Mount Calatong on the island of Tablas in Romblon province hosts a supernatural complex that encompasses land, sea, and air: engkantos who descend from the mountain to visit nearby communities, ghost ships visible off the coastline, and a vanishing city on the mountain that was reportedly witnessed from the air by Japanese pilots during World War II.
The engkantos of Mount Calatong are described as territorial spirits who inhabit the mountain's forests and caves and who periodically descend into the coastal communities below. Their visits are not hostile but they are unsettling — residents describe encounters with unusually tall, pale-skinned, well-dressed individuals who appear in the barangay, interact briefly with human residents, and then walk back toward the mountain, disappearing as they enter the tree line.
The ghost ships off the Romblon coastline appear at night, their lights visible from shore. They sail in formations and at speeds that do not correspond to any known vessel traffic, and they vanish when approached by fishing boats. The ships are interpreted by local fishermen as belonging to the engkanto fleet — vessels from the spirit world that travel the same waters as mortal boats but that operate on a schedule and a route system known only to their supernatural crews.
The vanishing city on Mount Calatong is the most dramatic element. According to accounts that emerged after World War II, Japanese pilots flying over Tablas island reported seeing a city on the mountain that did not appear on any map — a settlement of buildings, roads, and lights visible from the air that, when investigated from the ground, did not exist. The Japanese reports, coming from military personnel with no background in Filipino folklore, provided an external corroboration of the vanishing city phenomenon that the indigenous Romblomanon communities had known about for generations.
The convergence of mountain engkantos, maritime ghost ships, and an aerial vanishing city gives Mount Calatong a three-dimensional supernatural geography that extends from the depths of the sea to the summit of the mountain and the airspace above it.