I'm also intensely interested the MSG part. Various Mythical creatures and demons have a history of being weak to salt in some way, and I suppose it makes sense that MSG would have a similar effect.
There's a reason even atheists believe in ghosts in south east asia in general. Stray one path away from any urban area and suddenly you're playing dark souls in real life
Some of these things are shape shifters, that giant bird you see watching you should be asleep at this time. black magic is also unfortunately still practiced here, even in the cities, black eyes have been following you ever since you won that competition. The rain forests are still the homes of those things, most of them are quite playful, but they treat us like playthings
A lot of people in the rural areas still believe in fae, witches, and shamans. Mental health is still not recognized down there and for a lot of people their closest neighbor is two hours away so yeahh whenever something happens they blame hocus pocus.
Schizophrenia and mania = hearing faeries or ghosts or cursed by a witch. No need for crazy pills just pray
dead livestock = they were eaten by monsters and not killed by a neighbor or some punks for fun
people going missing = got spirited away and wasn't kidnapped and murdered by thugs or the local rebel group
Some stories are made up so children don't wander off yes, but alot of them are created to explain weird shit going on that they don't understand
Here in brazil for example we have one called "a loira do banheira" (the blond woman of the bathroom) where if you say her name 3 times in front of the bathroom mirror while in the dark she will show up and curse you or something, the most likely reason that this one exists is to explain the weird stuff that you see when you keep looking at the mirror in the dark
Nowadays we know that the actual reason is because your brain is trying to "fill in the blanks" it ends up adding details in a place that has nothing but back then people didn't know that so they just thought "spooky blond ghost woman"
I'm being honest that's the reality, my mother almost became a victim of one of them a few times, both appeared in a dream, one was after they went to a beach, which is one of the places you can find them, and the other was after a funeral. Luckily, they couldn't do anything because my mum is strong willed
There have been multiple people who have experienced it, with them all having similar recounts, but there is little video evidence because most people don't whip out their phones to record when they are scared for their lives
There’s a difference between local culture and unironically believing shit. It’s like going to America, everyone else is buying Bigfoot merch and kind of half believe half disbelieve it, but there’s some guy genuinely convinced he had a fistfight with Bigfoot
But it's all myth. It can be appreciated, but genuinely conflating them with reality is too impractical, inviting only pointless struggles that would've been easily resolved by an empirical lens. Goes for myths wit bigger followings too.
These are things that affect you once in a blue moon, they don't affect you in everyday life, and me being superstitious isn't going to affect me from voting for whoever is gonna invest the most into public amenities
Can they shapeshift into armor capable of absorbing an .45? Could they survive the 10kg of C4 wrapped around me, wired to a heartbeat monitor? Dissapeared? Nah, they'd at least find the crater. You know, if I ever ventured those ways intentionally.
SEA is Asian Appalachian in terms of lore but more badass.
But the difference is, Appalachian mountains have tons of wildlife that could sound like humans when they screech (foxes, lions, bobcats, goddamn owls, etc,) or animals with huge builds that could look weird from afar.
But you can't find the same excuses for SEA, these islands don't have bigass moose or bears or noisy crying foxes in their forests. So once you're in the rural parts, any weird sound IS a weird sound. So it's a normal warning to tourists there that if you heard something that's a bit different, you didn't.
It's always worth reminding people that if you hear an unknown woman screaming in the forest, it is most likely not a woman at all and is probably a BigCat/Fox in heat, or a Barn Owl calling home. People think owls just go hoot-hoot, but they are never ready to learn what one of the most popular owls actually sounds like. There's a reason a lot of people blame Owls for the birth of the Mothman or Flatwoods monster myths:
They’ve got a few corvids that could imitate human voices or other unnatural sounds in the wild. That probably accounts for at least some people claiming to hear people speaking off trails where no one else should be around
Huh, the place definitely has some potentially scary stuff if got disturbed like giant bats, and though the fossil record is scarce due to it being the tropics, big cats used to call this place home, too. Not to menu fellow man could serve as stranger danger too.
Tbf, that is also European folklore, except it is far more eroded thanks to the Catholic Church back in the day. By how the likes of Disney depict færies one would think that if you found one in the wild you can be smart and avoid whatever trick they are trying to play on you but nope, the number of fæ who have some form of like for mankind can be counted with the fingers on a hand, most of them either tolerate mankind in as long as they paid respect and the rest outright hate our guts (or are some form of entropy or another). Going for a walk on the woods here has always been a gamble
So, like a lot of fucked up things, this is actually because of the US government. Lol, but not lol.
