If the West has zombies, here in the Philippines, there is what some Visayan speaking locals call the Maranhig (also Amalanhig or Amaranhig), our native version of the corporeal undead.
According to Wikipedia, the Amaranhig is "an aswang who has failed to transfer their monstrosity causing them to rise from their graves to kill humans by biting their necks." The description was based on a list of mythical creatures as depicted in "Pedro Penduko," a popular Philippines comic book superhero which had been portrayed many times in TV and cinema.
Usual stories about Maranhig sightings usually fall under the "my-uncle's-cousin's-grandpa saw it" category and are rarely reliable and informative. My father described hearing about it as a child growing up in his home province but he never mentioned seeing anything that remotely fits the description above and otherwise. He says based on accounts of people who allegedly "saw" it that they are not 'Aswang,' but Zombies - undead corpses whose presence is announced by the overpowering stench of decaying flesh.
I don't know much about the Amaranhig and honestly, this is by far one of the most far-fetched mythical beings I've heard about.
Well up until recently, at least.
I work for a prominent BPO company and I was facilitating a "free speech" exercise as part of our upskilling sessions back then. People took turns sharing their personal stories and most of those were really interesting yet this one guy's story intrigued me as he stated quite matter-of-factly that he has seen a lot of weird things during his Mindanao tour of duty that left a lasting imprint on his psyche. By weird, the first thing that came to my mind was senseless violence and killings or irregularities within the ranks. The guy is, after all, an ex-soldier before he joined our call center.
Well I was wrong.
This guy, let's just call him Max, told me that his Army unit set up camp by a river after one of their routine patrols hunting for rebels one cold night. However, he discovered the following morn that his buddy was missing. They combed the perimeter of the camp for hours and finally found his buddy's corpse, torn to pieces, literally, with most of the organs missing. The first thing that came to their mind was a predatory wild animal. You see, even though illegal loggers are making short work of our forests, there are still patches of barely touched greens in certain places like Mindanao, which can harbor animals of all shapes and sizes.
Upon establishing the location of the remains, his comrades tried to pick up what's left of his buddy in order to bring them back to camp but for some strange reason, they can't lift the pieces of flesh scattered about. In fact, several members of his unit tried to do it but they all failed. Finally, one of his more superstitious comrades approached Max and told him to talk to the corpse of his buddy so that they may put his remains to rest. Distraught as he was, Max spoke to the remains as if they were alive, and lo and behold - the rest of the unit was able to pick up the remains and put them in a sack or bag.
When I asked him what he said to the remains, he said he simply asked for his dead buddy's permission to allow them to put his remains to rest and bring him home to his mom. That somehow did the trick.
I know hearing is the LAST sense to go when someone dies but that last bit about talking to your dead friend's mangled remains pushes the envelope just a bit too far.
The night before, Max felt that they were being watched and true enough his team kept seeing red, glowing pairs of eyes dotting the darkness surrounding their riverside camp in the dead of night. This would be usually followed by the rustling of leaves and a scurrying noise from nearby foliage, as if a big animal is stalking them from behind the trees. They never had a clear picture of the critter(s) that visited them that night but some reported its profile was about as big as a man, that it was arboreal and it had lots of body hair.
I don't know if primates have "reflectorized" eyes like cats do but I'm almost certain that what they saw was a large monkey, a Crab Eating Macaque (Macaca fascicularis) to be exact. This species of monkey is native to Mindanao and I'm under the impression its diet is one of the reasons it lives near the river. As for the gruesome death, only a great ape can do that (gorilla, chimpanzee) but there are no endemic great apes in the Philippines. There are NO native species of Big Cats and Canines in these parts as well, but I digress.
The one incident that made me include Max in this post is his assertion that he, along with his entire squad, saw a group of Maranhigs on one of their Mindanao sorties. He said the way these things walk were somehow similar to the way zombies are portrayed in the movies (pre World War Z at least) - slow, plodding and erratic. It was a bright full moon, he says, that allowed them to make out these beings from across a narrow clearing. They were some yards away, with only a few trees standing between his unit and the macabre spectacle of the reanimated corpses. Based on his description, the Maranhigs were walking quietly in a a broken line. They were naked but rotting flesh and skin hung from their bones like old curtains. The stench was unbearable, he says, and methinks to exude a nauseating smell from yards away, one has to be really diligent in skipping showers, or one has to be dead. Really dead.
Upon seeing the creatures, the unit's local guide implored all of them to stay quiet and to look away immediately. They need to avoid the Maranhig's deathly stare, otherwise, it will chase them without letup. They promptly complied and waited until the beings were out of sight.
