Diplomat Hotel, Baguio City, Philippine

Baguio City is known for its cold and relaxing weather. It’s been called as the Summer Capital of the Philippines. Do you know why? Well of course you do, but for some who don’t, it’s called Summer Capital because during summer, people tend to go to Baguio City to cool themselves off because of the heat in the lowlands and because of the cold weather in Baguio City.

But do you know that Baguio City is also home to paranormal events. A lot of Philippine ghost stories come from Baguio City. I myself experienced some during my stay in Baguio City.

There’s this hotel that was abandoned for many years now. It’s been deserted and all precious items and designs to the hotel were already ruined. What you would see now is just destroyed bricks, destroyed walls, destroyed rooms, destroyed bathrooms, well you get the idea. This hotel is called, the DIPLOMAT HOTEL.

The Diplomat Hotel

The Diplomat Hotel is located at Dominican Hill, Baguio City. It’s believed to be haunted. In the early 1900’s, it was bought by Dominican Friars from the American owners. Now, it’s been abandoned due to the war that raged here in the Philippines.

On May 1911 the Council of Dominican Order decided to erect a rest house in a 17 hectares place that was called Dominican Hill for the terminally ill patients in Baguio City. The first building was inaugurated on May 23, 1915.

On June 1915 Collegio del Santissimo was opened to the public because of tax exemptions during the time. But it was closed after 2 years and became a vacation house sanitarium. When the World War II started, this is where the refugees stayed. The Japanese Army Liberation Forces bombed the place and a lot of nuns and priests were beheaded and murdered.

After the war, the Dominican Hill was reconstructed in 1947-1948. In 1973, the property was purchased by the Diplomat Hotel Inc. and remodelled the interior and turned it into a 33-bedroom hotel. From the start of the opening of the hotel a lot of guests didn’t stay long for the reason that they’ve been seeing ghosts in their rooms. There were screams and howlings heard along the hallways. Until now, some of the residents in the Dominican Hill had testified of hearing screams and howlings from the hotel.

The fountain view of the stairs going to the second floor

So now, let’s proceed to my story. My friends and I went to the Diplomat Hotel last August 2006 around 5:00 pm. It’s been 3 years since we went there. There’s a guard watching the Diplomat Hotel. Just one. His guard house was located at the gate of the hotel, well duhh. It’s just a very small guard house where you could just stand and sit. The thing is that you won’t be able to enter the Diplomat Hotel when you couldn’t get pass through the guard because it’s the only way. The guard won’t allow you to enter especially if you’re just teenagers. Unless you bribe him with something like liquor or think of a very silly excuse that is believable. So what we did is to tell him that we’re visiting the hotel to do a little investigatory project on it. Kind of like a science project on spooky stuff. He wasn’t buying the excuse so we showed our university ID and such then he let us go in. Finally.

The entrance to the lobby of the Diplomat Hotel

So there we are, walking inside. We felt eerie things while we are walking. As we went inside, you would see that everything has been destroyed and all. We first roamed the first floor. Walked inside every room. Walking inside the halls and inside a room will give you goose bumps. At first, we didn’t encounter paranormal things. So then we proceeded to the second floor.

 Second Floor - Restaurant

The second floor consists of rooms; of course it’s a hotel, and a restaurant of some sort. We took pictures as we proceeded from one place to another, one room to the next, one side to the next one. After that, we went directly to the third floor and me taking a video footage since we entered the gates up to the last. While we were walking through the stairs going to the third and last floor, I was still taking a video of the whole thing. So as I was in the middle of the stairs, I stopped the video recording for awhile and watch if everything’s going well and if I captured something strange. I blasted the volume to maximum and full screened the video. So there I was in the middle of the stairs watching the video while one of my friends watched it with me. Until it came up to the video footage of me walking up the stairs and shooting a video of the guard walking through the second floor. Then a scary thing happened. When I’m watching the video, I’ve heard myself talking in the video; however there was a second voice. I was not shouting or anything and it’s impossible that it’s an echo because there’s no hallow place there and it’s an open place. There I heard a voice copying my voice. Here’s the dialogue:

Me: The guard is right over there!
Unknown Voice: The guard is right over there!
Me: He's coming!
Unknown Voice: He's coming!
Me: Let's go to the third floor immediately!
Unknown Voice: Let's go to the third floor immediately!)
End

So after I watched and heard that video, I was frightened and so is my friend. We ran to the view deck of the hotel with the others. However, we didn’t tell them the story yet so that they won’t freak out. They were just wondering why we ran to them.

When we were in the view deck, a friend of mine who has a third eye noticed something weird. He pulled me and told me that he saw a ghostly and shadowy appearance on the cross (there’s a cross in the middle-side of the view deck) and the shadowy appearance jumped. So again I am almost freaking out but I maintained my composure. After that, my friend who saw it said that we’d better go down already.

After which, we went back to the first floor. We decided to get a picture of the fountains. There were two fountains. In the left, and in the right. It has 2 or 3 angels on it. However, heads were already removed.

Left Fountain and Right Fountain

While we were taking a picture. A friend of mine heard a girl screaming. A lady more likely. So she went running outside screaming while I and another friend of mine remained in the fountain. Then the friend of mine went back to the fountain and told us what she heard. So everyone ran inside the lobby of the hotel. After that, every one of us heard the screaming and we went outside the hotel. We were so frightened and we were wondering on what and who was screaming. After that incident, some of us wanted to get out of the hotel already. But majority said that we should still visit the park or garden or whatever it is where there’s a lot of trees.

While we were walking through it, the guard told us that there were a lot of visitors who entered the hotel already and went through the park or garden. He said that some even had a camping there. For some, they were unlucky; they were never found and never came back until this day on.

Walking to the garden

We don’t know if it’s true but we’re already scared so we’re starting to believe it due to what happened inside the hotel. So we went to this place in the garden where there’s a big hole in it. The guard said that the hotel had a hidden underground passage where the people staying in the hotel could pass if ever the enemies would try to invade the place. But now, it’s not really clear if it’s still a hidden passage because it’s already filled with water and trash.

The hidden underground passage

After that, the friend of mine who has a third eye said that there’s a woman looking at us from a far. So we asked him if he’s just joking because we’re already scared as it is. He said he is not. He looked really serious to us so we believed him and we hurriedly went back in front of the hotel.

After that, we decided to visit the place where they usually held a mass. There’s a statue of a saint or some sort in there. The weird thing is that, the statue is black, really black. We don’t know if it’s really like that or someone ruined it to be like that.

Well that’s the whole hotel. After that, we took the very last video of the hotel through my friend’s phone. This time, we decided to not watch it until we are far away from the hotel.

We left the hotel around 6:00 pm or 6:30 pm. We decided to walk because there was no taxi passing by in that place. After we arrive in the highway, we departed in our own ways with different taxis. The next day, in class, the friend of mine who shot that last video of the hotel approached me and said that she captured a ghost in the video. When we were watching it closely, it appeared to be a bloody nun or a bloody woman standing just inside the window of the Diplomat Hotel. My friend sent me the video. Fortunately, my phone has the ability to play videos frame by frame. So there it is, we saw it clearly. We chose the best frame and took a snapshot of it using my phone. The snapshot is below. Feel free to see it.