It was a couple of years ago when I first heard the term “Aswang” from the Philippines. Growing up, I realised there are many similarities between ghosts and supernatural creatures across Southeast Asia. Every country seems to have its own version of them.

When I first started researching and gathering facts about the folklore of Southeast Asia, I already had various stories in mind from growing up in Malaysia and being exposed to many ghost stories in my area. However, the more I researched, the more eye-opening it became. There are many layers to each story and legend, making every region completely unique, even if the creatures themselves may appear similar.

However, truly understanding the Aswang is a challenging task. No single person can properly define or describe it. Different communities across the Philippines have their own interpretations of the Aswang. If you travel through the country, you would hear hundreds of different Aswang stories, yet none of them describe exactly the same creature.

Thus, it can be said that “Aswang” is a general collective term for various shape-shifting evil creatures in Filipino folklore. However, one man, Maximo D. Ramos, also known as the “Dean of Philippine Lower Mythology,” took on the task of classifying the Aswang into several groups.

Vampire Aswang

These Aswang feed on human blood or internal organs, often targeting the sick, children, or pregnant women. They are commonly encountered in the regions of Bicol, Cebu, Ilocos, and the Visayas.

Examples include the Mandurugo, a beautiful maiden who lives as a normal human during the day, blending into society. At night, however, she transforms into a winged creature with a long proboscis-like tongue used to suck blood, usually from her husband. There are stories of Mandurugos marrying many young, healthy men, only for the husbands to mysteriously die within a year after having their blood drained night after night.

Viscera Sucker

This is the famous half-bodied flying Aswang, with the classic example being the Manananggal. Commonly described in Bicol, Luzon, and the Western Visayas, this Aswang separates its upper torso from its lower body and grows bat-like wings. These creatures are said to feed on fetuses or internal organs using their long tongues.

Weredog/ Werebeast Aswang

Famous in regions such as Bicol, Cebu, Western Visayas, and Luzon, these are shapeshifting Aswangs capable of transforming into animals such as dogs, pigs, cats, and birds. In some regions, especially areas influenced by Malay folklore, weretigers are also mentioned.

Witnesses often describe glowing eyes, unusually large animals, foul smells, and unnatural movements.

Witch Aswang

These are the typical traditional witches often described in communities across Bicol, Cebu, and the Eastern Visayas. They are associated with curses, black magic, hexes, and harmful rituals.

Unlike the other types of Aswang mentioned, these beings are often portrayed as ordinary people feared by their communities, while also possessing strange abilities such as teleportation, flight, shapeshifting, and other supernatural powers.

Ghoul Aswang

Described throughout the Philippines, these Aswang feed on corpses. They are often said to steal bodies and replace them with plant matter before devouring the decaying flesh. Some stories even claim these Aswang can imitate grieving relatives in order to infiltrate funerals and wakes.

To conclude, Dr. Ramos emphasized that the Aswang is not just one creature, but rather many different types of creatures grouped under a common umbrella term. Different islands and ethnic groups have their own variations of the Aswang depending on their region and cultural beliefs.

Here are three Aswang stories from the Philippines that may make your hair stand on end.

Story 1

The old house in Molo sat beneath an acacia tree so enormous it seemed to swallow the night itself. Its branches stretched across almost the entire property, choking the moonlight. Even during the day, the place felt dim beneath its canopy. At night, it became something worse.

I never believed in ghosts. Never believed in Aswangs. Even now, I still try not to.

But there are things I cannot explain.

It happened around ten years ago when my family and I returned to Iloilo City from abroad. We stayed at my in-laws’ ancestral home in Molo, a massive property with rusting gates, old concrete walls, and that tree standing at the far end like a silent guard.

One night after a party, sometime around 1 AM, everyone went inside to sleep. I stayed behind to smoke.

I sat alone on the tailgate of an old truck parked near the house. The acacia tree stood maybe fifty meters away at the opposite end of the lot, swaying gently in the dark.

The air was humid.

Then suddenly, cold.

Not normal cold. The kind that crawls under your skin.

The hairs on my neck rose. A tingling spread across my shoulders and down my spine. Every instinct in my body screamed that something was wrong.

I looked toward the tree.

At first, I thought someone was climbing down from the canopy.

But then I realised, it wasn’t climbing.

A shape was descending from the branches. Slowly. Floating.

No sound. No struggle. No movement except the unnatural drift downward through the darkness.

