The Herrera Mansion in Tiaong, Quezon Province — also known as the Old Stone House — is widely considered the oldest residential structure in the municipality, designed by pioneering Filipino architect Tomás Mapúa in 1920 for the Herrera family. After decades of abandonment, the house has deteriorated into a romantic ruin, its stone walls and art deco details slowly surrendering to tropical vegetation. But according to those who have entered or passed by the property, the mansion is not empty.
The ghosts that inhabit the Herrera Mansion are attributed to the Japanese occupation period, when the house — like many substantial residences across Quezon Province — was commandeered by the Imperial Japanese Army for use as an officers' quarters, a command post, or a detention facility. The specifics of what occurred inside the Herrera Mansion during the occupation have been obscured by time, but the pattern is consistent with dozens of similar cases across the Philippines: a fine Filipino home appropriated by the Japanese military, subjected to years of wartime use and abuse, and left with spiritual scars that persist long after the soldiers departed.
Believers report seeing figures in the windows of the mansion's upper floor — shapes that move against the light in rooms where no floor remains to stand on. The sound of footsteps on the stone staircase, measured and deliberate, has been heard from outside the building. Some visitors describe the overwhelming sensation of being watched from multiple directions simultaneously upon entering the grounds, as if the mansion's occupants are assessing whether the newcomer is a threat.
Tomás Mapúa, who designed the house, was the first licensed Filipino architect and the founder of the Mapúa Institute of Technology. His creations were expressions of Filipino modernity and ambition — buildings designed by Filipinos for Filipinos in a period when the country was finding its identity. The Herrera Mansion, now haunted and crumbling, is a monument to both that ambition and to the war that interrupted it.