Manila North sees 660,000 visitors on All Souls’ Day

MANILA, Philippines — The Manila North Cemetery saw around 660,000 visitors on All Souls’ Day as of Monday night, with some of them said they came this day to avoid the influx of millions of visitors on All Saints’ Day in one of the biggest cemeteries nationwide.

“We visited just now to avoid the huge crowds yesterday,” said Michelle Viernes, 31, in an interview with Inquirer, saying she and her family would visit six of their departed loved ones in the cemetery.

Viernes said she was surprised with the huge crowds.

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“Maybe the mindset of others is the same as ours, that they don’t want to be with the huge crowds yesterday,” she said.

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Maxine Sia, 24, who would visit the grave of her grandfather, echoed the same sentiment.

“Yesterday there were so many people that we decided not to go, and then it rained,” Sia told Inquirer. “Actually, the influx [of crowds] is not like yesterday, so it’s still okay.”

With that total number of Nov. 2 visitors so far, the total number of crowd estimates in this year’s Undas crossed the 2 million mark as the cemetery recorded 1,343,000 visitors on Nov. 1, according to the Manila Police District.

READ: Manila North Cemetery logs nearly 1.4M Undas visitors

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The 2 million visitors for this year’s Undas is higher in recent years, particularly the post-pandemic period.

MPD said the total number of Undas visitors in the years 2023, 2024, and 2025 reached 1.4 million, 1.6 million, and 1.7 million, respectively.

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As for 2021 and 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still a major concern, the MPD said the visitor total in the cemetery only reached 125,000 and 315,480, respectively.

Established in 1904, the 54-hectare cemetery has a grave capacity of more or less one million. /ms