The University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) campus in Laguna is one of the most haunted academic institutions in the country — a sprawling campus set against the slopes of Mount Makiling that witnessed some of the worst atrocities of the Japanese occupation and now hosts a constellation of supernatural phenomena spread across multiple buildings and landmarks.
The epicenter is Baker Memorial Hall, which during the war was converted into an internment camp holding approximately 2,500 American and Allied prisoners of war and civilians from 1943 to 1945. The building also served as headquarters for the Imperial Japanese forces in the area. Conditions in the camp were brutal, and many internees died of disease, starvation, and execution. The most chilling detail reported by believers involves "garroted ghosts" — apparitions that appear with the marks of garroting around their necks, suggesting they were strangled with wire or rope during their captivity.
The campus's supernatural geography extends well beyond Baker Hall. The Narra Bridge, a footbridge that crosses one of the streams flowing from Mount Makiling, is reported to be haunted by a white lady. The Men's Dormitory generates reports of footsteps and door-slamming in vacant rooms. The Main Library is said to produce unexplained sounds during late-night study sessions. The Student Union Building has its own collection of accounts involving shadow figures and temperature anomalies.
A footbridge near the College of Engineering and Agro-Industrial Technology (CEAT) was reportedly haunted until it was destroyed by Typhoon Milenyo in 2006 — a natural disaster that, in the view of some campus residents, may have released the spirits that were attached to the structure. Pili Drive, a tree-lined road that cuts through the campus, is avoided by some students after dark due to sightings of figures standing motionless beneath the pili trees.
The UPLB campus is uniquely positioned in the Philippine supernatural landscape: it sits at the foot of Mount Makiling, home of the diwata Maria Makiling, and on ground soaked with wartime suffering. The mountain's spiritual power and the campus's traumatic history create a convergence that makes UPLB one of the most spiritually active locations in the country.