In the waters off the municipality of Argao on Cebu's southeastern coast, a ghost ship sails with a purpose that distinguishes it from the phantom vessels reported elsewhere in the Philippines: this ship collects souls. According to Cebuano tradition, the spectral vessel appears during typhoons and storms, navigating the turbulent seas to gather the spirits of the recently drowned and the dying.
The ship is described as an old-fashioned sailing vessel — its rigging and hull design consistent with craft from the Spanish colonial era or earlier — that appears on the horizon during storm conditions when no sane captain would be at sea. It moves against the wind and waves, its sails full despite the storm's chaotic air currents, and it glows with a faint luminescence that makes it visible even through heavy rain and spray.
Residents of Argao's coastal barangays have a strict warning about the ghost ship: do not board it. Those who see the vessel are told to look away, to resist any compulsion to approach the shore, and under no circumstances to respond if they hear voices calling from the ship. The ship is understood to be a vessel of the dead that travels between the world of the living and the afterlife, and anyone who boards it — whether through curiosity, compulsion, or invitation — will not return.
The municipality also hosts the Balay sa Agta — a cave in Barangay Conalum named for the agta, the Cebuano equivalent of the kapre, who is said to live within it. The cave's name literally translates as "House of the Agta," and the creature is described as a tall, dark, cigar-smoking giant consistent with agta traditions throughout the Visayas.
The pairing of a soul-collecting ghost ship and a cave-dwelling agta gives Argao a supernatural geography that encompasses both sea and land, the spirits of the dead and the living creatures of the spirit world, the transient horror of the ghost ship and the permanent territorial presence of the agta.