I was told that that night wore on without further incident but to say they were shaken with what they saw is a gross understatement. I'm not told if this incident was reported to their leadership. I highly doubt they did,
True or not, that was the FIRST and LAST time I met someone who claims a first hand account of seeing a Maranhig.
Max said he never believed in the supernatural until those two incidents. That was quite understandable given the fact that this guy had a college degree before joining the ranks of enlisted personnel. Only his military haircut, muscular build and deep bullet scars in his arms (which he showed to us after I asked him out of curiosity) will tell you this guy used to prowl the jungles of Mindanao wielding M16 rifles in search of insurgents and terrorists. Everything else about Max tells me he's either a businessman or a well-bred, well-schooled yuppy with his light complexion, American twang and well-modulated voice.
By the way, if you're asking yourself why Max retired from active service, it's the same condition most of our retired serviceman are suffering from: post-traumatic stress disorder.
It's not war or hardship, however, that traumatized and stressed him to the point of quitting -- and that much he admitted.
Weird and intriguing indeed.
According to Wikipedia, the Amaranhig is "an aswang who has failed to transfer their monstrosity causing them to rise from their graves to kill humans by biting their necks." The description was based on a list of mythical creatures as depicted in "Pedro Penduko," a popular Philippines comic book superhero which had been portrayed many times in TV and cinema.
Usual stories about Maranhig sightings usually fall under the "my-uncle's-cousin's-grandpa saw it" category and are rarely reliable and informative. My father described hearing about it as a child growing up in his home province but he never mentioned seeing anything that remotely fits the description above and otherwise. He says based on accounts of people who allegedly "saw" it that they are not 'Aswang,' but Zombies - undead corpses whose presence is announced by the overpowering stench of decaying flesh.
I don't know much about the Amaranhig and honestly, this is by far one of the most far-fetched mythical beings I've heard about.
Well up until recently, at least.
I work for a prominent BPO company and I was facilitating a "free speech" exercise as part of our upskilling sessions back then. People took turns sharing their personal stories and most of those were really interesting yet this one guy's story intrigued me as he stated quite matter-of-factly that he has seen a lot of weird things during his Mindanao tour of duty that left a lasting imprint on his psyche. By weird, the first thing that came to my mind was senseless violence and killings or irregularities within the ranks. The guy is, after all, an ex-soldier before he joined our call center.
Well I was wrong.
This guy, let's just call him Max, told me that his Army unit set up camp by a river after one of their routine patrols hunting for rebels one cold night. However, he discovered the following morn that his buddy was missing. They combed the perimeter of the camp for hours and finally found his buddy's corpse, torn to pieces, literally, with most of the organs missing. The first thing that came to their mind was a predatory wild animal. You see, even though illegal loggers are making short work of our forests, there are still patches of barely touched greens in certain places like Mindanao, which can harbor animals of all shapes and sizes.
Upon establishing the location of the remains, his comrades tried to pick up what's left of his buddy in order to bring them back to camp but for some strange reason, they can't lift the pieces of flesh scattered about. In fact, several members of his unit tried to do it but they all failed. Finally, one of his more superstitious comrades approached Max and told him to talk to the corpse of his buddy so that they may put his remains to rest. Distraught as he was, Max spoke to the remains as if they were alive, and lo and behold - the rest of the unit was able to pick up the remains and put them in a sack or bag.
When I asked him what he said to the remains, he said he simply asked for his dead buddy's permission to allow them to put his remains to rest and bring him home to his mom. That somehow did the trick.
I know hearing is the LAST sense to go when someone dies but that last bit about talking to your dead friend's mangled remains pushes the envelope just a bit too far.
The night before, Max felt that they were being watched and true enough his team kept seeing red, glowing pairs of eyes dotting the darkness surrounding their riverside camp in the dead of night. This would be usually followed by the rustling of leaves and a scurrying noise from nearby foliage, as if a big animal is stalking them from behind the trees. They never had a clear picture of the critter(s) that visited them that night but some reported its profile was about as big as a man, that it was arboreal and it had lots of body hair.
I don't know if primates have "reflectorized" eyes like cats do but I'm almost certain that what they saw was a large monkey, a Crab Eating Macaque (Macaca fascicularis) to be exact. This species of monkey is native to Mindanao and I'm under the impression its diet is one of the reasons it lives near the river. As for the gruesome death, only a great ape can do that (gorilla, chimpanzee) but there are no endemic great apes in the Philippines. There are NO native species of Big Cats and Canines in these parts as well, but I digress.
