“With his horror fiction debut, Manibo presents a cursed family manor, tapping into the Philippines’ oppressive history with a nightmarish gothic tale.”
Villa Sepulveda, a Spanish colonial manor, is a celebrated relic of the Philippines’ past. Set in a remote coconut plantation, the moldering stonework is filled with old family heirlooms. When the family patriarch mysteriously dies, the family treks back to their ancestral home. Adrian Sepulveda invites his girlfriend Sophie, a transracial adoptee unfamiliar with her own Filipino heritage, to the funeral of a man whose life was central to the history of the country.
Soon, Sophie learns there’s much more to Sepulvedas than the grand tradition of political and business success. The relatives viciously clash amid confusion, grief, and questions of the family curse … questions the matriarch refuses to answer. Trapped in the villa by a sudden landslide, the secrets begin to break free. Sophie finds herself sifting through fact, folklore, and fiction. Did a demon really kill Adrian’s father? Is the family complicit in the country’s oppressive history?
As a series of ill omens befall the villa, Sophie must decide whom to trust—and whom to flee—before the family’s true legacy comes to take its revenge.
Why we’re excited about this book:
When not working as lawyer for his dayjob, Victor Manibo is fast at work creating fictional worlds in crime, science-fiction, and now horror. Manibo is the author of The Sleepless, Escape Velocity, and his crime fiction debut, Dead Note. With his horror fiction debut, Manibo presents a cursed family manor, tapping into the Philippines’ oppressive history with a nightmarish gothic tale. Premee Mohamed (No One Will Come Back For Us) says: “For all its beauty, no saints, no heroes, no angels inhabit this villa—only ghosts and secrets. Manibo has crafted a pitch-perfect modern gothic, in which the personal is political and there is no such thing as the past: only facets of a dangerous and suffocating present.” David Demchuk (The Bone Mother) says: “A classic Gothic thriller set in the Philippines in the wake of the Marcos dictatorship, Victor Manibo’s terrifying new novel The Villa Once Beloved holds you tightly in its clutches and refuses to let go. A curious, headstrong young woman visits her boyfriend’s eerie ancestral home and confronts a horrific family legacy entwined with a nation’s dark history and her own mysterious past. This chilling tale seamlessly blends supernatural shocks and suspense with powerful political and social drama, and builds to a hair-raising climax. Sleepless nights await!”, and Ai Jiang (Linghun) says: “The Villa, Once Beloved is a gothic, haunting tale of estrangement, dissecting the complexities of identity and diaspora, intergenerational trauma, and the helplessness of vicious cycles in a slow burn narrative bound together by chains of secrets buried and unearthed.”
Releasing from Erewhon Books 25 November 2025, The Villa, Once Beloved by Victor Manibo is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
