Diplomat Hotel (Old Pines Hotel)

The structure known popularly as the Diplomat Hotel (also called Old Diplomat Hotel, Old Pines Hotel, or originally described in some sources as a Dominican retreat/seminary or rest house) sits atop Dominican Hill in Baguio City. Multiple travel and blog sources trace its origins to an early 20th‑century retreat/seminary/rest house for the Dominican Order and report that it was later converted to a school and then to a hotel. Contemporary popular accounts depict the building as dilapidated and abandoned and include it among Baguio's better‑known haunted sites. Reported hauntings are presented in the sources as part of local lore and dark‑tourism narratives rather than as the product of documented investigative reports. The supplied materials emphasize a generalized “rich and tragic history” as the cultural frame used to explain haunt claims, invoking broader Philippine contexts of wartime and calamity as reasons many places in the region are said to be haunted. The sources used are primarily travel blogs, listicles, and paranormal blog posts; they do not provide primary eyewitness testimonies, detailed descriptions of specific paranormal events, names of spirits, casualty figures, or official preservation/ownership records.