Episode 15 - Aswang

You lived in the outskirts of the town. One of the farthest layers of the community.

Your mornings, most mornings, were spent walking to the market, speaking with your neighbors and enjoying a small breakfast with your family.

Your neighbors were all pleasant enough, but they did all look at you with the slightest of suspicion. Because you were apprentice and friend to one of the people who chose to live beyond the city, deep within the forest.

And that did earn you some amount of a reputation. Being friends to an outlier. But you would have it no other way. Your apprenticeship is teaching you how to heal, how to help.

And so, like most days, after your meal, you leave the town along the small path into the forest and toward your employment.

The name aswang evokes many images to those who know it. Because an aswang is many things.

They are spirits, vampires, ghouls, warlocks and shape-shifters. They are an umbrella for many things in Filipino folklore.

They are found all throughout the stories of the Phillippines, but most popular in the Visayas, Luzon and Mindanao.

They go by many names as well. Aswangs are tik-tiks, wak-waks, and sok-soks after the noises they are said to make.

They have been around for centuries, at the fringes of society. Walking in the daylight as people, friends, neighbors, or outsiders.

And at night, they would change. Sometimes into bats, or crows, or cats or boars. Or most commonly, into a large black dog.

They would go hunting, to prey upon women, or the newly dead, or the bedridden and ill.

However, they would attack anyone they came across while hunting, they were hungry things.

The myths and stories of the Aswang stretch back centuries.

They are found all across the Phillippines, living among people and feeding when the fancy took them.

They lived on the fringes and in the towns. They walked and talked among everyone else. Hidden away, they struck at nightfall to feast.

It is the most feared of all of the creatures of Filipino folklore. Every region seems to have its own variations. Its own aswang stories and fears.

And today I hope to share a few with you all.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I invite you to join me as we pass Through the Veil.

You walk the path every day, and you never find yourself lost upon it.

The stories of the path are many, and few would dare to tread upon it. But it has never troubled you.

It is the path to your mentor, the healer. They lived in a deep part of the forest. But you have never felt fear of it.

Maybe it is because, while the others fear your mentor, and the forest and all the stories; you instead try to understand, try to learn.

In that way, they do not hold fear for you. The path is open and clear, and the forest does not appear haunted.

But today, something has changed. You find your feet misstep and you realize you have lost the path.

You try and try to find your way back, but even as the sun begins to set, and a fear you’ve never felt before worms its way into your mind, you have not found the path. You have not made it home, nor to your mentor’s house. You are lost.

It is then, in the dark, lost in the forest, calling for help that you hear the sound…

Tik-tik-tik-tik… Loud first, then quiet. Tik-tik-tik-tik.

Again it sounds, echoing through the forest. You never believed the stories. But now, you know and fear they are true.

This forest, this place, is haunted by an aswang.

There are many descriptions of Aswang, which makes it particularly difficult to settle on a definition. Making it even more difficult is the fact that aswang are extraordinarily capable shapeshifters, capable of taking many different forms even within one variation.

They often live their daily lives as towns-people. Generally they live at the fringes of society, leading quiet lives. They are ascribed the ability to become a number of animals. Unlike many monsters of folklore, aswang are very much like people on the surface.

They have been known to befriend people. To laugh and cry. They possess the full range of emotions and they are known not to hurt or hunt their friends or neighbors. There is a saying in Filipino because of this belief that they would not harm someone they care of. Translated, it means something like “An aswang is better than a thief.”

Aswang are said to hunt far from their homes to avoid attracting attention. If they were discovered, they would be hunted, and during the day, they possess none of their powers or abilities. They cannot change their shape or wield super-human strength while the sun is up. Thus, that is when they are vulnerable.

Some stories account that at night, an aswang can be so thin it can hide behind a single bampoo stalk. Some stories account them as silent, and impossibly fast. Others ascribe that they make a distinct sound while hunting. A ticking noise which they create loudly when they are far away and more quietly as they approach their victim to disorient them.

They are intelligent and deadly predators.

You know that the aswang will find you, if it does not already know where you are. You run to find a spot in the forest where you can defend yourself.

As you run, clothes snagging at underbrush and splashed with mud, that horrible noise follows you. Growing and shrinking in volume. It seems to come from everywhere at once… tik tik tik.

Then you see a clearing, some place where you won’t be surrounded by the press of forest. You break into the clearing, pulling to a stop and spinning, trying to find the source of the sound.

A flicker of movement and a shadow catch your eye, but in an instant it’s gone. Hidden from view. You reach into the basket you carried with you. The stories are clear, there are only a few ways to repel such a creature. You grab the small jar of salt.

It was meant to be a gift from your family to your mentor. It would never reach them, you had need of it.

