Within the ethnographic summary available, the Alan occupy a parallel non‑human social role in Tinguian cosmology: they are unseen persons who appropriate certain human reproductive materials and transform those materials into offspring they raise outside ordinary human families. While the provided source does not record a creation myth for the Alan or an origin legend, it situates them as part of a cultural imagination that locates liminal reproductive substances (menstrual blood, afterbirth, miscarried tissue) as matters that can be taken up by otherworldly beings. Their placement near springs and their elaborate dwellings suggest a contrast between alluring otherworld wealth and social separation from human settlements as understood in the Tinguian material cited (Source: Wikipedia: Alan (legendary creature)).
The available ethnographic summary describes the Alan as winged spirits capable of flight and notes that their fingers and toes point backwards. The source characterizes them as "deformed spirits" (direct quote from the summary) but provides no further details on size, coloration, clothing, or how closely their faces or bodies resemble humans. Their dwellings are described as "extremely fine houses, made of gold and other valuables," indicating a visible material splendour to their habitations (Source: Wikipedia: Alan (legendary creature)).
The Alan are reported to take drops of menstrual blood, miscarried fetuses, afterbirth, or other reproductive waste and to transform those materials into human children, whom they then raise as their own. They are described as having wings and the ability to fly, which implies mobility between springs (their named habitat) and possibly other locations. Beyond these transformative and locomotive behaviors, the cited summary gives no explicit claims about magical combat, curse‑casting, possession, or routine harm or benefit to humans; their role is framed primarily as appropriators and rearers of persons created from reproductive waste (Source: Wikipedia: Alan (legendary creature)).
Aguingay
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Amalanhig
Amalanhig are Visayan undead beings in Philippine folk belief, described as aswang who failed to transfer their monstrosity or power before death and who rise from graves to attack living humans. Accounts portray them as externally human in appearance with enlarged upper canines and as predators that bite, feed with a pointed tongue in some tellings, or — in an alternative variant — tickle victims to death.
Angalo
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Anggitay
A Philippine folkloric female equid–human hybrid often described with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a horse. Frequently compared to the Greek centauride and sometimes presented as a female counterpart to the tikbalang; traditionally associated with an attraction to gemstones and jewelry and with a local homeland in Santo Tomas, Batangas in some accounts.
Anito
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Aswang
The most feared supernatural being in Philippine folklore — a shape-shifting monster that appears human by day but transforms at night to prey on pregnant women and children.
Bakla
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Bakunawa
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Bal-Bal
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Bathalà
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Batibat
The Batibat is a vengeful, tree-dwelling female spirit in Philippine (Ilocano and Tagalog) folklore associated with causing suffocative sleep afflictions, nightmares, and sleep paralysis when trees that house it are felled and used near human sleeping spaces.
Berbalang
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Community Record
- [1]Alan (legendary creature) — Wikipedia summary. Wikipedia: Alan (legendary creature) — ethnographic summary citing Fay-Cooper Cole's Traditions of the Tinguian (as presented in the Wikipedia entry)wiki