Plaza Cuartel, which is across Immaculate Conception Cathedral church, looks like your ordinary city park with concrete pavements, towering trees and benches, but here lies a deep and dark historic mystery.

The ruins of an old garrison and tunnels are proof of its grim past. Plaza Cuartel is the site of Palawan Massacre. The tunnels were where 150 American prisoners of war were kept during World War II.  But on December 14, 1944, the Japanese decided to kill them all by burning them alive. Many perished but eleven prisoners were able to survive and escape the mass execution. The place was then transformed to a leisure park.

Horror Experience at Plaza Cuartel

It was already dark when we got here, probably around 8pm. There were 3 other people in the park apart from us but they’re situated meters away, making us look like we are the only ones roaming around the dark, cold park.

Well nothing should really be frightening  I guess, so I proceeded to take snapshots while walking around the park.

I came to a halt near the area in the image below. Since I’m not carrying any tripod with me,  I decided to place my camera in one of the flat surfaces here and set in into a timer mode so we could both (me and my friend) be included in the picture.

First attempt of a timer shot, a trial one, worked and I was able to capture this image below. Contented enough, I set it again in preparation for a second shot while me and my friend planned to be seated in these seats.

My friend was already seated and I was just setting the camera up, but to my surprise I can no longer click the camera in timer mode. I’ve tried to adjust the settings (lighting, aperture, camera stuff, etc) still nothing worked.

Then I tried to look into the viewfinder and but what weirded me out was that everytime I try to click the shutter button, it won’t capture the image and instead I’m seeing a somewhat black, blurry spot.

I’ve checked the lens, but found no dirt in it. I started to have goosebumps…

So without further adieu, I’ve just told my friend that maybe we should go and reasoned out that the scene is not well lighted enough for a good photo op.

Until now, I’m still wondering what happened. Maybe just a plain camera malfunction, or maybe there are ‘other people’ in the area that doesn’t want us to take photographs in there.