The Chronicle’s Mark Bel-lune traveled to Cebu, Philippines, recently to see a friend from Lexington. He learned much of the history and culture of the nation of islands in the Pacific — living with local people for 2 weeks. This is a continuing series.

One evening while staying in Liloan, a town north of Cebu City, two of my new friends took me to a local cemetery.

We were headed to Sam-bag for dinner at Liesyl Arcelo’s home that she shares with her dad and brothers.

Her mother had passed away years earlier.

She and her nephew wanted to pay their respects at her mother’s grave site.

As we stepped into the cemetery, the hair on the back of my neck raised.

I had not had that feeling since I was on a convoy in a dangerous part of Iraq in 2004. A sense of the dead walking with us washed over me.

Liesyl lit candles at her mother’s grave and said her prayers in silence.

Her mother had died in the local clinic years earlier leaving her father a widower.

A few days earlier Liesyl had extreme pain in her lower stomach. Her sister and I took her to the clinic their mother had died in from mysterious symptoms.

The clinic is said be haunted. Patients kept dying on the 6th floor which is the top floor.

That floor has been closed yet unknown sounds and footsteps and banging can still be heard there.

That floor had been abandoned because doctors and nurses reported seeing apparitions and refused to work on it. Not even security or maintenance workers care to go there now.

Their mother is said to have been a victim of the evil spirits that haunt the 6th floor.

Liesyl was given an appointment with a specialist in Cebu City 30 minutes from there.

The following Friday I hired a taxi and took her to Cebu where the specialist took an ultrasound.

The results showed kidney stones which they have been treating with medication.

I was thankful she did not have to undergo any serious procedures in the local, haunted clinic.

I had become close to her in the short time I was there in Cebu.

Next: Birthdays and cock fights.