MANILA: In Malacanang, the presidential palace of the Philippines, residents come and go usually every five years, but some are believed to have lingered for centuries, haunting its historical corridors with their mysterious presence.

Built in 1750 as a summer house for a Spanish aristocrat, the palace was acquired by the Spanish government in 1825 and served as the residence of the colonial governor-general — first of Spain and from 1898, the US. When the Philippines gained full independence in 1946, it remained its seat of power.

The building’s halls and walls have seen centuries of history and remain witnesses not only to politics but also to episodes that those who have worked there say they had to accustom themselves to: from phantom footsteps to a headless figure wearing the barong — the traditional Filipino shirt — complaining voices, or a waiter reporting for work long after his death.

Ignacio Bunye, press secretary during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, told Arab News that some officials, including Eduardo Ermita — executive secretary of the Philippines from 2004 to 2010 — took it seriously.

“In Secretary Ermita’s office, you’ll see so many medallions and little images of the Virgin Mary pasted on the windows. He even had his office blessed every now and then. Word is there’s a lot of strange apparitions in his office,” Bunye said.

“There are also stories about the sound of chains — clinking or being dragged. They hear those in other offices.”

Ghost tales are so ingrained in the palace environment that it is difficult to avoid their impact.

One evening, when Bunye stopped by his office after a palace dinner, he heard footsteps outside and then someone tried to turn his room’s doorknob.

“Fortunately, the door had automatically locked when I came in. I felt my hair stand on end. After a while, the footsteps moved away,” he said.

Once everything was quiet, he hurried out of the room and in the hallway saw a white-haired man in a suit, who slowly turned toward him and in a raspy voice, asked: “How do I get out of here?”

The person turned out to be his colleague.

“I sighed in relief. It was Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales,” Bunye said. “He had only been appointed to the Cabinet a week earlier and still didn’t know his way around the palace.”

But others who recall scary sightings have found no rational explanation. A documentary film released by Malacanang for last year’s Halloween had some of them share their stories.

Sgt. Ramson Gordo, a member of the Presidential Security Group, was on night duty when he noticed something odd in the main lobby. He saw three guards wearing the barong, while he knew there could be only two. When he approached the lobby and asked about the third man, he was told there were only two of them.

“There’s also a story of someone who took a photo of the palace’s main lobby. That was also nighttime and there was no one in there,” Gordo said. “When he looked at the picture, there was a person wearing a barong, but with no head.”

Riza Mulet, who usually arrives at work at 6:30 a.m., recounts seeing a man greeting her in the morning.

“He wasn’t familiar to me, but he said, ‘Good morning,’ so I greeted him back … I turned to look at him, but suddenly, he was gone,” she said.

When she told her colleagues that a tall man with a smiling face who looked like a waiter had greeted her and she asked if they knew him, they went silent and told her he had died during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her second sighting was during a tour of the palace. She saw a man standing beside two antique chairs that had been used by former presidents.

“We were joking, teasing, saying ‘We will sit on them’. Then he got angry, really angry … I made the mistake of looking him in the eyes, so I just bowed my head because he came closer to me. My hands turned cold, and my hair stood on end,” Mulet said.

Her colleagues pulled her away from the place — not all of them aware of what had happened.

“You have to learn to coexist with those who can’t be seen by most people. I can see them, but not everyone can,” she said.

“You have to learn to live with them.”