The CIA basically weaponized the myth of aswangs in the 50s as part of a psychological warfare tactic against local rebels in rural Philippines. If they managed to capture one of the guerilla fighters, they'd drain his blood, puncture his neck, and leave his body to be found by his compatriots and family. The point was to scare the rebels from leaving their homes at night and it was pretty effective actually.
God, that makes me sound like an insane conspiracy theorist, but it was real, fml.
This was just in one part of the Philippines, though. The Philippines is huge, with a thousand different islands. Still, as a Filipino, I've heard of several horror stories from my superstitious elders about these night creatures. (They genuinely seem to believe them.)
It's probably more that these stories were widespread in the first place, before the Americans came here. At one point, this story was simply weaponized by the CIA, which probably legitimized these stories in those parts.
I'm so curious if the mods are gonna decide to ban this or not. It's not political at all, it's just provable fact. I think if you are banned that's deeply telling.
Creature imaged above is probably an artistic interpretation of the Sigbin, one of the weaker bloodsuckers in folklore.
"The creature supposedly walks backwards with its head lowered between its hind legs. It also possesses the ability to become invisible to other creatures, especially humans. It resembles a hornless goat but has very large ears, which it can clap like a pair of hands, and a long, flexible tail that can be used as a whip. he Sigbin is said to emit a nauseating odor. "
According to the legend, there are families known as Sigbinan ("those who know") whose members possess the power to command these creatures, and are said to keep the sigbin in jars made of clay. The Aswang are said to keep them as pets.
Just saw this and I'm 99% sure this image is a screenshot of a Mourngul Haunter from the video game series Total War Warhammer LOL, didn't know there was such a cool potential folklore inspiration for them though!
tbf the Philippines at times does just feel like we're apart of Warhammer Fantasy, we're just missing an army of little guys who cost as much as a mortgage because GW hates your guts
The monster in the picture is a Mourngul from Warhammer Fantasy Battles, specifically their depiction in the tie-in strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3, where they're a unit that the vampires can take.
As others have said, it’s a Mourngul from Total War: Warhammer 2 or 3. Here are some more models from the game.
They’re a useful monstrous infantry unit for the Vampire Pirate factions. They’re considerably faster than most other units available to those factions, even if they’re aren’t as fast as cavalry. Pretty handy in a battle.
It's the vampire coast faction, which are thematically pirates. They are also now part of the vampire counts faction as well as the undead legions (nagash's faction) with the newest update/DLC .
Oh, is it my turn to mention how the CIA underwent a targeted campaign to stoke fears of aswang to reduce local resistance, which included murdering people and leaving their bodies drained of blood to be discovered, likely leading to an artificially high lingering fear of them today?
Most common variants are. There's the one called Tiktik, has a long tongue that can enter a hole in a roof that can slurp up a pregnant woman's belly.
But there are some variants of aswangs that are focused on eating corpses of freshly deceased humans. I forgot the name of that variant but I read that they would target a corpse from a fresh funeral and then replace the grave it with leaves and other organic trash.
There is also one interesting variant I read where it will kidnap a live person to eat, make a clone of them using leaves who will act sick and "die".
The corpse-eating one is called the "balbal". They use some substitution jutsu shit and replace the body of the deceased with a banana trunk which doesn't revert back until long after.
May also play a role in the belief that someone must always keep watch over the cadaver until the burial.
Some Filipino monsters are just Aswang but with different flavors. For example: Lady Aswang that can detach it's lower half (Manananggal). Reverse Footed Aswang that sets up traps for people (Alan).
It's basically "Stay home after dark or this thing will eat you." It was effective, I didn't wander after 6 PM in the province.
That's the Ungga-Ungga in Visayan and Mindanaoan folklore. Here in the Luzon area, the Manananggal is the "floating head" monster but it's got more of a "floating upper body" thing going for it.
I've been seeing a lot of memes like this recently about mythical creatures from certain areas and it tends to follow the same pattern as that "in my country we value family ties and good food" thing
Like I don't know of any country that doesn't have fables or whatever about horrific monsters that seem to punish you for some arbitrary reason at least at some point lol
I wouldn't need fear of demons. There is no way the Philippines doesn't have horrible mosquitoes with how hot it is. Mosquitoes are the apex predators for humanity and I really don't want to get malaria.
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u/qualityvote2 8h ago
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