The former terminals of Francisco Bangoy International Airport in the Sasa district of Davao City — once the main gateway to Mindanao's largest city — now house homeless families who share the abandoned structures with the ghosts of 21 people killed in a terrorist bombing on March 4, 2003.
The bombing, which struck the airport's passenger waiting area, was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Mindanao's modern history. A bomb concealed in a backpack detonated in the crowded terminal, killing 21 people and injuring over 140. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front was initially blamed, though responsibility has been disputed. The victims included men, women, and children who had been waiting for flights or meeting arriving passengers — ordinary people engaged in the ordinary activity of travel, killed without warning.
When the airport's operations were transferred to a new terminal, the old buildings were left standing but unused. Homeless families gradually moved into the abandoned structures, finding shelter in the former check-in halls, waiting areas, and boarding gates. These informal residents report that they share their living spaces with the spirits of the bombing victims.
The hauntings are described as auditory and atmospheric: the sound of an explosion that echoes through the terminal at irregular intervals, screaming that rises and falls from areas that correspond to the blast zone, and the persistent sensation of panic that descends on the building without apparent cause. Some residents describe seeing figures in the terminal who move with the urgency of people trying to escape — running toward exits, looking over their shoulders, clutching at injuries that are not visible — before vanishing.
The coexistence of the living homeless and the dead bombing victims in the same abandoned terminal creates a layered human tragedy: the displaced sharing space with the destroyed, both populations occupying a structure that the city has moved on from but that neither group can fully leave behind.