Top 10 Scariest Filipino Monsters

10

Aswang

The aswang is probably the most common of Filipino monsters since there are so many different kinds. In general, they are shape shifters who are human by day and then at night turn into a dog, a pig, a bat, cat, snake… the type of animal depends on the regional lore. They break into funeral homes and steal recent corpses. They are also known to enter homes to drink human blood and can turn people into aswang by tricking the human to bite them in return. The aswang are especially hungry for human fetus so some of the more superstitious stories include neighborhoods patrols set up in front of the home of a pregnant woman to protect her from wandering stray animals in case they are the aswang in disguise.

9

Matruculan

The Matruculan is one of many Filipino creatures who attack pregnant women. This particular creature first impregnates a virgin before coming back later to kill the woman and eat the fetus (although some stories say that both mom and baby are eaten). Some stories claim that the woman is not a virgin but rather married and already pregnant. To protect the mother and child, the husband must swing a balisong (pictured above), or butterfly knife, above the woman’s belly while she is in labor. This leads one to wonder: which is scarier, an invisible mythological creature, or the father of your unborn child brandishing a knife above your abdomen?

8

Kapre

These are hairy giants with glowing eyes and a cigar that never burns out. They can usually be found sitting atop of trees waiting for nightfall to scare naughty children who are outside of their homes late at night. The Kapre is a unique Filipino monster because he doesn’t steal fetuses, eat people or cut them up. The Kapre simply enjoys scaring children… and I suppose laughing at them for being scared. Some stories claim they are actually very friendly beings who can grant wishes if you find their magical white stone. One can assume a Kapre is nearby when trees sway while there is no breeze or you see faint smoke from high above, probably from the Kapre‘s cigar..

7

Duwende

These are tiny human-like creatures that live underground. There are two main types of Duwende: the duwende puti who are supposedly kind creatures who bring about good luck, or the duwende itim who are mean folk that like to play pranks on humans. They generally keep to themselves and only interact with humans when their homes are disturbed. For example, a kindly farmer who takes care of his plot may be rewarded by the duwende puti with a greater abundance of crops than usual. However, someone who kicks an anthill on or near the home of a duwendi itim will be punished with a myriad of ailments from twisted mouth to swollen testicles. The best way to avoid Duwende of any kind is to say “Tabi-tabi po” aloud before entering what might be their space.

6

Tiyanak

The tiyanak is similar to the Greek mythological siren in that it lures its prey with its voice. A person hears a baby cry from deep in the woods and then follows the sound to rescue the baby. Some stories say the person wanders aimlessly in search for the baby and becomes hopelessly lost. Other stories claim that the person eventually finds a baby in the middle of the woods. When it is picked up, the baby then shape-shifts into a monster with large, sharp teeth. It then eats the person and transforms back to a baby to await its next victim. With either version, the story ends with “… and he was never found again.”

5

Sigbin

Depending on region and storyteller, the sigbin resembles either a hornless goat, a reptilian crow, or something vaguely along the lines of the Chupacabra. What is most common with all accounts is that its head hangs between its forelegs which are much shorter than its hindlegs. Whether because of physiology or because it makes the sigbin seem scarier, it is also known to crabwalk backwards. The sigbin also has a long whip-like tail that emit’s a foul stench and two grasshopper-like legs on its neck that enable it to jump far distances. They wander around at night in search of children to devour but they keep the hearts to make amulets. Most stories and sightings originate from the Cebu region. However, although it is some distance away, in 2005 scientists in Borneo discovered a “cat-fox-like carnivore” with hind legs longer than forelegs giving it an awkward gait and physical appearance that somewhat fits many of the descriptions of the sigbin (e.g. long tail, short forearms, can jump far distances, carnivorous). No conclusive evidence has been found yet to link the two together. 

