Abstract: In his book Historia de las islas de Mindanao, Jolo, y sus adjacentes (1667), Fr. Francisco Combes, SJ mentioned that the Ternatans massacred hundreds of Bol-anons while pretending to trade, which led to the migration of some 1,000 Bol-anon families to Dapitan in northern Zamboanga. However, an earlier report by Miguel López de Legazpi in 1565 talked of the same incident in Bohol, but the perpetrators of the massacre were Portuguese, not Ternatans. Legazpi also did not mention any migration as an aftermath of the atrocity. A hundred years had elapsed between Legazpi and Combes, and details about the same incident had diverged. This paper gives a quick background of the Portuguese-Spanish rivalry and the continuing saga of Dapitan through the years. While Dapitan played an important role in the history of Mindanao in the early years of Spanish rule, today it is relatively obscure. Its main festival, the Kinabayo, is held in honor of St. James the Greater (Santiago) and commemorates the mythic Battle of Clavijo in Spain in 844 CE, which historians say did not actually take place, like the phantom Ternatans in Bohol.