Story of Aswangs and Baluts, Part 1

As promised, I am not going to blog about the boring subject of politics here.  Instead, I am going to tell the story of “aswangs” and “baluts,” two of the most interesting and entertaining subjects of story telling and folklores in one of Thailand’s neighboring and equally corrupt country – The Philippines.

Tales of Aswangs and Baluts, Part 1

There are supernatural creatures infamous in the Philippine’s folklore that can put a crippling chill in the spine of grown men by the mere mention of their name.  The term "aswang" as used in the Philippines is used to describe all types of witches, ghouls, manananggals, shapeshifters, lycanthropes, and monsters.

Stories of aswangs are popular in the Visayan region of the Philippines, especially in the western provinces of Capiz (a province on Panay Island), Iloilo and Antique. Capiz, in particular, is singled out by tabloids as an area of high supernatural activity: a home to aswangs, manananggals, giant half-horse men (tikbalang) and other mythological creatures.

Many of those who live in Capiz are superstitious, and adorn their homes with garlic bulbs, holy water and other objects believed to repel aswang. Since the stories recount aswang eating unborn children, pregnancy is a time of great fear for superstitious Filipinos.

Stories recount aswangs living as regular townspeople in meat processing professions by day. As regular townspeople, they are quiet, shy and elusive, and are not easily identifiable. They can take the form of women by day and werewolves by night.  At night, they transform into creatures that enjoy eating unborn fetuses and small children, favoring livers and hearts.

Aswangs are the merciless and murderous shapeshifters that hunt small children and the frail elderly. They may also take the form of a bloodsucking female vampire who seduce and kill. Or they can resemble something Westerners would describe as zombies or the undead on an eternal search for human flesh with a special fondness for liver.

Some are said to have long proboscises, which they use to suck the children out of their mothers' wombs or their homes.  Aswang are said to be able to cast spells in order to subdue their victims and then use her wickedly long, serpentine tongue to penetrate the skin and to feed off of their blood. As with many of the aswang’s Western counterparts, they were once human but became possessed by evil spirits and turned into creatures of the night.

Some also make noises, which are louder the further away the aswang is, done to confuse its potential victim. They may also replace their live victims or stolen cadavers with facsimiles made from tree trunks or other plant materials. This facsimile will return to the victim's home, only to become sick and die. An aswang will also have bloodshot eyes, the result of staying up all night searching for houses where wakes are held to steal the bodies.

There are only a few ways to repel aswangs, and among the most effective ways is to eat balut, according to rumors.  What is “balut” anyway?  Well, for the answer please wait for Part 2 of this chilling story.

--  Dalmasian