4

Tikbalang

The tikbalang is described as having the head of a horse, the body of a man and the hooves of a horse where human feet would be. In northern regions, the tikbalang is considered a nuisance but generally harmless. They enjoy disorienting weary travelers and making them imagine things that don’t exist. Travelers can easily stop the pranks by turning their own shirt inside out and asking the tikbalang to stop bothering them. The stories of tikbalang from southern regions paint the creature as a much more sinister monster. He has glowing red eyes, a large cigar and smells of the stench of burning hair. When angered (and he angers easily), the tikbalang will stamp you to death. To tame the beast, the person must pluck the one of three unusually long hairs found in its mane. After that, the tikbalang is your slave. Folklore states that when the sun shines through the clouds while it is raining, a pair of Tikbalang are getting married.

3

Kumakatok

In the middle of the night, a knock will sound at the door and outside are three hooded figures, one a pretty, young woman and two elderly men. There are no stories of how the group was formed or where they originated but tales about them have popped up all over the Philippines and with more frequency around the time of outbreaks. Legend has it that a visit from them is an omen that someone in the family will soon die. There are no paintings or hangings that can keep them at bay. Leaving the door unanswered does not help either. They simply knock and leave and then someone would still die shortly thereafter.

2

The White Lady / Kaperosa

The White Lady is a specific kind of Multo, or ghost. Most multo tend to be family members who come back to certain relatives to take care of unfinished business but the White Lady is unique in that she doesn’t appear to only her relatives or even to specific people she knew when alive. Many sightings have reported her in empty buildings, near forests and on cliffs. However, she is most commonly reported seen along Balete Drive in Quezon City. She was a young lady who was raped and killed by two Japanese soldiers during WWII. While there haven’t been stories of the White Lady being a purposefully malicious being, she has been the reported as the cause of more than a few car accidents by drivers who look in their rearview mirror and see a young lady in the backseat wearing a white dress. Sure, some strange, unknown lady sitting in your backseat is bad enough but the White Lady is also said to have no face or a face covered in blood.

1

Manananggal

The Manananggal is sometimes considered to be a special breed of the aswangs. They are sometimes referred to as “Tik-tik” because of the sound it makes while in flight. To confuse its victims, the tik-tik sound becomes fainter as she nears. These creatures generally take on the form of a beautiful woman with large, leathery bat wings. The lower half of her body takes root to the ground while the upper part detaches as she flies in search of food. The manananggal has a taste for human blood and a particular craving for the hearts of human fetuses which it retrieves with its long, proboscis-like tongue. Like the Western culture’s vampire, the manananggals hate garlic and salt so hanging garlic or placing a bowl of salt near the window is the best way to keep them away. To kill a manananggal, one must find the lower body and spread salt or ashes on the open wound. That prevents the two halves from joining and transforming back to human form when daylight breaks.

Secret Places Banned to the Public

Secretive Russian town of Mezhgorye

There is a town in Russia, called Mezhgorye, which is barred to anyone, except for those believed to work at the highly secretive Mount Yamantaw site, thought by many to be either an ultra-secret research facility, or be nuclear. Founded in 1979. The town is at the foot of the mountain, the highest in the Urals, at 5,381ft, where US satellites have recorded excavation projects, on a huge scale, though repeated enquiries about the nature of operations, at this maddeningly closely watched community, have been met by bland responses, such as it being a mine of some kind, or a repository for Russian treasures, and even as somewhere for government, in case of disaster, but nobody knows.

The mysterious Moscow metro2

Moscow, capital city of Russia, supposedly has a secondary, secret underground metro system, known as Metro-2, running parallel to the public Metro. Built, it is thought, during Stalin’s time, KGB codename for the project being D-6. The existence of this phantom system has never been confirmed, nor denied, by the FSB -Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, or indeed the Moscow Metro administration themselves. Rumored to be much longer, in length, than the public Metro.  And to consist of four lines, running between 50 and 200m below ground it connects the Kremlin with the FSB headquarters, Vnukovo-2 government airport, plus underground town Ramenki, as well as other, undisclosed locations.

