Worst Kept Secrets

Ok, the Philippines have some of the best monsters I’ve come across in a while, with the coolest monster names ever. Here are my favorites (this is all from skimming wikipedia which is thankfully unblocked at the moment).

First up, and perhaps most famous, the aswang. “Aswang” is a bit of a catch-all name that refers to the various vampires, lycanthropes, and other supernatural ne’er-do-wells that inhabit the region. But it also refers to a specific breed of vampire. There are a few notable differences between the aswang and the standard western Hollywood vampire - aswangs have no problem with sunlight. They live amongst mortals, usually as butchers or other such occupations that make you wonder about a person, and tend to be very reclusive (none of that Transylvanian charisma). The easiest way to spot one is to look it directly in the eyes and check to see if your reflection is inverted. They can change into animals, and especially like to eat unborn fetuses. Their diet isn’t blood-based - they’re called “visceral suckers,” and they really like the heart and the liver. If you’re hunting aswangs, you should come armed with a special herbal preparation from the local witch doctor, which will boil when in close proximity to the fiend, and a stingray tail or a silver sword for combat. Garlic, the old standby, works too. You know that an aswang has filched a corpse if you find a dummy made out of a banana tree in the coffin.

Aswangs should not be confused with manananggals, which are demonic lady creatures that hunt by detaching their torso and flying around looking for fetuses to suck out of the womb with their proboscis-like tongues. Gross! They will also suck blood from adults. Their Achilles heel is that they leave the lower half of their bodies standing around, and if you can get in there and smear some garlic on it, it won’t be able to reattach and will die what I can only imagine to be a dramatic, squawking death. I’m a little unclear about the origins of this creature; something about swallowing a black chick that grew in the throat of another mananaggal. You can get it out by tying the person upside from a tree or by spinning her around until she throws up.

Then there’s the kapre. It’s a little like a tropical Bigfoot. A kapre is a huge, hairy guy that likes to sit in trees, smoke tobacco, and punk out humans. He wanders about in a loincloth and an optional magic invisibility belt looking for trouble. As far as I can tell, they’re usually male. They’re not evil, per se, but a little Puckish. It’s possible to make friends with them, although you need to be careful - if a kapre falls in love with you, he absolutely won’t ever stop pursuing you. They’ve got a perverse sense of humor and get a huge kick out of leading travelers astray. They’ve also got a bit of a poltergeist prankster streak in them. The dark side to this story is that the Spanish may have spread it around to prevent Filipinos from assisting runaway slaves.

Here’s an odd one - the Pugot is a shapeshifter, but in its most comfy form, it’s a huge headless man who runs around the jungle at very high speeds shoving bugs and snakes down its neck hole. It looks terrifying, but it’s mostly harmless. Its only problematic characteristic is its affinity for women’s underwear, which it steals off clotheslines. I’m not making this up.

There’s a nice little environmental parable in the habits of the batibats. A batibat is a hefty elder lady demon who lives in trees. Under normal circumstances, they leave people alone. However, if their tree is cut down, they get pretty pissy. They’ll move into the nearest hole they can find, and get extremely upset if any human sleeps near them. Fall asleep near a batibat’s home and she’ll kill you through your nightmares. Unless, of course, you remember to bite your thumb or wiggle your toes to wake yourself up.

The tikbalang (horse demon) may or may be the ghost of an aborted fetus, depending on which village elder you put your faith in. It LOVES steering people astray, and if a tikbalang gets you headed down the wrong trail, you’re probably never going to be seen or heard from again. The good news, though, is that they’re pretty easy to work around. Wear your shirt inside out, for starters. If you get one on your tail, you can always ask out loud (and very politely) for permission to pass and it’ll leave you alone. Be extremely careful, though, as these things can take on the form of someone you know and trust. If you’re tough enough, you can actually tame these things.

There are a bunch of others, too, including a female demon called a Hantu Kongkek who goes around raping men and draining them of life, poor little deformed things with the terrifying name of Alan that steal drops of menstrual blood and other reproductive waste to grow their offspring from, a bird called an Adarna that sings magical songs and defecates a substance that’ll turn you to stone [word to the wise: it poops after it finishes singing], and creepy vampire thingies called sigbin that walk backwards with their heads between their legs.

Does anyone know more about this? All I did was skim through a few wikipedia articles, but now I’m legitimately interested. I know that I’m not exactly going to learn a whole lot about Filipino culture and folklore in one week on a resort island, but I am interested, and I sort of want to relocate - it’s really a shame that there’s not much of a market for English teachers there.

Also, I drew a picture.