The University of Santo Tomas in Manila — the oldest existing university in Asia, founded in 1611 — carries over four centuries of accumulated history and death within its walls. The hauntings at UST draw from two primary sources: its use as a Japanese internment camp during World War II and a pattern of student suicides that has left individual spirits in specific locations across the campus.
During the Japanese occupation, the UST campus was converted into the Santo Tomas Internment Camp, where approximately 3,800 "enemy aliens" — primarily American, British, and other Allied civilians living in the Philippines — were detained from 1942 to 1945. Conditions in the camp deteriorated catastrophically as the war progressed. Prisoners died of starvation, disease, and neglect. By the time American forces liberated the camp in February 1945, the survivors were emaciated and traumatized, and the dead numbered in the hundreds.
The wartime ghosts are reported throughout the campus's older structures, with particular concentration in areas that served as barracks and infirmary spaces during the internment. Staff and students describe encountering gaunt, pale figures in civilian clothing — not Japanese soldiers but the internees themselves, their spectral appearances reflecting the starvation and illness that defined their final months.
The student suicide ghosts are more localized. The most well-known is a female student who haunts a ladies' restroom in the Main Building, the university's architectural centerpiece. The circumstances of her death have been passed through student generations, and her presence in the restroom manifests as the sound of crying, flickering lights, and her reflection appearing in mirrors beside the living occupants.
Other reportedly haunted locations include Benavidez Park, a green space within the campus grounds, and the Ossuarium in the medical building, where human skeletal remains used for anatomical study create a concentration of death-associated objects that some believe attracts spiritual activity.