Clark attracting international ghost hunters

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – The haunted reputation of this place has gone international.

This coming All Saints’ Day, several areas here will again be the destination for local folk looking for unusual experiences that defy scientific explanation.

Even the US-based Ghost Hunters International (GHI) came here last Feb. 11 to probe reports of “babies crying and women screaming” in the abandoned hospital used by the Americans for years until the US military left Clark in 1991.

The GHI was established in January last year and has since visited haunted places in the US, South America and Western and Eastern Europe, including the purported castle of Dracula in Transylvania in Romania.

In Asia, Clark is so far the only place GHI has visited for its documentary, aired on a US television station.

The GHI video can be viewed on YouTube, with its probers, led by Barry Fitzgerald, interviewing local witnesses of ghost sightings at the abandoned hospital, whose basement morgue was reportedly often filled with bodies of US soldiers who died during the Vietnam War.

But there are reports that other parts of Clark are similarly haunted. A video of translucent figures, said to be Americans, was taken by a cell phone camera in one local building, which has since been demolished.

This video can also be accessed on YouTube by searching “Clark ghost video,” which has had thousands of hits.

Retired Col. Efren Alamares, who rents a house here, recounts to guests how once, at 4 a.m. while jogging at the parade grounds at the Clark Development Corp. (CDC) complex, he heard Americans seemingly partying in a small two-storey building anearby.

“I learned later from the security guard the building had been locked up for quite sometime. Since then, I would take another route when jogging that early in the morning,” he said.

The building was recently renovated to serve as the CDC’s tourism department office.

CDC tourism officer Josephine Pagaoan said she would not mind ghost hunters boosting tourism at Clark.

“Anything that will develop tourism here is fine with me,” she said.

Another site reportedly haunted is the CDC press center building also within the complex.

A soldier supposedly ditched his van into a canal to avoid hitting a woman in white crossing the street.

A security guard later insisted that he saw the woman in the passenger side of the van, not in the street as claimed by the soldier.

Fr. Sol Gabriel, parish priest of Barangay Lourdes East in nearby Angeles City, warned ghost hunters against delving into the realm of the spirits.

“While we acknowledge the supernatural nature of God, there are things beyond our capacity to fathom and these should be left alone,” he said in an interview.

Saying that he has never seen a ghost, Gabriel warned ghost hunters against the possibility of evil spirits in sites reputed to be haunted.

“There can be violent spirits that might just affect one,” he said.

Apart from haunted sites, there are other areas of interest to tourists at Clark on All Saints’ Day, Pagaoan said, such as the K-9 cemetery founded by the Americans near the Expo Pilipino theme park.

Few visit the cemetery on All Saints’ Day, as it hosts the remains of dogs beloved by their former American owners.

“We are preserving the dog cemetery as a historical site,” Pagaoan said.

Pagaoan also cited the Clark cemetery near the main gate in Balibago, Angeles City, the only site in Clark where the American flag still flutters alongside the Philippine flag.

Some 2,030 people, mostly Americans but also at least 638 Filipino members of the Philippine Scouts from the pre-World War II era are buried here.

It was established between 1947 and 1950 when tombstones and remains were transferred from four other US military cemeteries in Manila and other parts of Luzon.