It looked human only in silhouette: long limbs, a thin body, and a head tilted slightly sideways.

The drop should have killed it. The canopy had to be thirty or forty feet high.

But it floated like a leaf.

The moment its feet touched the ground, my body locked up.

I couldn’t move. Not fear. Not panic. Actual paralysis.

My chest tightened. My fingers went numb. Even my jaw refused to open.

Then the guard dogs exploded into barking.

Three German Shepherds chained near the side of the property began snarling violently toward the tree. But none of them would go near it. They barked and barked, claws scraping the concrete, whining in terror as if they wanted to run.

That was the worst part.

Dogs always chase intruders.

The barking snapped me out of whatever held me. I stumbled off the truck and walked quickly toward the house without looking back.

These dogs were afraid. Halfway to the door, I heard chains rattling violently behind me. The dogs had broken loose.

I turned just in time to see both German Shepherds sprint past me at full speed, not toward the tree, but away from it. Tails tucked. Whimpering. As though something behind them had started moving.

I slammed the door and didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning at breakfast, I finally told the family what had happened.

Everyone laughed nervously except my father-in-law.

He went quiet. Then he said something that made the room colder.

“Years ago,” he said, “one of our helpers quit after less than a month here.”

Apparently, she had been alone on the front porch one evening when she started screaming hysterically. The family found her curled on the floor crying.

She claimed she saw something drop from the acacia tree.

Not jump.

Drop.

It landed silently, then rushed toward her across the yard. Before she could reach the door, she felt a hand with impossibly long fingers wrap around her ankle.

Another helper came running outside after hearing the screams. She switched on the porch lights just in time to see what looked like a black figure dart away and disappear beneath the tree canopy.

The helper left the next morning. She never came back.

Even now, I still tell myself there’s a logical explanation.

Maybe exhaustion. Maybe shadows. Maybe alcohol.

But sometimes, late at night, I remember the way that thing floated down from the branches…

…and the way the dogs ran from it.

Not at it. From it.

Story 2

In the provinces of the Visayas, people still lower their voices when talking about Aswangs.

Not because they are afraid of sounding foolish. But because older people believe that once you speak about them too often… they start listening.

I used to laugh at stories like that.

Until the things I heard outside my window stopped sounding human.

The first incident happened in 2002, somewhere in Negros.

I was eight months pregnant with my eldest child and staying in our ancestral home, an old provincial house surrounded by trees thick enough to block out the moonlight. Because the air was cooler there, I moved into a second-floor bedroom at the back of the house.

At first, everything felt peaceful.

Then one night, just after midnight…

BANG.

Something slammed onto the roof directly above me.

Not a branch. Not an animal. Something heavy. The entire ceiling shook.

Before I could even sit up, I heard it:

WHOOSH.

WHOOSH.

Massive wings. Each flap pushed air hard enough that you could actually hear the wind striking the roof.

The dogs outside immediately began howling.

Not barking. Howling. As if they were terrified.

I froze in bed, unable to breathe properly as the thing moved slowly across the roof above me, scratching, dragging, shifting its weight from one side to another.

The sound continued for nearly thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes of listening to something enormous crawl above my ceiling while I held my pregnant stomach and silently prayed for daylight.

When morning came, I learned something worse. Everyone had heard it. The relatives in the next room. The workers staying in the nearby staff house. Even the neighbors’ dogs had gone mad during the night. No one dared to check outside. No one wanted to know what had landed there.

Two years later, it happened again.

I had just given birth to my third child. The baby was barely two weeks old.

That evening, around dusk, I went out to close the main gate of the property. The gate was far from the house, near the road where a dying streetlight flickered weakly over the trees.

As I pulled the gate shut, a man and woman walked past me only a few feet away.

At first, they looked normal.

But then I heard them speaking.

The sounds they made were not words.

It sounded like two large birds communicating with each other, low clicking noises mixed with strange choking sounds, almost like turkeys murmuring back and forth.

Neither of them smiled. Neither stopped talking.

But both slowly turned their heads toward me as they passed.

Their eyes lingered too long.

I suddenly felt cold.

I hurriedly shut the gate and locked it.

That night, just after midnight, the dogs started again.

Howling. Restless.

Pacing around the property as if something was circling the house.

We sealed every window and door because of the newborn baby.

And deep down, I could not stop thinking about the couple outside the gate.

Something about the way they spoke did not feel human.

