Tag Archives: vampire

Aswang – Legend

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 51
Occupation: Software Engineer Directing Manager
Residence: Naperville, Illinois
Language: English

Text:

The Legend of the Aswang is a legend about a female-presenting vampire-like creature which feeds on young children and unborn children. In the daytime, it looks like a normal person (often ones neighbor), but in the night, it turns into a deceptive creature which is characterized by the approach and intensifying “tik tik tik” sound.

Context:

The performer heard about this tale as a young boy. Growing up in a poorer region of the Philippines he often heard the creaking and groaning of his floorboards. To scare him, his dad would tell him the story of the Aswang. Because of this, he learned to be scared of any “tik tik tik” sound as a young boy until he realized it was just a urban legend.

After moving to America, he passed this tradition of scaring young children with the simple “tik tik tik” sound by telling the story to his children and enjoying the terrifying/amusing experience of watching them scared of even the faucet dripping at night. Sometimes they would even cut up garlic to play into the tale as the children believed it would keep the vampiric creature away until they were old enough to know it wasn’t real.

Analysis:

The Aswang was a way to collectively scare younger generations as retelling of the story/generational fear was a tradition passed down. It brings Filipinos together through the collective fear of the scary stories adults would tell them growing up. If you belong to the Filipino “folk group”, you’d easily react to the “tik tik tik” sound because of how you were “trained” to be scared as a child. However, in the same way these tales scarred Filipino children, the fear is also proof that one is “truly” Filipino.
It’s also important to note that Aswang were known as looking like unassuming women which is reflective of Filipino values of being extremely vigilant as Aswang tales immediately painted the unassuming and seemingly innocent as potentially evil. The Philippines is a third world country where one could easily be taken advantage of, so the Aswang would serve as an early lesson for children to be careful and not trust strangers on the street in addition to being a fun story to scare the kids with.

Vampire Hunting Club – Legendary Creature/Legend Sharing

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Sudbury, Massachusetts
Language: English

Text

Informant: So when I was in elementary school, probably around fourth or fifth grade um, there was myself and maybe two other students in the same grade and we were reading a lot of vampire novels. Um, like, you know, elementary to middle school aged ones, not like Twilight or whatever. And so we got it in our heads that maybe vampires are real. And it’s kind of like when you are looking for something to be true so you start, like, seeing signs of it everywhere. Like “Oh, there’s mysterious blood on my sheets” cause I had a like, fucking paper cut and it got on my bedsheets.

Me: Ooo mysterious

Informant: But no, it was a vampire, came through the window and tried to attack me, you know.

Me: And you fought back in your sleep and won?

Informant: Yeah essentially, That wasn’t my experience that was somebody else in the club.

Me: What was your experience?

Informant: Um, I think it was, it was probably, now that I think about it, just some creep in the woods behind the school.

Me: Oh, that’s not good.

Informant: No…not good at all. But then I saw it behind the woods, and it’s like when you see the grainy photo of Sasquatch and you’re like “oh my god,” that was me.

Me: That was you?

Informant: Well I wasn’t Sasquatch.

Me: Oh, how old were you at the time?

Informant: How old would I be in fourth grade? 8? 7?

(Pause as we figure out how old a fourth grader is)

Informant: I was not the most observant of 8-year-olds, so clearly this creepy guy in the woods, I was like “oh yeah that’s a vampire.”

Context

The informant grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts and had this club in the early 2010s. They told me that this club of three was isolated from the rest of their grade (“because everyone else thought we were freaks…and stupid”) and that everyone else believed that another student was a real fairy so they were part of the “fairy club” (the informant adds “but they believed in fairies so who’s the stupid one really”). The informant says that their club did try to hunt vampires in the woods during recess, but that their teachers would catch them and bring them back so they were unsuccessful in their legend hunting attempts. The club did not search for vampires outside of recess because they were not close friends outside of school. The informant no longer believes that they actually saw a vampire but, at the time, they did believe that there were vampires in both their friend’s story and their own experience.

Analysis

Vampire stories were on the rise at the time the informant was hearing and experiencing these stories. Twilight (one of the most popular vampire books ever written) came out in 2008 and a wave followed. These stories would have been easily accessible by children and intriguing as an idea. Vampires are scary in that they attack you and try to drink your blood, but many times, they don’t murder you. Vampires instead turn you into one of them. Along with the fact that vampires are distinctly humanoid, they are a less scary legendary creature or horror subject. This can make them an easier entrance into the horror genre for children. By playing with the concept of them being real, children are able to approach a topic (being attacked by someone or something you don’t know or understand) in a safer way. As the informant attempted to search with a group of friends, they were using the support of others to feel confident enough to explore the topic further by actually looking for a vampire.

