Date of Performance: 04/06/2025

Nationality: Filipino

Primary Language: English

Residence: Melbourne, Australia

My informant recounted the one ghost story he knows, told to him since he was younger by his older brother and his friends, who encountered a supernatural phenomenon in the attic of their house. One night, after drinking and partying, the five of them decided to hang out in my informant’s brother’s attic, which was barely used. Nothing was in there but old things, and as the house was quite old, passed down from generation to generation, my informant’s family had lost track of what exactly was kept up there. The group decided to take a photograph of themselves up there, but when the photo came out, in the very middle was the clear image of a white, slender hand. It did not belong to any of them, and its features appeared eerily similar to those of an aswang, a traditional Filipino vampire. The group immediately left the attic, and didn’t venture back up there unless it was absolutely necessary. They retold this story to my informant, who fully believed them, and from then on avoided his attic completely.

My informant showed me the photograph, and while it was eerie, wasn’t necessarily conclusive proof of the story – it was somewhat blurry, and could have been the reflection or distortion of one of the old objects lying in the attic. My informant reacted to my skepticism indignantly, and restated his belief in the story.

While he was confident in its validity, there are a couple of elements to the story that could have contributed to its exaggeration and gravitas, like the group of them drinking beforehand, as well as the tale being retold over and over in my informant’s youth, when one is susceptible to superstitions of this manner. From a cultural point of view, as has been the case across many of the folk narratives I’ve encountered, the supernatural encounter is reinforced by the superstitious and perhaps religious beliefs of the culture my informant comes from, and remains an important aspect of his worldview.