Story 3

Back in the years after Typhoon Reming devastated parts of Albay, the nights in our coastal barangay became different.

Darker. Quieter.

And according to many people there… dangerous.

The electricity had been out for months. Once the sun disappeared, the entire village drowned in darkness except for moonlight and kerosene lamps. That was when the stories started spreading again.

People claimed they saw impossible things moving through the province at night.

A pig as large as a truck wandering near the coconut fields.

Huge black birds circling silently above rooftops.

Heavy footsteps running across ceilings where no human could possibly stand.

Most people laughed nervously about it during the daytime.

But nobody laughed after midnight.

I was only seven years old when my father encountered something near the waiting shed by the sea.

My father was a fisherman. Every night he went out to sea, and almost every morning he returned before dawn. Our house stood around a hundred meters from the shoreline, near a narrow dirt road lined with coconut trees.

One full-moon night around 2 AM, he came home from fishing alone.

The ocean was calm.

The wind was almost nonexistent.

As he passed the old waiting shed beside a tall coconut tree, something caught his attention.

One branch high above him was moving violently.

Not swaying.

Shaking.

As if something large was hidden among the leaves.

My father stopped walking.

There was no wind.

Not even enough to move the grass.

But the coconut leaves above the shed trembled harder and harder.

Then he heard it.

SCRAPE.

A slow dragging sound from the roof of the waiting shed.

SCRAPE.

Like something crawling across dried anahaw leaves.

Then another sound followed.

Wet. Gurgling.

Almost like someone choking while trying to vomit.

My father said the fear hit him instantly, the kind of fear that makes your body turn cold before your mind even understands why.

But he kept walking slowly. Carefully.

Never taking his eyes off the roof.

The moon that night was bright enough to light the entire road silver.

And then…something slowly peeked over the edge of the roof.

First the fingers.

Long.

Black.

Claw-like.

Then the face emerged.

Covered in dark hair.

Eyes glowing deep red under the moonlight.

It stared directly at him.

Not blinking.

Not moving.

Just watching.

My father said the creature’s mouth hung slightly open, and he could hear that same wet choking sound coming from it.

He wanted to run.

But in our province, older people say never turn your back on something like that.

So he kept walking backward slowly toward home, never breaking eye contact.

The thing followed him with its gaze the entire time.

The moment he reached our house, he pounded on the door so hard that it woke everyone inside.

I still remember half-opening my eyes that night and seeing him standing there drenched in sweat, breathing heavily.

Our house was small. We all slept together in the sala.

My mother opened the door, and my father immediately grabbed his bolo knife.

“There’s an Aswang near the waiting shed,” he whispered.

Not shouted. Whispered. As if he was afraid it might hear him.

My mother grabbed a flashlight and followed him outside. In their panic, they accidentally stepped on the brand-new toy fighter jet they had bought for me earlier that week.

The road outside was silent.

Too silent.

Then my mother heard it too.

CRAAAWL.

Something moving across the roof of the waiting shed.

Slowly heading toward the back.

She could not see the creature itself, but the sound was unmistakable, something heavy dragging itself across the roof.

My parents moved closer. Step by step.

The flashlight beam shaking.

Then suddenly…

FWOOOOSH.

A violent burst of air exploded above them.

The sound of gigantic wings beating once in the darkness.

Strong enough to rustle the nearby trees.

The crawling stopped instantly.

The roof fell silent.

Whatever had been there was gone.

My parents searched behind the shed but found nothing.

No footprints. No animal. Nothing. Only the smell.

A rotten, foul smell lingering in the night air.

After that incident, more stories surfaced around the barangay.

People claimed they saw dark silhouettes flying over rooftops during the blackout months.

Others heard heavy footsteps running above their ceilings long after midnight.

Some swore they saw glowing eyes staring from coconut trees near isolated houses.

Maybe they were only stories born from fear and darkness.

Maybe not.

But even now, whenever I visit that coastal village and pass that old waiting shed at night, I still remember what my father told me years later.

“The scariest part wasn’t its face,” he said.

“It was the way it looked at me.”

“Like it already knew me.

It is interesting to note that even the Spanish colonial forces often described these Aswangs, documenting encounters and sharing different horror stories. However, it makes us wonder whether these Aswangs were truly real, or whether colonial forces used such stories to exert greater control over the people by encouraging superstition and fear.

What do you think?

Let us know your thoughts, or if you have any stories of your own, in the comment section below.

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