The old walled city in Manila has seen everything: love and betrayal, piety and ruin, life and the slow, steady creep of death. At night, its cobbled streets hum differently. The lamps cast their amber glow on stones that have absorbed four centuries of footsteps, prayers, and quiet cries. In the hush, the air thickens, and the wind carries whispers of ghosts, or perhaps of memory itself.

The One Night in Intramuros tour, led by Manila tour guide Benjamin Canapi, does not merely recount horrors for fright’s sake. It peels back the city’s ornate facades to reveal the true stories beneath.

The ruins of the Aduana rise again, history rebuilding itself brick by brick. Photo by Carby Basina/GMA Integrated News

I. The Lady of Memorare Manila

In Intramuros, the dead are never too far away. Within the Memorare Manila 1945 monument, there is a story older than the memorial’s own memory. Locals say a pale woman crawls across the grass at night, particularly by the left side of the grounds, her dress heavy with the soil of centuries.

Canapi brought us to the site one October evening. The air was damp, touched by the river wind. The tour guide started the story of the bronze figures – women, men, and a child frozen in agony brought about by gruesome massacres – before pointing to a quiet corner where stray cats sat watching.

He told the story of a house that once stood nearby, and of a woman whose name was Catalina.

It is assumed that the house of Governor General Alonso Fajardo once stood there. His wife, Catalina Zambrano, fell in love with Juan de Messa Suero, an ordinary person, a clerk, who had been a member of the Society of Jesus for some years at Coimbra.

The affair between Doña Catalina and Juan was exposed when Governor Fajardo, having been informed of his wife’s infidelity, pretended to leave the city for Cavite but secretly returned.

Before entering his palace, Fajardo was informed by a page, who carried the couple’s messages, that his wife had left the palace disguised as a man to go to Juan’s house, a guise she had often used before. The governor then proceeded alone to the house of Messa, where he arrived at the very moment his wife entered with Juan, allowing the governor to catch them in the act of adultery.

Alonso attacked Juan, who was clad in armor, piercing him through the neck with a mortal thrust, causing him to fall down the stairs where he was finished off by the guard.