An Aswang Attacked Me

My name is Aurora, my mother and my family called me Auring. My friends called me Aura, but really my name has no relevant at all to what I will tell about an aswang that attacked me when I was still very young. Yes, an aswang really attacked me. 

Some may asked what is an aswang? 

Aswang is the Filipino word for witch, but to Filipinos it's not only about crafts or magic potions or flying with a broom. Aswang had more deeper and frightening meaning to Filipinos belief.

I did believed in aswang when I was a child. I refused to believe it now but honestly still came moments that deep inside me the fear of this thing aswang existed especially during dark night when I heard a sound of tiktik, denoting as most Filipinos believed that the aswang was around ready to attacked her chosen victim. I used the description HER because always almost aswang were females.

If you heard this sound tiktik, you must be alert because you never knew maybe you are the chosen victim to be.

Philippines is composed of many islands, and the belief about aswangs varied from island to island.

Asked someone if he or she really had seen an aswang, many will answered you yes, but actually nobody can proved it, it could not be proven either that the person suspected as an aswang really was an aswang.

Where I was born, a saying circled around within our community "Living together you will knew a thief for one day but never you will knew that you had lived with an aswang the rest of your life". 

If you suspected someone was an aswang, there were things you can do to knew if your suspicion was true. An aswang could not looked you straight in the eyes. If you walk behind a suspected aswang you have to throw a handful of sands over her and if the person will became angry then she was an aswang, but as I thought about it now, of course, who will not became angry if you threw sands over to someone. Also, follow a suspected aswang and stepped  precisely to her footstep and if the person was really an aswang she will grabbed you. The aswang will not spared you, you will be really harmed.

Behalf their super power with their magic potions, once a year an aswang must ate humans. It was believed as a ceremonial call to maintain their power.

That was really the big deal. People were afraid to be eaten by an aswang, of course who's not?  It was also believed that the aswang ate only humans destined to be eaten.  How delicious a person look, to an aswang if the person was not destined to be, he will not be eaten, but it's not comforting the thought, that if you heard the sound tiktik, you will never knew if you are destined to be eaten or not.

Another weird belief was that an aswang can turn you into an aswang too, not by biting you as what the vampires did but thru their saliva. With their magic potion, they could let a person slept very soundly, then from their mouth they will let flew their saliva into your ear. Their saliva was a kind of bacteria or germ that will penetrate thru the blood and will dormant into the chest and when the call come, the bacteria or germ will generate to halve the body. The lower body will stay and the upper body flew to look for their destined victim. Filipinos called this aswang a manananggal. It happened most of the time in the full moon. 

These Manananggals had only to land on top of the roof and from their the Manananggal could enjoy her meal. The way how the Manananggals ate their victims was they just extended their very long sharped  tongue, paralyzed the person and cut the body where the heart and liver were. The Manananggal ate the heart and liver raw.

Another kind of aswang was the one who ate by cooking their victim. Like most people did with beef, pork, or chicken these aswangs will slaughtered you and will cook you. People believed that this kind of aswang could cooked human even there were many people around and that nobody could noticed or knew it because the aswang can create mass illusion. Don't trust if a suspected aswang cooked shrimps or whatever because it could be a human meat. Well, to know or to be sure safe that the food served to you was not human, just squeezed a lemon juice in the food.