Are there vampires in philippines

The Danag were gods of the Isnegs long ago. They came down to earth and tilled pieces of the land. They planted taro in their clearings.

They became friends with people on earth. A man was making a bamboo fence one day. A bamboo sliver ran under his fingernail. He asked a danag to pull out the sliver. The danag pulled it out by sucking it. Some blood came out with the sliver as she did so.

She said that human blood tasted good. She told her danag friends human blood was sweet. They stopped planting taro and became vampires. So it stands to reason that blood and guts is what their most dreaded supernatural enemies would immediately gun for.

Another inspiration is the natural world. There are many fish, birds, insects, and animals that live on the red stuff. We and our pets know how painful, annoying, and potentially deadly mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks can be.

The lamprey is a leechlike fish that attaches itself to other fish so that it can suck their blood. One thing that these monsters play on is the concept of opposites. Since they are essentially the enemies of the forces of good, some of their characteristics are mirror opposites to what is found in nature. Related to this is the concept of the other. Many monsters, such as the penanggal and our own manananggal , for example, have human forms, that usually of beautiful maidens or old crones.

Some of them, such as the kapre and other kinds of aswangs , appeared in the World War II era as word-of-mouth propaganda to scare away the enemy. Danag — One of the aswang creation myths involve the Danag, a supernatural race that lived side by side with humans in the old days. Legend is a human got a wooden splinter caught underneath his fingernail one day and a Danag offered to help by sucking it out. A bit of blood accompanied the splinter as it exited the nail, an iron taste which the Danag took a liking to.

Small containers of salt, ash and raw rice, and the smell of burning rubber are said to deter the Manananggal from approaching one's house.

There are other vampire-like creatures in the Philippines: the Tagalog Mandurugo "blood-sucker" is a variety of the aswang that takes the form of an attractive girl by day, and develops wings and a long, hollow, thread-like tongue by night.

The tongue is used to suck up blood from a sleeping victim. They use an elongated proboscis-like tongue to suck fetuses from these pregnant women. They also prefer to eat entrails specifically the heart and the liver and the phlegm of sick people. Myths and Folklore Wiki Explore. Top Content. Forum Blog posts. Explore Wikis Community Central.