This office building, which sits right on Marine Corps Drive in Tamuning, not far from the shore, used to house the Pacific Financial Company, now known as the Personal Finance Center. At one time, I believe, the Hakubotan store was located there. Now, as seems obvious, the building serves as the headquarters for the Tenorio-Ada campaign.
I recently talked to an older gentleman whose responsibility it was, back in the 1970s and 80s, to secure the building at night. He told me he'd go in at night long after the offices and store were closed, look around to make sure everything was OK and lock up again. On a few occasions, he said, he'd hear the voices of women and children, as if they were chasing each other in fun. They were pleasant voices, happy words mixed with laughter and giggles. He knew the language wasn't Chamorro, as he speaks Chamorro. And he said it sounded like a "Micronesian" language.
The man also knew, since his family has owned the land for many years, that this area of Tamuning was the site of the old Carolinian village on Guam in the 1800s. He thinks the voices he heard were of these Carolinian residents who used to live around this location, whose bodies were buried here.
If you don't believe in life after death, or the existence of the soul, you'd probably say it was all his imagination, or that, unbeknownst to him, there were living people talking about in the area. It's also possible that Chamorro graves exist below the surface of this ground. The language they spoke didn't have the vocabulary borrowed from Spanish that we have had for over 300 years. Besides that, languages just change on their own, dropping some words, creating new words, modifying pronunciation and so on. If we could hear the Chamorro spoken 800 years ago, chances are we'd find it somewhat familiar but also somewhat different from what we hear today.
The Spaniards called this Carolinian village María Cristina, after the Spanish queen. Colloquially, the Carolinian settlement was called Tamuning (spelled in various ways). This American map above in the early 1900s shows the location. If you look closely, the Carolinian village was located along the shore just where it turns north, in the direction of Alupang (or Alupat) island. This is precisely where the Pacific Financial building is located.
The location of the building, and possibly the old Carolinian village
But, lest we forget, for most of the 1800s, Carolinians were born, lived, died and were buried on Guam, right up to 1901.
Maybe some of those sandy graves give up their ghosts once in a while!
Perhaps members of the Tenorio-Ada campaign can tell us later if they hear the voices of Carolinian women and children, like those pictured below, playing chase at 2AM.
Carolinians of Tamuning
If I am not mistaken, Tommy's Bakery was in that building.
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