As All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days draw near, these small house like structures photographed on October 5, 2025, at the New Corazon Cemetery in Barangay Sambag, Bogo City, Cebu, show a long standing Visayan tradition of honoring the departed.
After five years or more, families exhume and clean the remains of their loved ones, then carefully place them inside these makeshift “homes,” often built by those who cannot afford a slot in the cemetery’s bone chamber apartments.
Many of these small shelters hold the remains of several family members, their skulls and bones arranged side by side, showing how family ties endure even after death. The sight of exposed bones within these shelters is not seen as morbid but as part of the community’s practice of remembrance and respect for the dead.
Photos by: Jacq Hernandez, PBB Photojournalist