The super secret Area 51 Groom Lake facility

Area 51, a phrase well known around the world, is a military base, Groom Lake, in the southern portion of Nevada, USA, 83 miles from Las Vegas. Found along the southern shore of Groom Lake, the large, secretive, military airfield appears to be involved in the development, and testing of experimental aircraft, as well as advanced weapons systems research.  So closely guarded is this place, and so well monitored, that it has been the subject of conspiracy theory for decades. Even the U.S. government only reluctantly admits to the existence of this place, and the fact that deadly force can, and has been used against people trying to get into the Area 51 zone, really does make you wonder

The ultra secretive Room 39 of North Korea

North Korea, that most oppressive of states, is infamous for Room 39, sometimes called Bureau 39, one of the most secretive of their organizations, dedicated to seeking methods of obtaining foreign currency for North Korea’s leader. Established in the late 1970s and described, by some in the west, as the lynchpin of the dynastic Kim family dealings. Room 39 is such a secretive institution that none are sure exactly what goes on there, though it is widely believed that ten to twenty bank accounts, in Switzerland and China, are used in illegalities such as counterfeiting, money laundering, drug smuggling and illicit weapon sales. The organization has, reportedly, 120 foreign trade companies that it operates, under the direct control of the ruling family, who obviously deny any illegal activities. Room 39 is believed to be l inside a ruling Workers’ Party building in Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea, but nobody knows for sure

The Inaccessible Ise Grand Shrine of Japan

Japan has an amazing series of over 100 shrines, known as the Ise Grand Shrine, the most sacred shrine in the country. Dedicated to Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, this wondrous place has existed since 4BC, and it is thought that the main shrine contains the single, most important item in Japanese imperial history, the Naikū. This is the mirror, from Japanese mythology, which graced the hands of the first emperors of Japan. Demolished, purely to enable rebuilding, every 20 years, honoring Shinto ideas of death and rebirth, the shrine is barred to anyone but the priest or priestess, who has to a member of the Japanese imperial family everyone else is kept away by very alert guards.

The terrifying Mount Weather Emergency operations center.

Mount Weather is not somewhere that that the US publics ever really want to goes to. This is the genuine article, as in the disaster films, where some highly classified area has been prepared, to accept the lucky few destined to survive. Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center truly is the real thing, set up in the 1950s, during the cold war; it still operates today, as a “last hope” area, though naturally highly classified. Federal Emergency Management Agency staffs, FEMA, are in charge of it, and already, when required much of US telecommunications traffic can be routed through it, so that emergency services operate well

The incredibly intrusive RAF Menwith Hill

The global ECHELON spy network, much employed by US and British governments, is the reason why Royal Air Force station Menwith Hill exists. Containing extensive satellite tracking ground systems, this communications intercept, and missile warning site, has been called the largest electronic monitoring station on earth. Ground station for satellites, of the US National Reconnaissance Office, serving the US National Security Agency, the station is famous for having antennae contained in highly distinctive white radomes. Believed by some to be part of the ECHELON system, reportedly created for the purpose of monitoring military and diplomatic communications, from Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc allies, during the Cold War, and these days I believed to search also for terrorist plots, drug dealing information, as well as political and diplomatic intelligence. Also believed to be involved filtering all telephone and radio communications in the western world, though not proven, this is an incredibly secretive and well guarded place that the public can never get into.

Top 10 Most Mysterious Disappearances in History

It is a fact that literally thousands of people go missing every year in this country alone; some of these are likely well-covered up homicides, but most are voluntary—either teenage runaways or people who just want to start over again—with a few as yet undiscovered suicides thrown in for good measure. However, there are a few vanishings that remain inexplicable or have so captured the public imagination that they continue to intrigue us to this day. Here is my listing of the top ten most mysterious or famous disappearances over the years that continue to baffle investigators to this day.

