Every campus has ghost stories.

But this one isn’t a story.

It started one stormy night, when the janitor was cleaning the main building downtown—the old one with the red gate and the basketball court that always floods when it rains. The power had gone out, and only the emergency lights hummed faintly in the halls.

He heard dripping. Then tapping.

He followed the sound toward the court.

When he got there, the rain was coming in through a crack near the far end. The tiles looked warped, swollen with water. When he stepped on one, it sank.

He crouched down and pried it loose.

Underneath was a metal hatch. Rusted shut, like it hadn’t been touched for decades.

He thought it was part of the drainage system.

Until he heard something breathing beneath it.

Slow. Wet. Gasping.

He took his flashlight, wedged the hatch open—and the smell hit him first. Old blood and iron. The beam revealed a set of stairs spiraling into darkness. Water trickled down each step like tears.

He called out, “Hello?”

Something answered.

But not in a voice he knew.

It spoke in fragments of words—half Cebuano, half Chinese—slurred, whispering, and coming from everywhere.

When he reached the bottom, his light swept across what looked like a hallway. Then he realized the walls weren’t walls. They were cells.

Iron bars.

Chains.

And fingernail marks etched into the stone—so deep they’d left grooves.

There were names, too. Hundreds of them. Carved in a mix of characters and letters. Some still wet, the lines red like open wounds.

He took a step closer. His shoe touched something soft.

He looked down.

A hand. Pale and swollen, reaching out from beneath the water.

Then the faces began to appear—pressed against the bars, eyes clouded, mouths stretched too wide. They whispered over and over in different voices:

“We never left.”

“We never left.”

“You let us out.”

The flashlight flickered and went out.

He screamed, but no one heard over the thunder. When they found him the next morning, he was lying in the middle of the court, drenched and trembling, his fingernails gone. His pupils were milky white. He hadn’t spoken since.

On the wet floor beside him, scratched into the tiles with what looked like his own nails, were words no one could forget:

“They’re under us.”

Since then, every time it rains, the floor near that same corner of the court turns darker than the rest. You can hear the water dripping underneath… followed by tapping.

Some say if you press your ear to the floor, you’ll hear breathing.

And if you stay too long—

you’ll hear your own name whispered back.

Everyone in that old campus in downtown Cebu knew better than to take night classes in the basement of the main building. Professors brushed it off as superstition, but students whispered otherwise. They said that when the wind blew from the harbor and the bells from the nearby church tower echoed through the halls, she cried again.

The basement was small, always damp, and smelled faintly of rust and old wood. Only one class was ever held there, a general elective, scheduled inconveniently at 7:30 PM. Students complained about flickering lights, chairs scraping the floor when no one moved, and the sound of a woman sobbing softly in the corner.

One semester, a group of students decided to prove the stories wrong. They stayed behind after class, laughing, teasing the air. The crying started as a faint echo—like someone weeping behind a wall. Then came a whisper, so close it brushed one girl’s ear:

“You shouldn’t be here…”

When they turned to leave, the door wouldn’t budge. Their phones died one by one. The crying grew louder, desperate, ragged, and the lights went out completely. In the darkness, someone felt a hand clutch their ankle.

By the time the janitor opened the door the next morning, he found the classroom empty… except for five sets of footprints, all leading into the far wall, and none coming back out.

Since then, no one holds classes in that basement anymore. But sometimes, if you pass by the building late at night, you can still hear her crying, especially on rainy evenings, when the old church bells ring in the distance.

I used to believe schools were safest at night, quiet, harmless, asleep. But on the night of our encampment, as the laughter of my friends faded into distant echoes, I learned that silence can breathe… and darkness can watch. In the unlit hallway of the oldest building, where the moonlight died before it touched the floor, I felt it, a presence that was not human. The air grew colder, the shadows pressed in, and before I even saw her, I already knew I was not alone… and something was smiling in the dark.

There was an old building in our campus that everyone avoided, the earliest structure ever built there. Older than the rest. Darker than the rest. Even in daylight, that building felt… aware. Like something inside it never left.

It was midnight during our Boy Scout encampment. The teachers were asleep, the lights were out, and we were running across the campus, playing hide and seek in total darkness. Our laughter echoed through hallways and gardens, fearless and excited.

There was no danger in our minds.

Not yet.

When I wandered near the oldest building, the energy changed. The air felt heavier, colder, like the place had been waiting. I walked through the corridor, guided only by moonlight from the broken windows. My footsteps echoed, but strangely, there were no crickets, no wind.

Just silence.

Then my eyes caught something at the far end of the dark hallway.

A girl.

Standing alone.

She wore a yellow school uniform with a checkered skirt, a uniform that didn’t belong to our school. She stood in the center of the corridor, her face blank and her posture stiff, as if someone had placed her there.

This was an all-boys encampment.

No visitors. No girls. No reason for anyone to be there.

And yet she was.

Staring.

Unmoving.

Unblinking.

My body froze, my breath turning cold. I wanted to shout or run, but my limbs refused to move. I told myself it wasn’t real, just my imagination, just tricks of the dark. I forced myself to walk away, joining the others, pretending nothing happened.

Later that night, we held a ghost storytelling session near that same building. One of the seniors shared a story… about a girl who roams that corridor at midnight.

My heart began to race.

Every detail matched.

I raised my hand and asked quietly, “Was she wearing a yellow uniform with a checkered skirt?”

The senior’s face turned pale.

His voice dropped to a trembling whisper.

“Yes… but she wasn’t alone.”

I felt an icy chill crawl up my spine.

He continued, “There were two figures when I saw them. A boy and a girl. Standing together. On that same spot.”

Before anybody could react, a sharp, dragging sound echoed from the old building, like a desk being pulled across the floor.

We didn’t wait.

We ran. All of us. No screams, no questions, just pure instinct and terror. We didn’t look back. We didn’t breathe until we reached our tents.

I never walked near that building again at night.

And here’s the thought that still haunts me:

I saw only the girl.

But the senior saw two.

Which means…

The boy was there.

Watching me.

Closer than I realized.

I just didn’t see him.