Central Philippine University in Jaro, Iloilo City, is one of the most haunted educational institutions in the Visayas, its campus layered with the violence of the Japanese occupation and the supernatural traditions of the Western Visayan region. Founded by American Baptist missionaries in 1905, the university became a site of atrocity during World War II when Japanese troops occupied the campus and killed many of the American faculty members.
The most famous apparition is that of William O. Valentine, the university's founder, who reportedly appears as a headless figure carrying his own severed head through the corridors of Valentine Hall. In reality, Valentine died of malaria in 1918, well before the war — yet the headless apparition persists in student accounts, perhaps conflated with the actual beheadings carried out by Japanese soldiers on campus grounds.
Other documented encounters include a white lady who drifts through Franklin Hall, an enchained girl seen in the windows of the old dormitories, and a small, hairy imp — resembling the "nuno sa punso" or "duwende" of Filipino folklore — spotted in the overgrown areas near the campus perimeter. Doppelgangers are also reported with unnerving frequency; students describe seeing exact duplicates of classmates or professors in locations where the real person could not possibly be.
Perhaps the most extraordinary claim involves Roblee Science Hall, which according to campus urban legend, occasionally vanishes from sight at exactly 3:00 AM. Students returning from late-night study sessions claim to have looked toward the building and seen only an empty lot where it should stand, the structure reappearing by dawn. The phenomenon, whether real or collective suggestion, speaks to the sense that the university campus exists in two times simultaneously — the peaceful academic present and the violent wartime past that refuses to fully recede.