Under the dark cloud of Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’, life goes on for the hundreds of families who live in the Manila South Cemetery. Many of the inhabitants are attracted to the economy of the burial grounds providing them with regular work maintaining grave sites and servicing the needs of the daily visitors. For others, the decision to live among the dead if buoyed on by a safer sense of security when compared to the outside world. Despite corruption among officials and the lack of electricity and running water, some families have called the cemetery home for over four decades.