The Philippine National Bank building on Roxas Boulevard in Pasay harbors a haunting so severe that the institution resorted to exorcism — a rare acknowledgment by a major financial institution that the supernatural had become a workplace problem. The source of the disturbance is the building's fifth floor, which was pressed into service as an emergency morgue following one of the Philippines' deadliest hotel fires.
On February 13, 1985, fire erupted at the Regent of Manila hotel, killing dozens of people. The victims' bodies, recovered from the gutted hotel, were brought to the nearby PNB building, where the fifth floor was cleared and converted into a temporary mortuary. The dead were laid out for identification by their families — a process that took days and left the floor saturated with the presence of death.
After the bodies were removed and the floor restored to office use, the hauntings began. Employees assigned to the fifth floor reported a consistent catalog of paranormal activity: phantom footsteps pacing the corridors, doors slamming in sealed offices, the sound of weeping from empty rooms, and the persistent, inexplicable smell of decomposition. Some employees described feeling unseen hands on their shoulders, others reported their computer screens flickering to display nonsensical text, and several claimed to have seen translucent figures standing at desks or walking through walls.
The disturbances were severe enough that occupants of the floor formally requested intervention. Exorcisms were conducted — the details of which the bank has not publicly discussed — in an attempt to clear the floor of its spiritual occupants. Whether the rituals were fully successful remains a matter of internal debate; the fifth floor was ultimately converted into a storage area, removing the need for employees to work there at all.
The decision to repurpose the floor rather than continue to staff it suggests that whatever the exorcisms accomplished, they did not entirely resolve the problem. The fire victims of 1985, brought to a place they had no connection to in life, appear to have claimed it in death.