Wak Wak

Wak Wak

Description
The Wakwak is a vampiric, bird-like creature in Philippine mythology or said to be a witch. It is said to snatch humans at night as prey, similar to the Mananaggal and the Ekek in rural areas of the Philippines, due to its ability to fly. The difference between the Mananggal and the Wakwak is that Wakwak cannot separate its torso from its body while the Manananggal can. Some believe it is also a form a vampire takes. Other people contend that a "Wakwak" is a Philippine night bird belonging to a witch.
The sound of a Wakwak is usually associated with the presence of an Unglu (vampire) or Ungo (ghost or monster). It is also believed that this monster is called "Wakwak" due to this sound it makes when it flaps its wings while flying. When one hears the Wakwak, it is looking for possible victims. If the sound of the Wakwak is loud, it means it is far from you. Otherwise, it is near and worse yet, it is about to attack. It slashes and mutilates its victims and feeds on their hearts.

The Wakwak is often described by old folks to have long sharp talons and a pair of wings similar to those of a bat. It uses its talons or claws to slash its victims and to get their heart. Many say that its wings are also sharp as a knife.
The sound that a tiki, tike or teke (Common House Gecko) makes usually at night when out of sight was discovered by an American who spent much time in the Philippines to be the source of the sound everyone was saying was a "Wakwak".

Siyokoy

Siyokoy

Description

Siyokoy are mermen, sea creatures that have a human form and scaled bodies. The Siyokoy is the male counterpart of the Sirena. The lower extremities of a Philippine merman can either be a fishtail or scaled legs and webbed feet. They could also have long, green tentacles. They drown mortals for food. Siyokoys have gill slits, are colored brown or green, and have scaly skin, comparable to that of a fish.
Legends of merfolk occur in almost every sea-faring culture, tales of alluring mermaids possessing deceptive beauty, mighty mermen summoning destructive storms, and diminutive merchildren holding their own amid the dangers of the ocean. Some accounts portray merfolk as hostile, some beguiling, some helpful to humans, some ready to kill. The term for these ocean dwellers comes from the Old English word mere, meaning sea, but the siyoykoy don’t make an appearance in any European culture–they come from the Asian-influenced Philippine Islands.

Appearance: With unattractive features, more fish-like than humanoid, the siyokoy might hold the dubious honor of being the most hideous mermen. The scales covering their entire bodies range in color from brown to green, and gill slits positioned in various places enable them to breathe underwater. Their upper bodies vaguely resemble the form of a man, tapering down to the tail of a fish or scale-encrusted legs with webbed feet. Various legends depict them with powerful green tentacles, fins, webbed hands, claws, or other unusual appendages.

Sirena

Sirena

Description
Sirena is a mermaid, a sea creature with a human upper body and a fish tail instead of lower extremities. They attract fishermen and tourists.Sirenas are reportedly often seen ashore by fishermen, especially in the towns bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Romanian, Portuguese and Philippine the word for mermaid is respectively Sirena, Sirène, Sirena, Syrena, Sirenă, Sereia and Sirena and that in biology the Sirenia comprise an order of fully aquatic mammals that includes the dugong and manatee, add to the visual confusion, so that Sirens are even represented as mermaids. However, "the sirens, though they sing to mariners, are not sea-maidens," Harrison had cautioned; "they dwell on an island in a flowery meadow." In the Philippine mythology, the Sirena is a mythological aquatic creature with the head and torso of human female and the tail of a fish. The male version of a Sirena is called a Sireno. Sometimes it is also paired with Siyokoy. The Sirena is an engkanto which is classified as one of the Bantay Tubig or the guardians of water. In addition to the Sirena, other examples of Bantay Tubig are Sireno, Siyokoy,Kataw and Ugkoy. Bantay Tubig are part fish, part human water-dwelling engkantos which are the Filipino counterpart of the English merfolk.
It is also said that the Sirena has a very beautiful and enchanting voice that can attract and hypnotize males, especially fishermen. A Sirena would sometimes sing to sailors and enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or cause shipwrecks. They would sing with enchanting voices while hiding among the rocks by the shore. When the men hear their song they are hypnotized and the Sirena can abduct them. Some old folk traditions claim that the Sirena carry its victims under the sea and offer them to their water deities. Other stories claim that the Sirena squeezes the life out of drowning men while trying to rescue them.
A malevolent Sirena may tease and attract human males with their spellbinding songs; but reports of Sirena grabbing the seemingly hypnotized humans and drowning them or taking them under water may only be isolated cases. Either the tempted human had tried to chase the Sirena deep into the water until he drowned or he had a heart attack upon seeing such an engkanto and plunged literally into the water to his death.