10. Harold Holt, 1967

It’s not every day that an active head of state—in this case the Prime Minister of Australia—goes disappearing, but that’s precisely what happened one Sunday morning in December of 1967 when the Prime Minister went for a swim and was never seen again. Of course, a massive hunt was undertaken, but despite one of the largest search-and-rescue operations ever mounted in Australia, his body was never found. There were many rumors surrounding Holt’s death, including claims that he had committed suicide or faked his own death in order to run away with his mistress. His death even became the subject of numerous urban myths in Australia, including outlandish but persistent stories that he had been kidnapped by a Chinese submarine, or that he had been abducted by a UFO. Most likely, however, the 59-year-old Prime Minister—not in the best of health at the time anyway—was simply swept away at a beach notorious for its strong and dangerous rip currents and the rest is, as they say, history.

9. John Cabot, 1499

It’s not really that big a mystery what happened to famed Italian explorer, John Cabot—the second European to step foot on North America in 1497—who disappeared along with his five ship fleet during an expedition to find a western route from Europe to Asia. This was, after all, 1499, when things like the Coast Guard and GPS was not yet around to help someone out of such situations. Still, it is unusual that nothing was heard again from at least one of the ships from the ill-fated cruise, but such was the case with Mister Cabot’s fleet. In fact, considering that his ships were primitive wooden vessels that averaged less than 100-foot in length, the prospect that they were all destroyed in a storm or became entangled in an ice flow—or even that the crew succumbed to disease—must be considered not only possible, but considering the era, practically inevitable.

8. Raoul Wallenberg, 1945

Never heard of Raoul Wallenberg? It’s not surprising, as few people outside of Sweden have heard of the courageous Swedish diplomat who was credited with saving the lives of at least 20,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust (ten times more than Oskar Schindler, by the way). Such, however, are the vagaries of fame. Arrested on espionage charges in Budapest following the arrival of the Soviet army, his subsequent fate remains a mystery despite hundreds of purported sightings in Soviet prisons, some as recent as the 1980s. In 2001, after 10 years of research, a Swedish-Russian panel concluded that Wallenberg probably died (most likely executed by the Russians) in July of 1947, but to date no hard evidence has been found to confirm this. In any case, he rightfully remains a genuine hero for his actions, however, especially in his home country of Sweden and to thousands of Jews around the world.

7. Judge Joseph Force Crater, 1930

Though not well known today, at the time the disappearance of Judge Crater—an associate justice for the Supreme Court for the State of New York—along with his “girlfriend” Sally Lou Ritz, was quite a sensation that prompted one of the biggest manhunts of the 20th century. Some speculated the judge ran afoul of the mafia, which is not all that outlandish a prospect, considering that there were any numbers of judges during that era known to have connections with organized crime. Others, however, believe the judge and his mistress planned their own disappearance and probably skipped town with bags of loot in an effort to start a new life elsewhere—like, say, Rio de Janeiro. In any case, whatever became of the good judge and his mistress has remained a well-kept secret for eighty years and one that isn’t likely to be solved anytime soon. One legacy he did leave behind, however, was that for many years the term “pulling a Crater” was used as slang for a person who mysteriously disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

6. Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli, 1927

1927 was a big year in aviation, and nothing was bigger than the race to be the first to make the Paris to New York Atlantic crossing. At one point, as many as a half dozen aviators were vying for the honor of being the first, but most dropped out due to mechanical or funding problems, leaving only a few genuine contenders. Of course, we know today that Charles Lindbergh was the one who eventually pulled it off, but it was a close call as just days before he made his flight, a well-known French aviator named Charles Nungesser attempted to take the prize by flying from Paris to New York. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortuitously from Lindbergh’s standpoint—the man, along with his navigator, François Coli, disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic and were never heard from again. They are presumed to have crashed into the sea, of course, though some maintain they made it to Newfoundland or Maine and went down in the vast forests of those sparsely populated regions, though no wreckage that could be confirmed to be from their biplane, The White Bird, has ever been found.

