In 1948, Filipino actress Lilian Velez and her housemaid were murdered in her home on Pulag Street (now Nicanor Jimenez Street) in Santa Mesa Heights, Quezon City. The killer was her leading man, Narding Anzures, in what became one of the most sensational crime stories of postwar Philippine cinema. After the murders, the house was abandoned, and it was then that the singing began.
Neighbors living near the vacant house reported hearing a woman's voice singing from within — clear, melodic, unmistakably human in quality, yet emanating from a building that everyone in the neighborhood knew to be empty. Lilian Velez had been a popular actress known for her musical roles, and those who had seen her films recognized the quality of the voice: it was the kind of singing that belonged on a screen, not drifting from behind the shuttered windows of a crime scene.
The singing was reported intermittently throughout the years the house stood abandoned. Some neighbors described it as mournful, others as strangely joyful — as if the spirit of the actress was performing for an audience only she could see. The reports were consistent enough that the house became a destination for the curious and the fearless, though few who visited after dark claimed to have heard the voice themselves.
The Velez house was eventually demolished to make way for a Buddhist temple, and the singing reportedly ceased with its destruction. In Filipino spiritual belief, the demolition of a haunted structure can release the spirits bound to it — though some in the neighborhood maintain that on quiet evenings, if you stand on the street where the house once stood and listen carefully, you can still hear the faintest echo of a woman singing.
The case of Lilian Velez remains one of the most well-documented intersections of true crime and the supernatural in Philippine history.