A delightful fright
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By Elizabeth Lolarga
The Aswang Inquiry by Frank Lynch, S.J., illustration by Gilda Cordero-Fernando, 1998, Quezon City: GCF Books, 36 pages.
At the height of the 1992 presidential campaign and partly during the recently concluded campaign period, there were reported aswang sightings in vote-rich districts like Tondo or some of the Project areas in Quezon City.
One
analysis surmised that this supernatural phenomenon
was a probable brainchild of the "dirty tricks
department" of whoever was the administration
candidate (Fidel Ramos in '92, De Venecia in '98).
A deeper kind of black propaganda, it was most likely
aimed at the Ilongga presidential bet Miriam Defensor
Santiago. After all folk beliefs trace aswangs
to the Visayan islands where she traces her roots.
Long before baby boomers and their progeny were scared into not misbehaving by tales about blood-sucking Dracula, Frankenstein, wicked witches, the "Bombay" who carried a sack filled with naughty children or lately Hannibal the Cannibal and evil aliens from deep space, their yayas and housemaids told them goose-bump-raising tales about the aswang. Often, exasperated parents got upset when they learned that their children lapped up these stories from the crypt, and so the yayas were told to pack their bags and return to their superstition-ridden home provinces.
On the back-of-the-book blurb, trailblazing writer, publisher and now painter Gilda Cordero-Fernando defined the aswang as "a night creature who divided at the waist. The upper part sprouted wings and took to the sky."
Billing this latest venture as a book "For semi-adults," Ms Fernando has gone to town with The Aswang Inquiry. It has the size of a workbook and stands vogueishly slim and elegant on the bookshelf, and does not have the jaw-dropping price of a coffee-table tome.
GCF Books revived these tales and colorfully packaged the researches of two respected, now deceased, priests-anthropologists (the Jesuit Lynch and Richard Arens, S.V.D.) for a wider audience appeal. Ms Fernando interpreted the night-flying creatures as garbed in haute couture "with ghoulish eye make-up and purple lipstick," while Manni G. Chaves photographed green ferns and other flora, plus highly textured old saya cloths, to serve as page borders.
Through these gestures Ms Fernando seemed to be giving this message: if we're going to enjoy a good fright, the source might as well be one of our very own, the aswang, done in fashionable, bongga-ka-'day style.
According to Lynch, folks are afraid of the aswang "because of its craving for human flesh and blood." Despite the ostracism faced by people who are suspected of being aswangs, many still choose to learn to become one because they "can get anything they want. They take many long trips withou being noticed. They pay nothing because they fly on their own. And they have power over their enemies."
Lynch also considered the aswangs as "probably the loneliest creatures in the world. They are hated and feared. It is believed that to offend them would invite an attack."
He divided the aswang into two kinds: the walking one, who "walks on the ground or in the air," and the flying, more popular kind whose "upper part (including the internal organs) separates and takes to the air, looking for prey. The lower limbs remain planted on the ground."
There are three stages of aswang growth:
1. "The germ sits in the newly bewitched person's stomach which causes terrible stomach aches. The person feels uneasy during the day but alert at night.
2. "After sufferng for a month from stomach pains, the bewitched person develops an appetitie for raw chicken. When she sees a chicken, she begins to drool.
3. "An older aswang instructs the pupil on how to fly. She directs her to sick persons or pregnant women. During this time, the new aswang can be seen at night in the backyard or under the house of a sick person. She is not yet an expert in flying or escaping. This is therefore a good time to trap a new aswang. During this period, however, the disease is already very hard to cure."
Lynch pointed out that one could become an aswang not only by choice but by accident wherein a normal person "takes food or a soft drink in which an aswang has mixed his saliva or a piece of human flesh... a bewitched person feels an urge to suck blood. When hungry she sees things not as others see them. In an egg, for example, she sees the chick inside; in a pregnant women she sees the little baby."
Sufficiently scared? Are you now promising yourself not to share your soft drink with anyone or to accept food from a weird friend or suspicious-looking stranger? Well, let a good Jesuit and a self-confessed "far-out grandmother" (Ms Fernando) walk you through nightmare country with their assurance that aswang tales are fascinating and usually used to make kids tow the line.
Just to play safe though, the author advised, keep sacred objects (holy water, blessed palm, incense and cruficix) around. Do not forget that citric fruits like kalamansi (lemon) and such sensible practices (at least in terms of keeping burglars away) as brightly lighting the inside and underside of the house discourage an aswang visit. Good night!
(The Aswang Inquiry is distributed exclusively by Anvil Publishing, Inc., and available at National Bookstores.)
Elizabeth Lolarga is the author of two poetry collections: The First Eye and dangling doll: poems of laughter & desperation. She does freelance writing on the side while maintaining her job at the communication agency Raya Media Services, Inc.
