I’ll never forget the silence felt in Batangas at dusk. It’s not the calm of a quiet town, but an uneasy pause… as if someone were holding their breath. I arrived there with my tape recorder, my notebook, and a single sentence I’d heard a thousand times in police records:

“Three children entered that daycare in 1995… and never left.”

The building is still standing. Abandoned, covered in vines, its broken windows like empty eyes watching over the main street. Today, by order of the new mayor, they decided to remodel it into a community library. A symbolic act of “healing wounds,” he said. For me, it was the first sign that someone wanted to bury more than just rubble.

I had barely set foot in the neighborhood when an old woman stopped me without even asking who I was.

” Are you here for the children? ” he said. ” You shouldn’t be here after dark. That place… calls to those who listen.”

I didn’t have time to answer. He took my arm with unexpected strength for his age and murmured:

— Don’t let him talk to you… like he talked to them.

I didn’t know if he meant it or if time had eaten away his lucidity. But that phrase— don’t let him talk to you —stayed with me all day like a cold knife in the back of my neck.

The neighbors didn’t want to talk, but they couldn’t keep quiet either.

A mother who still carried her son’s yellowed portrait in her chest told me that that morning in 1995, she heard laughter behind the daycare after no one was inside . Another man swore he’d seen lights in the basement years after it closed. No one confirmed anything, but they all agreed on two things:

The children’s bodies were never found.

No one ever went back inside the building… until today.

I approached the main entrance while the masons were dismantling old planks. Among them was a different one. Solitary. He didn’t speak to the others. He worked tirelessly, as if he wanted to finish as quickly as possible so he could get out of there.

I followed him with my eyes. Suddenly, he stopped in front of a wall at the end of the main hall. It wasn’t a wall like the others: it was built with different materials, as if added later. The bricklayer ran his hand over the surface, tapped gently… and frowned. I approached.

—Anything strange?

He didn’t respond. He knocked again, harder this time. Hollow.

“That wasn’t on the plans,” he said finally. “There’s something behind here.”

I recorded the sound. I don’t know why, but I felt it was important to capture that first beat . As if it were the heartbeat of something trapped.

The foreman yelled at him to leave it for tomorrow, but he ignored it. With a chisel and a mallet, he began to break down the makeshift wall. Each blow echoed like thunder in a temple. The other masons stopped working and approached, some nervously, others with curiosity.

I was recording.

Something inside me screamed at me to stop, that running away was still an option. But my body decided otherwise: I stayed.

BRICKLAYER’S PERSPECTIVE

I don’t know why I hit that wall. Something told me to. I didn’t hear it with my ears, but with another part of my body… as if the wall were breathing.
And I felt like there was someone behind it… waiting.

When I broke the first brick, a chilly breeze hit my face. It didn’t smell like mold.
It smelled like confinement.
Like fear.

I shoved my flashlight into the crack. I saw dirt, dust, and something else.

A metal corner.
A chain.

I stood still. I didn’t want to go on. But my hand… stayed the same.

JOURNALIST’S PERSPECTIVE

— “Enough! ” shouted the foreman.

But it was too late. The bricklayer had already dug a hole big enough to fit his head through. He shone his flashlight. I came up behind him and looked over his shoulder.

I won’t fully describe what we saw here. Not out of respect—I no longer know if those of us who dig up other people’s graves deserve respect—but because describing it would mean accepting it as real.

I’ll just say this:
There was enough room for three small bodies.
And in the center, something that shouldn’t have been there after 30 years… but it was .

He wasn’t moving. But it was clear he wasn’t alone .

Not because of what we saw… but because of what we heard.

A whisper.
Inarticulate.
Not human.
Not outside.
Inside.
In the head.
As if the wall were still speaking, claiming to have been broken.

The bricklayer stepped back silently. He sat down, trembling.

I kept looking.

A shadow… no, a silhouette… no , it wasn’t a shape. It was a presence.

The flashlight began to flicker.

And then…

I can’t keep writing what happened next—not here.
I’ve recorded it.
I have it on my camera.
I have it in my mind.
And now you’ll have it too if you choose to watch it.

I’ll just tell you this:

Batangas didn’t lose three children. 
Batangas lost something deeper…
And what was behind that wall…
it never wanted to be found.

👉 Are you sure you want to continue?

Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.