We’re bringing back this story originally published 13 yrs ago for those who are yet unfamiliar with the story behind the curious house in Malaybalay City so some things may have changed meantime
Malaybalay City, Bukidnon – There’s a quaint residence near the outskirts of this capital city of Bukidnon which has long been a tourist attraction for travelers in Barangay Cabangahan, along the Sayre Highway between Valencia and Malaybalay.
With its man and animal sculpture and baroque architecture, the sprawling, three-story residence built by David Valmorida during the early 60s has been known to residents and travelers as the “Torre ni David.”
Malaybalay City’s Torre ni David.
It was meant to be a simple residence and still houses the descendants of the Valmorida and Pacana families. Local folklore says David Valmorida built it a room at a time starting in 1962, adding a new segment every time a new child was born, thus the seemingly disjointed series of seven buildings which make it look so mysterious to the passing motorist and commuter along the nearby Sayre national highway.
The house and its fixtures is excellently preserved and a quick glimpse into its interior reveals that it looks almost exactly the way it did during the 60s and the 70s, from the old photographs hung on its walls to the long flights of narrow wooden stairs which link it to a not too distant past where many things unexplained seem to linger.
“We hear a lady crying every full moon,” says caretaker Teresita Nabaha. “But we only hear her and have never seen her. My younger sister, who cared for David’s wife, told me she hears footfalls of someone walking up and down the house at night.”
Nabaha claims the mysterious footfalls can be heard walking among the house’s seven large rooms and originate from the third floor. She added that kapres also live among the large trees, which surround the house’s spacious yard.
Boy Valmoria, who like his father David is reported to have a third eye which enables him to see things not visible to ordinary persons, also claims to have seen and heard mysterious things.
Besides the playful duwendes or dwarves and elves who make the house their playground during the night, Valmorida claims to have seen a “floating lady” on occasion.
“Ako usahay makakita ko’g floating lady diha sa likod pero dili lang nako panumbalingon,” he said in the vernacular. “Mulutaw lang na siya’g mulakaw, mulutaw. Babaye..ug taas giyu’g sinina. Tagsa ra man giyud siya motunga ug sa gabi-I ra.” (I sometimes see a floating lady at the back but I don’t pay any attention to her. She walks as if she’s floating…and has a very long dress. But she appears very seldom and only during the night.)
A production team from a show of a national television network which featured mysteries and the unexplained visited the house in 2004 and slept overnight with video and audio recorders running, in an attempt to document the mysterious sounds and images.
Although they failed to get any video, they did manage to record a myriad of mysterious noises which sent the crew packing back to Manila the very next day.
David Valmorida’s descendants still keep family heirlooms from times past, such as the enigmatic heads of statues which were often featured during parades and festivals in the sixties and the seventies. Now they are kept in a bodega where they have lain silent for long years now, with their secrets sealed perhaps forever.
-INDNJC-