By telling these stories to each other, this club was sharing memorates. As they retold their experiences to each other, they built up the legend of the vampire past what the books had told them and brought the creature into their world. They also reenforced the legend by proving to each other that vampires really did exist. The act of hunting and sharing stories also created a social group. The informant said that the reason they didn’t hunt more is because they were not close enough friends, however, this club did bring them together for a significant amount of time each day during recess so that they could share and engage in these stories. This group would not have otherwise interacted if they did not have this shared legend to bring them together.

Elementary School Vampire Joke

Main Performance:

The informant, TB, recounted a joke she picked up in elementary school.

TB: “What do you call a vampire in the winter?”

Me: “Hungry?”

TB: “Frostbite.”

Background:

She had heard this joke back in elementary school and latched onto the use of the punchline, so she decided to dedicate it to memory for whenever she needed a joke. It’s the sort of back pocket comedy that kids used to exchange and it stuck.

Thoughts:

These sort of jokes are a bookmark on a period of time in life when everyone is still forming a sense of humor, so the jokes that were told often had a repeated/memorized feeling like this one. I’ve heard it before as well, also from someone at school, and was reminded of that innocent test of knowledge that would take place during recess. The joke being more self indulgent for the teller, as their laugh comes from getting to tell the recipient the answer.

The Aswang

Context: X is a 20 year old Filipino American college student who spent the first seven years of childhood living in the Philippines, before moving with his close family to California. The piece was collected over an audio call. 

Intv: “Can you think of any, like, ghost stories, or urban legends from the Philippines?”

X: “Probably the most famous one is the aswang, typically depicted as a vampire but can also be a ghoul/were-beast or something of the sort and like to kill and devour humans dead or alive. Can also be a witch but that’s not as common. Their strength is severely reduced during daytime/in sunlight so we tend to fill our wakes/funerals with candles and leave some on the grave after to protect the wake/corpse from being attacked. They are a very varied monster because of how varied the cultures of the 3 main islands and even the tinier islands inside of them are, but the most common one is basically bat-like ghouls/vampires”

Intv: “Where specifically in the Philippines were you told about the aswang?”

X: “So my (dad’s) family that told me most of the folklore lived in the very southern tip of the Province of Pangasinan (used to be in north Zambales before territory changes) in a village/town named Nayom and we primarily saw them as ghoul-bat creatures that range from monstrous looking to almost humanoid not really a definite one shape (not too sure if this is the only thing my family thought but that’s what they told me as a kid). Filipino media typically depict them as ghoul-bat vampires still but some of them could transform to look just like a really pale human.”

Analysis: I find it interesting how all across the Philippines they have many different stories of the aswang, going so far as to have the aswang often being viewed as different things across different cultures. The friend that I interviewed also informed me that he believes that it’s known as a man/bat creature where he’s from because of the golden crowned flying fox bat, which is native to the Philippines and X argues the tale of the aswang comes from before our knowledge of the bat as a species and therefore has been misidentified in the past.

The Soucouyant

Nationality: United States
Age: 20
Occupation: Student/Digital Artist
Residence: Queens, NY
Performance Date: 04/11/2021
Primary Language: English

BACKGROUND: My informant, OR, was born in the US. Her parents are both immigrants from Grenada. OR is always joking about Carribeans being a very superstitious people and this piece is just one story out of the many that OR told me about her family’s beliefs. This story in particular stood out to OR because her parents always jokingly warn her brother to watch out for seductive soucouyants. 

CONTEXT: This piece is from a conversation with my friend to discuss the role of superstition in Caribbean culture. 

OR: Okay. So basically, um, the soucouyant is kind of like half vampire, half fireball. 

Me: Fireball?

OR: She’s like a blood-sucking hag, essentially. I think other islands literally just call her the hag. She sucks your blood and… okay, she usually appears like, um, either a woman or like a reeeally sexy woman during the day. And then at night, she peels off her skin and puts it in a mortar and pestle and grinds it up. (laughs) And then she turns into a literal fireball and like runs around the sky at night and she can enter your home through like a keyhole or like any crevices, or if you like leave the windows cracked. So you gotta close the windows. And um, they say, if you want her to not come in your house, you have to drop, um, like rice outside your house and you have to drop a lot because basically, she will be counting the rice until morning. I think the Haitians actually call it the Lougarou, but in Grenada, Lugar is actually a totally different thing.

THOUGHTS: I really like this story for its specificity. The concept of a half-vampire half-hag half-skinless witch creature really says a lot about the specific fears and taboos of this community. The fact that this story was aimed at OR’s brother and not OR points to the fact that the Caribbean community may fear the control that women can possess over men. OR mentioned that the story is a variation of the European version of a vampire so I think the gender swap is notable in examing the significance of this story in Caribbean culture.

For another version of this legend, see: Simpson, George Eaton. “Loup Garou and Loa Tales from Northern Haiti.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 55, no. 218, 1942, pp. 219–227. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/535864.