A little later it spead over a considerable part of the archipelago.

On my return in 1890 I heard the most shocking stories of what had occurred.

Victims of this disease were regarded with such fear and horror by their friends that they were not infrequently carried out while in a state of coma, and buried alive.

It became necessary to issue orders to have shelters prepared in cemeteries under which bodies were required to be deposited and left for a certain number of hours before burial, in order to prevent this result.
In Siquijor an unfortunate, carried to the cemetery after he had lost consciousness, came to himself, crawled out from under a mass of corpses which had been piled on top of him, got up and walked home.

When he entered his house, his assembled friends and relatives vacated it through the windows, believing him to be his own ghost.