On Dalan Bayu Road between the municipalities of Guagua and Floridablanca in Pampanga province, jeepney drivers have encountered a supernatural passenger they call Mariang Kulut — Curly-haired Maria — a white-gowned apparition with long, distinctive curly hair who appears at the roadside and vanishes from moving vehicles.
Mariang Kulut conforms to the "white lady" archetype that pervades Philippine supernatural lore, but her distinguishing feature — the voluminous curly hair that gives her the name — sets her apart from the anonymous white ladies reported throughout the archipelago. The specificity of the hair detail suggests that Mariang Kulut may be based on a real woman whose identity, while not publicly confirmed, was specific enough in community memory to earn a personalized name rather than a generic label.
Jeepney drivers who travel the Guagua-Floridablanca route at night describe seeing a woman in white standing at the roadside, her curly hair clearly visible in headlight beams. Some drivers report that she signals for a ride like any ordinary passenger, and those who stop find her seated in the jeepney when they check their mirror — only to discover she has disappeared when they reach the next town. Others describe her appearing suddenly in the road ahead, forcing the driver to brake hard before she dissolves.
The Dalan Bayu road passes through flat agricultural land in the heart of the Pampanga delta, a region devastated by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which buried much of Guagua and surrounding towns under meters of lahar. The volcanic mud flows displaced entire communities and transformed the landscape, and some believers suggest that Mariang Kulut may be connected to this disaster — a victim of the eruption whose body was never recovered from the lahar, her spirit now wandering the roads that were rebuilt over the volcanic debris that became her grave.