The Transcentral Highway, a mountain road cutting across the spine of Cebu island, contains a stretch in the municipality of Balamban that drivers approach with dread. In Barangay Gaas, residents attribute a persistent pattern of vehicular accidents to supernatural forces. But it is at a mountainous curve in Barangay Cansumoroy, near a towering balete tree, where the highway's deadliest legacy is concentrated.
The worst incident occurred in 2010, when a bus carrying passengers along the winding mountain road lost control at the curve near the balete tree, killing 21 people. Local residents did not attribute the accident solely to road conditions or mechanical failure. They pointed to the tree — a massive balete whose aerial roots had spread across decades into a dense, twisting column that locals believed housed powerful engkantos — and to a history of accidents at that precise spot that stretched back long before the 2010 disaster.
The balete tree of Cansumoroy occupies a position of dread in local consciousness. Vehicles approaching the curve are said to suddenly decelerate or halt for no mechanical reason, as if an invisible barrier has been placed across the road. Drivers describe their steering wheels turning on their own, pulling them toward the embankment. At night, figures are seen standing at the base of the tree — shadowy and indistinct — that witnesses believe are the spirits of past accident victims, now absorbed into the tree's supernatural ecosystem.
In Cebuano folk belief, balete trees are not merely inhabited by spirits — they are portals between the visible world and the realm of the engkantos. A balete tree positioned at a dangerous mountain curve creates a convergence of physical and supernatural hazard that locals regard as intentional: the engkantos chose that location because the terrain already made it a place of death, and each new accident feeds the tree's power. Residents have performed rituals at the site and placed offerings at the tree's base, but the accidents continue.