Another Aswang Story

My mother was born in the province of Pangasinan and it was absolutely covered in forest back in the day and it was common knowledge that 'something' lived in the woods and either an uncle or neighbour once told my mom when she was a little girl that he had gotten lost in them once late at night and suspecting that the spirits were at play, he pulled down his pants and 'mooned' the trees. He heard loud laughter and was able to find his way home.

Several members of my extended family (aunts, uncles and cousins) have the 'third eye' or 'sixth sense'. Thankfully, my mother doesn't and neither do I. So, they constantly hear or see things.

My mother comes from a big family (about ten siblings or something) and when she was a girl one of her sisters was sleeping in the kitchen on a mat. Late at night they woke up to find her screaming, eyes shut, sitting upright struggling against 'something' they couldn't see. When they woke her she said a big hairy man was attacking her. My mother's theory is that it may have been a...capre I think they're called, a 'tree ogre'. She never slept out on her own again.

Besides that two of my aunts and uncles would regularly hear footsteps and other noises in the dead of night while no one else would (third eye).

One of my uncles in particular has had a plethora of encounters with the supernatural. Many from when he was a boy. One night he was playing tag with his friends, he heard panting and loud footsteps behind him so he ran faster thinking one of his friends was about to tag him but when he reached the front of his family's house, all his friends were already there. None of them had been chasing him. He told them what happened and they never played running games at night ever again.

The same uncle has also seen 'little people', one showed itself to him when he went to feed the dogs. He was very small, he said, resembling a little old man with a long beard, he ran back into the house. He was later told that the 'little person' wanted to befriend him, but he was so scared that afterwards he took my mom with him whenever he had to feed the dogs and he never saw the little man again.

My mother came to the Philippines when she was pregnant with my brother and me because she wanted us to be born here. Naturally she was wary of the 'Aswang'. But it wasn't after both of us were born and little more than toddlers on vacation in the Philippines two or three years later that there were reported 'sightings' of Aswang in our area (Caloocan City). Us being so young, made her very nervous and it was around this time that again, the same uncle was out late one night when he heard a loud flapping of wings and saw a shadow on the ground much too large to be a bird or a bat and it swooped just over him, enough for him to feel the air shift above him.

The Aswang has since been said to have left...however, as of last night, I'm thinking a new one's moved in or the old one's come back.

It was by no means late. Just a little after nine o'clock at night. I was at the computer when I heard a flapping sound by the top of a semi-open window a few feet away, I wouldn't have thought much of it if it hadn't been immediately followed by a loud thump on the roof, and a loud heavy dragging-scraping sound as it dragged across the roof in a very fast zig-zag pattern. I followed the sound all the way to the kitchen where it ended on the roof's edge with another loud thump. I've heard cats and possums run over rooftops before and that's not what I heard. I considered the possibilities of a large bird or bat but...why would it DRAG across the roof? And what I heard was definitely bigger and heavier than any bird or bat found in the area. My mother was asleep in the bedroom, one of the windows open. I went to keep her company and didn't hear anything else. But at around 11 my brother said he heard a scratching noise and assumed it was me (despite having fallen asleep at around 10).

In the morning I told both about the dragging-scraping and flapping sounds I heard and my mother mentioned the 'Aswang'. My brother then related how about a week and a half ago on a quiet night he had heard a scraping noise over his bedroom.

We have only recently moved here from overseas, we are still considered strangers to the area, which is unfortunately enough to attract an Aswang.

While I'm at it...

Aswang is somewhat of a generic term that are used to refer to several 'types' of beings:

Type 1 - A shapeshifter, usually turns into a dog, cat, pig, bird - or whatever else suits it's purposes, a dog is most common though

Type 2 - A witch, a person who practices witchcraft

Type 3 - A corpse eater, steal the body and replace it with a fake from what I understand

Type 4 - The 'separator' a being that detaches its torso from the lower body and flies around looking for prey (damn it this is the one that scares me most) uses a very thin elongated tongue to feed on its victims. Has large batlike wings and...usually has its entrails hanging from where it separated.

Type 5 I think was something more closely related to what we perceive as vampires...

Either way, I'm shutting all the windows by 5 and keeping a sharp ear out for more strange noises and will be sprinkling some salt and hanging garlic around the house if it continues.

I try to be more scientific than superstitious, but then...better safe than sorry right? And making a mistake with this particular mythical being is a risk I am not willing to take.

source: Chiogaru