Local tourists learn about La Union’s spooky places

November 4, 2017 Community Billboard

SAN FERNANDO CITY, LA UNION – Local tourists went on a horror trip to several tourist spots in this city including an abandoned and haunted resort in another town for a ghost hunt during the Halloween.
About 89 participants, including members of the “Kararua” tour group, joined the trip on Oct. 28, 2017. “Kararua” is Ilokano for soul or apparition of a dead person.
The participants first visited St. William the Hermit Cathedral for a prayer of salvation, starting their first eerie destination at Pagoda, a Chinese structure, at the Provincial Capitol Hill ground. They walked around the area with several lighted candles in the middle, where they silently prayed and held hands to enable psychic guides to contact the spirits.
Doc Yari Andaya, one of the tour guides with psychic ability, said that before praying he heard whispering voices of women and saw a soldier in complete uniform and chains on his legs. Two of the participants also said they saw the soldier and a woman in rotten dress.
Still at the Capitol Hill, the tourists entered a mysterious tunnel believed to have been built during World War II, but sunk several meters due to a series of earthquakes, and was used as a guerrilla hiding place. The hill was a battleground for several groups of American, Japanese, and Filipino soldiers. It is said that those who were killed were buried in the tunnel.
It was revealed that several other people were killed along the hill including a girl named Angel Joy Valdez, who was found with a bashed face and stab wounds in the body and allegedly raped near a park in the capitol ground on April 11, 2012.
Aiko Nagas, also a psychic tour guide, said the dead girl whispered to him in last year’s “Kararua” tour that she was raped in the area.
The second destination of the tour was an abandoned, decaying house near the Lighthouse, locally known as “parola,” at the Poro Point Economic Zone. Psychics said bodies of several soldiers were at one time abandoned here.
Another abandoned and “decaying” resort called Cresta Del Mar, in Bauang town, was the third destination. In the 1960s, tourists, local and foreign, were drawn to Cresta del Mar along with Nalinac and Long Beach.
The place was so dark, only the moon lighted the area. Residents near the haunted resort said that at sunset until midnight they see unusual things like a headless man or “pugot,” a woman dressed in black, and a giant bearded black man with a tobacco also called “kapri”.
The group members expressed fear while praying and lighted candles while moving around the area, feeling as if spirits were whispering to them. Several balete trees believed to be the dwelling of environmental spirits or “enkanto” are also found in the place.
The tour went back to the city and members visited the centennial acacia trees along the La Union National High School. It is believed that spirits live in the trees.
The horror tour ended at the South Central Integrated School in Tanqui village where one of the teachers and some students of the school were possessed by spirits after they found a skull and human bones on a deepwell while excavating for a source of water. According to Andaya, several people were killed somewhere in the village and the area was used as a mass grave for the bodies.
The “Kararua” tour is an annual activity in partnership with the city government, the provincial government, Philippine Red Cross, PNP, Department of Tourism (DOT), and Association of Tour Guides in La Union (ASTG-LU). ERWIN BELEO / ABN