You wait until you see that flicker of motion, too fast to be anything other than a monster. It dashes toward the clearing. You loose a handful of the salt at the creature and you turn to run. Its scream of pain echoing through the forest as the salt burns against it.

You sprint through the trees and then suddenly, you see a building in the woods. The old churchyard, with the graveyard near it. A place of worship that many among your town attend. No light burned there in the dead of night, but the place was holy ground.

You heard the tik-tik-tik grow quieter. The creature was near. You spun and tossed salt in an arc behind you, catching the creature only feet from you in a cloud of it.

It screamed again and peeled away into the forest. You reached the church yard, consecrated ground, and knew you were safe. Such creatures could not tread upon holy ground. The tikking sound faded away into the forest, until it vanished entirely.

With all the stories of the many powers and capabilities of aswang, it only makes sense that they would have a collection of weaknesses and vulnerabilities. 

Like European vampire myth, aswang are repelled by raw garlic. They can be repelled or destroyed by pure salt and can be driven off with religious artifacts such as crucifixes, blessed water, rosaries or even prayers.

They could not step foot on consecrated ground, to do so would destroy them.

More uniquely, it is said that aswang could be killed if wounded with a whip made from a stingray’s tail, and because of this weakness, they were afraid of the sound of such a whip slashing through the air.

Aswang were repelled by certain charms and prayers as well. Perhaps most famously, many newborns in the Phillippines wear bracelets of red and black beads that are meant to protect them from Aswang.

Among their weaknesses, Aswang can be discovered even in their human form in a few ways. Firstly, if a person is viewed upside-down between your legs and they appear different, they may be an aswang. But more common, it is said that the reflections in the eyes of an aswang are upside down, so to detect one you must only get close to them and look in their eyes.

When the morning sun rose into the sky, you left the holy ground, and you made your way to your mentor’s home without any trouble in the forest. 

When you arrive, you find them helping someone you don’t recognize. A man, with terrible burns across their face and chest.

You feel sorry for the man, and then you notice something odd. Their eyes, reflecting the light of the flickering fire…

The reflection is upside down. You begin to back away, to run, when your mentor speaks to you.

She apologizes to you. She calls the man her husband and says he knows better than to hunt near the village. The people there are under her protection and his attack was a foolish mistake.

She asks for your forgiveness. She explains that they are both aswang… Just as the stories, the gossip around town claims. They hunt away from the village, they care for the people there and do not wish to harm them.

You nod and leave quickly, telling them you need time to think. You wander back the path toward home.

You bear a secret now, a terrible secret… And now you must make a terrible decision.

What would you do? Given this awful dilemma, would you betray your mentor and her husband? Tell the village of their true identities?

Or would you leave them be? And carry the guilt that although they may never hunt near your village, they do hunt somewhere, and that means they are hurting people somewhere…

The abilities and powers of the aswang do not stop at speed and strength and shapeshifting. 

Those are common between nearly all the stories, but across them, they wield a variety of other powers.

In one version of aswang story, after they feed, they would build a double of their victim out of wood and breath life into it. That facsimile would return to their home, then would in a matter of days fall ill and die as the magic faded.

In another version of the story, the aswang is a monstrous thing with a long proboscis which they use to suck the blood of their victims.

In the worst stories, they would prey upon pregnant women, killing the unborn child and leaving the mother alive.

Because, during the day, aswang are so much like people, it is common that they form some relationships with people who live nearby. And while it is uncommon, some stories dictate that should a human marry an aswang, that human immediately becomes another aswang.

They say that this couple may hunt together, but more often, they split off to go separate directions to avoid detection and to avoid sharing their meals.

Aswangs have been feared in the Phillippines for centuries. The stories became more widespread after the 1600s when the Spanish modified and helped to spread the myths to maintain control over a superstitious population. 

But well before the Spanish colonists manipulated the stories for their purposes, the aswang was spoken of in hushed tones and feared. It was everything that wandered in the darkness. It was magic and fear and shifting shadow. It hunted the most vulnerable among us, and because of their duplicitous nature, they could be anyone.

These creatures play many roles in the folklore of the Phillippines. They are one part vampire, one part shape-shifter and one part spirit. They are witches and they are monsters.

And while they were feared without a doubt, I can’t help but be fascinated by their stories. After all, they could form meaningful relationships with people, something not many creatures in folklore are capable of. They would choose to go hungry rather than prey upon their friends and neighbors.

So in spite of their hunger, in spite of their desire to prey upon and drink the blood of the weak and innocent, aswang demonstrate their own sense of right and wrong. They won’t harm those that have done right by them.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed your time with me today. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly as we continue our exploration of folklore, stories of magic, and monsters.

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.