The cemetery a few hundred steps away from the place I grew up in has a secret.
During hot summer days, when there was nothing else to do, my friends and I used to jump on its tombs. We’d fly kites from the highest mausoleums in October, when the wind is at its strongest. My grandfather, who now rests inside its hallowed grounds, used to take walks here every morning. Occasionally, I’d accompany him.
The Malabon City Public Cemetery—not to be confused with the Malabon Catholic Cemetery right at San Bartolome Church—has been our playground of sorts during my childhood years. But it holds an ominous figure that sent chills down my young spine: an almost life-size sculpture of the devil atop a tomb, standing over Archangel Michael, with a pitchfork aimed at the latter’s face.
A marker on the left reveals an exchange between Lucifer and Saint Michael. The devil proclaims that he owns the world while Saint Michael pleads to the people. On the right is a crumbling bas relief of Adam and Eve—in Catholic faith, the symbol of the “first sin of man.”
Supernatural stories about this statue abound. Some say that the figures used to be small and grew each year to its current height. A few whisper about the devil roaming around the graveyard at night. Other stories speculate about the tomb beneath the sculpture, which up to this day, probably remains empty.
However, everything about this controversial icon has all been hearsay. Stories, as old as the sculpture, that have been passed down from one generation to the next. A 60-year-old lady I talked to says it’s been there since she was a kid.
The shroud of mystery, however, soon lifted as Noli de Castro of the infamous show, Magandang Gabi Bayan, visited our town one October morning to feature the “Demon of Malabon” on its much-anticipated Halloween cum All Saints’ Day special.
There, it was revealed that Simeon Bernardo, the person buried in the tomb, specifically asked his children to build the sculpture over his grave to remind society that darkness has taken over the world—the devil has won and there is no God.
Bernardo, who died in 1934, suffered a bitter fate during the Spanish occupation. Accused of being a filibuster – a pirate or a subversive that goes against Spanish rule – he was imprisoned in Fort Santiago and mercilessly tortured by the Spaniards. The ordeal made him believe that God does not exist—a belief he indoctrinated into his children.
Now encased in iron bars to protect from destruction by the people, the bizarre image of the devil beating down an archangel is an unsettling reminder of how society was back then. According to the Bernardo clan, they will reverse the statue and put St. Michael on top once they see that the world that their great-grandfather witnessed has already changed from the one he saw decades back.
Years passed and much of Malabon’s public cemetery has been bulldozed down. A new, shiny cemetery is being built in its place—a ‘gentrified’ version that is the total opposite of maze-like Filipino cemeteries of the past.
Thankfully, some of the oldest and grandest mausoleums of the cemetery have been retained, including the infamous demon and Saint Michael—an homage to Malabon’s history and culture.
However, for the Bernardos, apparently not enough change has happened through these years, and to this day, the demon remains on top of the embattled archangel.
Malabon Municipal Cemetery
Address: Simeon Bernardo Tomb, Barangay Tugatog, Malabon City, Metro Manila
Opening hours: Daylight hours
Entrance fee: None
GPS Coordinates Map: 14.660677, 120.968829
This article was originally published in Lakad Pilipinas.
