Manila Film Center

On 17 November 1981, scaffolding collapsed during the Manila Film Center's rushed construction and workers died. The death toll is disputed, and a legend grew that bodies were left in the concrete and haunt the building.

The Manila Film Center was a project of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, then the First Couple, built for the first Manila International Film Festival, held in January 1982. GMA News notes that its design was inspired by the Parthenon. According to Wikipedia, at about 3:00 a.m. on 17 November 1981, the scaffolding collapsed and workers fell into wet, quick-drying cement.

Wikipedia says the Marcos dictatorship imposed a blanket of security and kept rescuers and ambulances away until the government had its official statement ready, and that rescuers reached the site nine hours later. The Martial Law Museum gives the same nine hours before ambulances were let in and says construction carried on. Esquire Philippines wrote in 2019 that the press was kept silent for fear of a scandal.

The number of dead depends on who is counting. Wikipedia gives at least 169 and Esquire at least 168. GMA's Howie Severino made repeated trips to the site, searched without success for records, and interviewed survivors and relatives of workers who died; in 2005 he concluded that the dead numbered a dozen at most. He traced the 169 figure to a story in the Inquirer about an expedition by spirit questors. In a 2017 letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Baltazar Endriga wrote that a Dr. Hong, who brought him the building's architectural plans, explained that the scaffolding under a platform being filled with concrete gave way and seven workers were killed in the fall.

The haunting rests on the claim that bodies stayed inside the building. The Martial Law Museum says many victims were left under the concrete so the work could keep to its deadline, and Esquire says that by the time responders arrived at least 168 workers were dead or buried in cement that had set. GMA's 2005 documentary described a long-held belief that the center is the country's largest tomb, haunted by workers, their number unknown, who are believed to lie beneath it. Hong, in Endriga's account, said all seven bodies were recovered and given proper rites, and he rejected the story that many were buried alive. Severino concluded that none of the dead were left in the building.