5. Glenn Miller, 1944

When the popular American jazz musician and bandleader vanished reroute from England to France to play for troops in recently liberated Paris, few people knew about it at the time. This is because it happened the same day the Germans launched their last major offensive against the allies in what would be known as the Battle of the Bulge, pushing such news to the back page. What happened to the single-engine Norseman he was riding in over the English Channel some 10 days before Christmas has never been explained, and no trace of Miller or the plane has ever been found. There is speculation a German fighter got it, or that the plane got hit by ordnance being dropped by British bombers on their way back from a canceled bombing mission. (Bombers couldn’t land with unexploded ordnance on board and had to jettison their bomb loads—preferably over the ocean—before they could land.) Whatever the case, Miller’s death was a huge loss to the American musical scene and one that it never quite recovered from.

4. D.B. Copper, 1971

In what has to be considered one of the most bizarre events in aviation and criminal history, a man calling himself D.B. Cooper skyjacked a Boeing 727 over Washington State and, after collecting a ransom of $200,000 dollars from authorities, jumped from the rear stairs of the plane from an altitude of 10,000 feet, never to be seen again. Of course, such a feat is made to order for conspiracy buffs, which came up with all sorts of scenarios—not to mention alleged suspects—about who the mysterious man was and what became of him. The mystery appeared destined to remain unsolved, however, until a boy playing on the banks of the Columbia River in 1980 found a stack of decaying bills later confirmed to have been part of Cooper’s ransom, suggesting that the man probably didn’t survive the plunge after all. However, it was only a small part of the ransom (about $5,000 dollars), forcing one to ask what became of the rest of it—or of the man who almost got away with the perfect crime.

3. Percy Fawcett, 1925

When British archaeologist and explorer, Percy Fawcett, together with his eldest son, Jack, and friend Raleigh Rimmell, set out for the jungles of Brazil in search for a hidden “city of gold”, who could have imagined that something could possibly go wrong? As was wont to happen when people set off on adventures of this nature, they were never heard from again and their fate remains unknown to this day. Several unconfirmed sightings and many conflicting reports and theories explaining their disappearance followed, but despite the loss of over 100 lives in more than a dozen follow-up expeditions, and the recovery of some of Fawcett’s belongings, their fate remains a mystery. Probably ended up as shrunken heads on some witch doctor’s coffee table, but who knows? Sounds a little like an Indiana Jones movie to me.

2. Jimmy Hoffa, 1975

So what’s the payoff for being one of the most obnoxious—if successful—union leader ever to put on a tirade? A cement overcoat, which is probably what Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa got when his organized crime chums decided he was more trouble than he was worth. In any case, when he went missing sometime after, 2:45 pm on July 30, 1975, from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant near Detroit, nobody was really that surprised. Of course, what do you expect when you’re meeting with a pair of Mafiosos with fun-loving names like “Tony Jack” Giacolone and “Tony Pro” Provenzano. While it’s pretty apparent he was “offend” by some mob hit man, the real mystery remains as to where they buried the body. One of the more popular suggestions is the fifty-yard line at Giant’s Stadium in New Jersey, which would seem a fitting final resting place for arguably one of the most corrupt—though effective—union leaders in American history.

1. Amelia Earhart, 1937

Easily the most famous disappearance in history, what happened to the 39-year-old aviatrix and her navigator, Fred Noonan, has remained a source for speculation to this day. On one of the last legs of a circumnavigation of the globe, the pair left Lae, New Guinea en route to a tiny speck of land known as Howland Island, never to be seen or heard of again. Of course, the most likely explanation is they simply got lost and ran out of fuel, forcing her to ditch in the sea—a precarious and probably fatal prospect in the heavy, two-engine Lockheed Electra she was flying. Conspiracy theorists had had a field day ever since, claiming that she was captured by the Japanese when she flew too near the Marshal Islands on a secret spying mission for President Roosevelt, while others think she set down on some other deserted island and played Gilligan’s Island with Fred for awhile. Even as late as 1970 there were those who claimed she was still alive, having somehow survived to make her way to America to live under an assumed name. Gotta who love those conspiracy theories?