Poverty-stricken families are living inside cemetery mausoleums in the Philippines - sleeping alongside corpses.

In the capital’s Manila North Cemetery alone, thousands of people taken to living among the dead.

The number of families making homes among the tombs is now rising amid the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Footage taken on October 24 shows the daily routine of a cemetery settler family, who had to move into the spooky area earlier this year after income dried up during the lockdown and they were kicked out of their home because they could no longer pay the rent.

They now sell street foods outside which they cook and prepare inside a mausoleum.

The mothers bathe their children by collecting water in buckets from faucets in public toilets.

To earn a living, some of them work as vendors outside the 54-hectare cemetery selling flowers and candles to families visiting their dead relatives.

While one man who had already 'settled' in the cemetery with his family for several years, said he learned how to engrave headstones as a trade.

While most of the cemetery dwellers occupy abandoned mausoleums, others have been permitted by the owners of the family tombs, in exchange for cleaning and maintaining the structures.

The only condition is that they don't interfere with the caskets or rob the graves.

The bizarre way of living started around two decades ago. Many children who grew up in the cemetery have now inherited their parents' odd jobs there.

The Philippines has a long-standing tradition of visiting their dead in cemeteries locally called “Undas” during the All Saint’s Day.

However, during the pandemic, visitors had to be limited compared to previous years where people arrive by the thousands. The cemeteries will also be closed during Undas to prevent crowds congregating.