several rumors went around about how haunted it was, starting off with the fortune teller telling im Marcos, the Philippines' first daughter, that she would die if she stabbed in the building. This just added to the rush to cleanse the place with rituals that came from Chinese, Catholic, pagan and even exorcism practices. That morning before it opened at five am, rituals were performed demanding that the spirits cross over to the afterlife, even sacrificing pigs and chickens. Part of the ritual involved eating those animals, and I couldn't confirm as Miss Marcos ate the dead animals. She might have just kind of catering. This is based on an article that I read, but Anyway, this didn't seem to work. Guests and workers claimed to see the bodies of deceased construction workers, and even during that first event, the Manila Film Festival that Emmel de Marcos wanted so badly had its own share of haunting occurrences, with guests claiming to feel strange during the event. Part of the rumors say that several ambulances were called that night because of a strange pressure in their chests. Maybe they were reliving the feeling of concrete crushing lives away. Overall, the news, including the New York Times and obviously national channels, said that the festival had been a huge success, and I mean it was true as far as sales of movies and deals with other countries. Thirty Filipino films worth half a million dollars were sold right then and there. But as I found out, the curse continued. You see, the subsidy of five million dollars was not approved by the Prime Minister, so they had to come up with creative ideas to make money, and after a bunch of different things, they ended up allowing adult films to be shown there to make money. But even that wasn't enough. Art pieces that had been placed there to decorate the building were taken back, and what really sealed the deal was the earthquake in nineteen ninety when it was abandoned all the way until December of two thousand and one when The Amazing Show took it over with theater performances. Performers in that show claimed to see and hear strange forces like cold winds and see moving shadows in the backstage area. There's even a legend about a performer of the show being murdered and her body being dumped on the steps to become another one of the many ghosts that have been haunting the building for years. Eventually, though, their lease was up and they had to leave in two thousand and nine, but later it came back. In November twenty twelve. Not long after that, there was a fire, among other unexplainable accidents. There's a man one named Peter Purissima, who went to this place and wrote a piece for ABSCBN in twenty eighteen about the Manila Film Center. He was going in for a nighttime shoot along with a group of nine other people, including TV staff that was with him. They walked around with the psychic journalist and writer who while they were walking around the stage area, said that his student could see a laborer standing right next to Peter's cameraman. Peter turned around and saw nothing, and while they were praying in the area, they noticed that the flames on candles that they were using seemed to move in the same direction all at the same time. They all just kind of looked at it, wondering what it could have been. As they were walking around, they could hear the sound of hammering on masonry, and they walked toward the source of the sounds, only to find nothing. Peter left with some good after visiting the place, though before everyone goes home, you must say a prayer and dust off your clothes and take them off before going into your homes. Elementals or bad spirits can sometimes stick to your clothes in their desperation to move on to the afterlife. Although there is some debate whether or not there are bodies underneath the cement of the building, they argue that there was no outrage from relatives of victims and that may have been made up to hurt the government. But I mean, we can't say that doing a media blackout during the accident and not allowing journalists document helped in the slightest The war remains now is a rundown structure, standing tall for as long as a concrete and the job of the laborers can hold. The story of a corrupt government of death. The memories of those that died still remain. May they rest in peace. Dark Memory is a part of Scary f M. Be sure to check out our episode page and my other shows. Take it in touch with me, send me an email or message via Instagram. I'll leave my info in the description of the episode. Please subscribe to listen to upcoming stories. Thank you very much for listening. See us soon.