Manananggal

Manananggal

Description
Manananggal is an aswang that can fly after separating itself from the lower half of its body. It eats babies and fetuses from a mothers womb. It eats babies by means of passing their long tongue through a small hole from the roof of a house. The sharp end of the tongue touches the mother's navel to suck the blood of the fetus or unborn child. This creature's name was derived from the Filipino word, tanggal, which means "to separate" because of the manananggal's ability to separate itself from its lower body.
A manananggal can also be a sorceress that visits villages and barrios. To feed, the self-segmenter chooses an isolated place where she will leave her lower torso while she hunts at night. When she separates from her lower torso, she then gains her ability to fly. She then goes off in search of houses where pregnant women reside. Upon choosing a suitable victim, the Manananggal alights on the house and inserts her tongue through the roof. The tongue is long, hollow and extremely flexible. She uses it to puncture the womb of the sleeping woman and to suck out the fetus. At other times, she seduces men with her beauty and lures them to a private place before eating them alive. She usually eats the insides, like the heart, stomach or the liver. Sunlight is deadly to the Manananggal when she is in her monstrous form. Should her two halves still be separate with the coming of dawn, she will be destroyed. According to legend, to destroy the Manananggal, one should search for the lower torso that she leaves behind during her nightly hunts. Salt, ash, and/or garlic should then be placed on the exposed flesh, preventing the monster from combining again and leaving it vulnerable to sunlight. Small containers of salt, ash and raw rice, and the smell of burning rubber are said to deter the Manananggal from approaching one's house.

Stories of close encounter with the manananggal
To the rest of the world, this may sound more like fiction. But to Filipinos in any part of the world, this is a common story. One that is a known fact and one that is treated with both reverence and fear. This story happened to my mom when she went on a vacation in Cotabato City with relatives as a child.

It was a quiet moonlit night and to anybody who's used to life in the big city, a peaceful night like this one is indeed a sight to behold. The moon seemed especially bright tonight without the blinding lights of the city. I couldn't keep my eyes off the moon! I feel like I was staring at it for the first time.

I don't know how long I was admiring its beauty when suddenly; I saw a dark speck that was slowly becoming larger and larger. I went closer to the window to have a better look. What I saw next was something I will never forget all my life!

I saw an old woman and she was flying with huge bat wings! She only had the upper half of her body and she had flaming red eyes and mouth, long crooked hands and pointed fingernails. Her skin was dark as the night itself. It was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen!

She was coming towards the window and fast! I could only think of my younger brothers, how she would definitely devour us if she got to us! I mustered the remaining courage I had and I locked the thick glass windows and curtains.

I heard her shriek as she segued around our house. I stayed still, trying my best not to make a sound and listened to the deafening sound of her huge wings. It felt like forever! Then all of a sudden, she was gone. I didn't close my eyes until I saw the sun shining. It was then that I realized that no matter how advanced society has become, there are still places and entities you should never mess with.

You may all think that this is just fiction, but let me reassure you that this is 100% factual. I will do my best to tell you more stories like this one. Hope you enjoyed this.

Anggitay

Anggitay

Description
Anggitay is a creature with an upper body of a female human and of a horse from waist down. They were the Philippine counterpart for the centauride, the female centaurs. They are also believed to be the female counterpart of Tikbalang.
Sometimes, they are illustrated to have a single horn in the middle of their forehead just like a unicorn. They were usually said to be attracted to precious gemstones, and jewelries.
It is believed to be that the Anggitay usually appears when it rains although the sky is clear.

Tikbalang

Tikbalang

Description

Tikbalang (also written as Tigbalang, Tigbalan, or Tikbalan) is a creature of Philippine folklore said to lurk in the mountains and forests of the Philippines. It is generally described as a tall, bony humanoid creature with disproportionately long limbs, to the point that its knees reach above its head when it squats down. It has the head and feet of an animal, most commonly a horse. It is sometimes believed to be a transformation of an aborted fetus which has been sent to earth from limbo.

