The aswang is arguably the most well-known and feared supernatural entity in the Philippines, documented consistently since the Spanish colonial period (16th century). It is not a single creature type but a class — encompassing vampiric beings, flesh-eaters, entrail-suckers, and viscera-hunters. The aswang appears as an ordinary person by day — often described as shy, avoiding eye contact — and transforms at night. Regional variants exist across all major Philippine island groups.
By day, appears human, often female, often living at the edge of a community. A telltale sign is that the reflection of a person in an aswang's eyes appears upside-down. At night, it transforms — gaining red eyes, black wings in some forms, the ability to fly, or splitting in half at the waist.
Shape-shifting into dogs, cats, pigs, or birds. Could extend a long proboscis tongue to extract a fetus through a pregnant woman's navel without waking her. Its chick-like sound ('tik tik') grew louder as it moved farther away (to confuse direction) and softer as it came close. Aswang saliva could infect victims.
Weaknesses
- substanceGarlic
- substanceVinegar (particularly coconut vinegar)
- symbolSalt
Wards
- substanceGarlic hung around the room
- ritualBuntot-pagi (stingray tail whip) — traditional protective item
Aguingay
Aguingay (also Agingay) is a legendary woman from the Bulusan epic of Sorsogon, Philippines. Presented as a mortal of exceptional beauty and tragic fate, her life and death are etiologically linked to local landscape features (Mt. Bulusan and two lakes) and commemorated in an annual festival.
Alan
A class of non‑human spirit-beings in Tinguian (Philipine) folklore associated with reproductive wastes and springs; said to transform discarded menstrual blood, afterbirth, or miscarried tissue into human children whom they rear, and to dwell in fine houses near springs. Key described features include wings and backward-pointing fingers and toes.
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
Angalo is a primordial culture-hero and giant in Ilocano mythology credited with shaping the landscape of Luzon and explaining natural phenomena; narratives present him as the first man and an ancestral figure whose bodily acts produced mountains, valleys, seas, and celestial features.
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
Anito is a category of non‑human and post‑human spiritual beings in indigenous Philippine animistic worldviews, encompassing ancestor spirits, nature spirits/local deities, and sometimes carved effigies (taotao) that house or represent those spirits. They mediate relations between the living and the unseen world, functioning as household guardians, owners of places, intercessors, or occasional agents of harm when offended.
Bakla
Bakla is a Philippine social and gender category—commonly an assigned‑male‑at‑birth person who adopts a feminine gender expression and is often treated as a third gender. Historically some bakla served as indigenous ritual specialists (babaylan, katalonan), but the term itself denotes a social identity, not a supernatural being.
Bakunawa
A dragon- or serpent-like mythic being from Philippine tradition associated with the moon and eclipses; its actions explain lunar eclipses and some natural phenomena and were integrated into ritual practice and calendrical knowledge.
Bal-Bal
A Philippine folkloric undead/monster that steals corpses from funerals and graves and feeds on them, noted for keen scent for dead bodies, sharp claws and teeth, foul breath, and reportedly leaving a banana‑tree trunk in the coffin as a substitute for the stolen corpse.
Bathalà
In pre‑colonial Tagalog religion Bathalà (also Maykapál) functions as the transcendent supreme creator-preserver — the originator and ruler of the universe. The lexeme also served as an honorific applied to lesser tutelary spirits and portentous phenomena, and was later syncretized with the Christian Dios after Spanish contact.
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
Berbalangs are a class of corpse‑eating, astral‑projecting beings described in a late‑19th‑century ethnographic account from the island of Cagayan Sulu (Mapun). The report portrays them as a village community whose members are said to dig up graves to eat corpses and, by entering trance, liberate an astral body to possess and feed on the living; protective measures recorded include lime and a coconut pearl talisman.
Community Record
- [1]Philippine Folk Literature. Eugenio, Damiana. 1994. Philippine Folk Literature: The Legends. University of the Philippines Press.academic
- [2]The Aswang Complex. Ramos, Maximo. 1971. The Aswang Complex in Philippine Folklore. Phoenix Press.academic