Manananggal: Meet the vampire-like mythical creature of the Philippines
The manananggal is a vampire-like mythical creature that originated in the Philippines.
During the day, the manananggal disguises as a beautiful woman, but at night she transforms into an evil monster. Her upper torso detaches from her lower half, and she flies away looking for her next victim with bat-like wings as intestines trail her split body.
The manananggal preys on the unsuspecting, sleeping population for food. Pregnant women are the manananggal’s ideal prey. She’ll suck out blood, internal organs and even fetuses with her long, tubular tongue.
According to a CNN article, the manananggal sometimes comes with a tiktik, a small bird named for the sound it makes. The louder the tiktik is, the further the manananggal is. If the bird is silent, the closer she is. The Thought Catalog says you can try to keep the manananggal away from your home by leaving pots of uncooked rice, ash or salt around. If the manananggal sees the mentioned items from the roof, she might not enter the house.
To kill a manananggal one needs to wait for its torso to separate from its bottom half. Sprinkling salt or crushed garlic where the body was split will make the rejoining of both torsos impossible. The manananggal will perish after the sun rises.
Manananggals are subspecies of aswangs (evil spirits). The word manananggal comes from the word tanngal, which translates to “remove.”
According to the Aswang Project, creatures similar to the manananggal existed throughout Southeast Asia. The penanggal in Malaysia and the krasue in Thailand all share common features with the Filipino creature. However, the penanggal and krasue do not detach from their lower torso, but from their heads.
In “Aswang and Other Kinds of Witches: A Comparative Analysis,” Kathleen Nadeau looks at the root of the aswang (an umbrella term for evil spirits) folklore. Nadeau states that females held important roles as shaman priestesses, mediums, healers and midwives in ancient Philippines. It’s also been documented that women in pre-colonized Philippines exhibited some level of sexual freedom.
One theory to explain the differences between the manananggal in the Philippines and its cousins in Malaysia and Thailand suggests that Spaniards manipulated the story when they came to the islands. The Aswang Project notes that the wings of the devil might have been added to the creature to fit Christian imagery at the time. The colonizers supposedly changed the manananggal to detach from its torso instead of its head to separate women from their reproductive organs and symbolically take away their sexual freedom.
“The real fear of the Europeans may be based on the fear of uncontrollable women. In contrast, the fear in regional Southeast Asia may be of something or someone who may represent a danger to their children,” Nadeau states.
Nadeau highlights works from other writers to show the equality that pre-colonized men and women shared in the archipelago.
“William Henry Scott (1992; 1994) provides detailed examples of pre-colonial women who enjoyed a politically and economically more balanced relationship with men than did their European counterparts. Also, H. De la Costa (1961: 314–315) writes between the lines that women played more vital social roles as healers, warrior priestesses, and merchants before the colonial period. He documents [. . .] that female shamans performed the role of midwives and healers and rallied forth together with men in rebellion against the colonial overlords. The Spanish Catholics, [Herminia] Meñez explains, with their dark and repressed attitudes toward sexuality, were shocked by the natives’ easy-going manners when it came to sexual behavior (1996: 93).”
Nadeau sites Herminia Menez’ work “Explorations in Philippine Folklore” in her article. According to Menez, colonizers slandered Filipino priestesses to try and take away their power and enforce Christianity on the islands. Spaniards instilled fear in the people by calling shamans witches, or aswangs, to associate them with the devil.
The Culture Trip states that aswangs have been used to explain miscarriages and stillbirths in the Philippines.
Back in 1992, in the height of an election, Manila’s Tondo district was preoccupied with rumours that a manananggal was terrorizing the area, according to the Associated Press. The Chicago Tribune notes that a number of local women had miscarriages at the time and blamed the manananggal.
“No pregnant woman goes out after dark in my village,’’ Elvira Militante told the Chicago Tribune.
References
- “17 Facts About The Manananggal, A Vampiric Cannibalistic Woman” by January Nelson for Thought Catalogue.
- “Aswang and Other Kinds of Witches: A Comparative Analysis” by Kathleen Nadeau in Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society published by University of San Carlos Publications.
- “The Aswang Phenomenon” for the Aswang Project on YouTube.
- “The bloodthirsty aswangs of Philippine mythology” by Yvette Tan for CNN Philippines.