Superstitions
Tikbalangs (some provinces) are said to scare travelers and lead them astray. Tikbalangs play tricks on travelers such that they keep on returning to an arbitrary path no matter how far he goes or where he turns. Supposedly this is counteracted by wearing one's shirt inside out. Another countermeasure is to ask permission out loud to pass by or, not to produce too much noise while in the woods in order not to offend or disturb the tikbalang.
A superstition popular with the Tagalog of Rizal Province is that Tikbalangs are benevolent guardians of elemental kingdoms. They are usually found standing at the foot of large trees looking around for anyone who dare to bestow malignancy on their kingdom's territory.
A common saying has it that rain from a clear sky means Kinasal na si Irene.(Filipino, "a tikbalang is getting married".) This was most likely derived from a similar Spanish proverb that claimed a witch was getting married when there was rain on a sunny day.
According to traditional folklore, the tikbalang can also transform itself into human form or turn invisible to humans. They like to lead travelers astray.
Tikbalang are generally associated with dark, sparsely populated, foliage-overgrown areas, with legends variously identifying their abode as being beneath bridges, in Bamboo or Banana groves, and atop Kalumpang or Balete trees.

Stories of close Encounter with the Tikbalang
Couple of people who had tikbalang stories. One of them is my father. When he was a teener living in Antique he mentioned one particular night when two of his brothers were quarreling and socking each other outside their hut after a late evening drizzle. You can hear shouts and a dull thud here and there. After sometime, their mother broke up the fight and asked them to sleep away their tempers and change their clothes for the night. The two grudgingly obliged. A few hours later, there were dull thuds all over again, this time however, the sound shifted from one side of the house to the other. Father said the last time he checked, both his elder brothers were fast asleep, tired from their fisticuffs earlier. Who or what could be making the sound outside? He tried to sneak out of the back door to check but his mother, who was still awake and sitting near the window, stopped him and told him nonchalantly that he should stay inside as "there's a tikbalang outside". He obeyed and made sure that everyone was inside at the time. My father was the 7th of nine siblings by the way, and everyone except for himself and my grandma was fast asleep already.

Still the dull thud-thud-thud continued, one at a time on each side of the house. He describe the sound as akin to the sound of the heavy pestle used for separating the rice chaff from the grain. He was forbidden even to sneak a peak at the window so he can only imagine what it looked like. Apart from the dull thuds, there was no other sound to hear except the stridulation of crickets and cicadas. He fell asleep to the sound of the "tikbalang" jumping like crazy outside.

The next morning he woke up to find that their neighbors and relatives were all milling around a strange sight: huge hoof impressions, each the size of ripe coconut littered each side of the house. the impressions came in pairs and overlapped each other. Each mark was several inches deep and filled with rainwater from last night's drizzle. No one owned a horse in the barrio and not even a thoroughbred bronco can make impressions that big. It's clearly not a buffalo's since the hoof is not cloven in the middle. Whatever made those impressions would be immensely bigger and heftier than a carabao or a horse judging from the depth and size of the impressions. The fact that the impressions came in pairs suggest a bipedal creature left those marks. Granting that this thing had legs proportionate to a horse and the torso of a human relative to its legs, it could've easily scraped the ceiling at around 10-15 feet tall.

Unfortunately, no one had a camera at the time. Which was understandable considering that the area was so poor at the time some students had to walk unshod to and from school just to make their precious "bakya" last longer. Umbrellas were expensive and were almost unknown so if it rained, people used banana leaves instead. The blessings of Tesla's electricity still hasn't reached those parts yet (this was in the early 60's).

What was the tikbalang's business jumping over the roof at those late hours? What it did was similar to the Filipino chidren's game called "Luksong Tinik" lit. "Jumping Thorns" but its motives were never known. Tikbalangs have been known to be playful and mischievous so it's anybody's guess.

Mambabarang

Mambabarang

Description
Mambabarang (summoner) is a witch who uses insects and spirits to enter the body of any person they hate.A Mambabarang is a kind of a mangkukulam. Mambabarangs are ordinary human beings with black magic who torture and later kill their victims by infesting their bodies with insects. They are different from Mangkukulams - the latter only inflict pain or illness. Mambabarangs use a strand of hair from their chosen victim and tie it to the bugs or worms which they will use as a medium. When they prick the bug, the victim immediately experiences the intended effect.

Ekek

Ekek

Desctription
In Philippine mythology, Ekek (or Ek Ek) are creatures who are bird-like humans. They are winged-humans who search for victims at night. They hunger for flesh and blood. They are usually described by old folks as flying creatures that look like the Manananggal but are unable to divide or split their body. Apart from the Manananggal, they are also associated to the Wak Wak because of some similar characteristics. The only difference between a Wak Wak and Ekek is that Ekek has a bill like birds whereas the Wak Wak has none.
The Ekek can transform into a huge bird/bat at night and prowls. Similar to the Manananggal, the Ekek looks for sleeping pregnant women. Then it extends a very long proboscis into the womb and kills the fetus by draining its blood. It is said that while this is taking place, a "ek-ek-ek" sound is often heard. The Ekek fools people into thinking it is far by producing a faint sound when it is actually near.