The one incident that made me include Max in this post is his assertion that he, along with his entire squad, saw a group of Maranhigs on one of their Mindanao sorties. He said the way these things walk were somehow similar to the way zombies are portrayed in the movies (pre World War Z at least) - slow, plodding and erratic. It was a bright full moon, he says, that allowed them to make out these beings from across a narrow clearing. They were some yards away, with only a few trees standing between his unit and the macabre spectacle of the reanimated corpses. Based on his description, the Maranhigs were walking quietly in a a broken line. They were naked but rotting flesh and skin hung from their bones like old curtains. The stench was unbearable, he says, and methinks to exude a nauseating smell from yards away, one has to be really diligent in skipping showers, or one has to be dead. Really dead.
Upon seeing the creatures, the unit's local guide implored all of them to stay quiet and to look away immediately. They need to avoid the Maranhig's deathly stare, otherwise, it will chase them without letup. They promptly complied and waited until the beings were out of sight.
I was told that that night wore on without further incident but to say they were shaken with what they saw is a gross understatement. I'm not told if this incident was reported to their leadership. I highly doubt they did,
True or not, that was the FIRST and LAST time I met someone who claims a first hand account of seeing a Maranhig.
Max said he never believed in the supernatural until those two incidents. That was quite understandable given the fact that this guy had a college degree before joining the ranks of enlisted personnel. Only his military haircut, muscular build and deep bullet scars in his arms (which he showed to us after I asked him out of curiosity) will tell you this guy used to prowl the jungles of Mindanao wielding M16 rifles in search of insurgents and terrorists. Everything else about Max tells me he's either a businessman or a well-bred, well-schooled yuppy with his light complexion, American twang and well-modulated voice.
By the way, if you're asking yourself why Max retired from active service, it's the same condition most of our retired serviceman are suffering from: post-traumatic stress disorder.
It's not war or hardship, however, that traumatized and stressed him to the point of quitting -- and that much he admitted.
Weird and intriguing indeed.
4 comments:
very interesting!!! wonderful blog. :) thanks for sharing.
Thank you!
quite an interesting story, but what I want to know is where exactly in mindanao did max saw those things.? my dad told me about maranhigs and he believe that they realy exist.. he said that maranhig legends are in visayas, but he never told me that they could also be fond here in mindanao..
I was born in the Philippines, American father and Filipina mother, in 1954. In 1971 my siblings and I, along with our mother, came to live here in the states. Our father had perished in a US military plane crash in 1959. After our father died, we had to leave Clark Field and moved to Manila to be closer to our mother's family. When I was about 8 yrs old, my mother was having our home built in Philam Life Homes in Quezon City. In the meantime she had to rent this house, can't remember where, and live in it until our new house was ready. An Uncle of ours, one of my mother's brothers, moved in with us to be the man of our household, and we also had a cook and 3 maids. Now, it wasn't long before my two younger brothers and I started experiencing strange occurrences. Like one afternoon, as my brothers and I were in our bedroom playing, we heard crackling sounds coming from where our window was, and as we turned to look, we were frightened by the sight of thousands of flies swarming on our windows, as if trying to break through! We quickly ran out of our room screaming for our uncle. As he guided us back into our bedroom to see for himself what we were so hysterical about, there was nothing, not a single fly on our window. Another incident was when our uncle was working in the backyard, clearing the tall weeds that had practically taken up the entire back. It was then he discovered this old well that was covered with old deteriorating planks of wood, and had warned my brothers and I not to go near it until he came back with new planks of wood. The well and wood looked so ancient, and had this strong stench emitting from it. My brothers and I were standing a few feet away from it staring in childhood awe at how ancient it looked. Then suddenly, one of the old planks, in the middle, suddenly moved by itself, leaving a small opening and the stench got stronger. Then suddenly we started to see a snail slither out, but faster than normal. Then another one followed, then more started coming out. Our uncle had left to purchase new planks, so we quickly ran into our home screaming for our maids to come see the snails. When one of them came back out with us to investigate, we saw this long trail of snails in one single line and when we followed the trail with our eyes we were astonished to see hundreds and hundreds of snails all over the back wall of our house that our maid quickly ran back into the house to get our cook and other maids and with all the brooms they could muster, started swapping the snails off our back wall. It was then our uncle arrived with the planks and upon seeing what was going on, and noticing they were coming from the well and the old rotted planks having been moved, began scolding me for having disobeyed him. I had tried to explain that it opened by itself, but he wouldn't have any of it and sent my brothers and I into our bedroom. Later we could smell smoke and a burning stench, and as we looked out our bedroom windows, we saw a huge pile of snails being burned. Within the next few days, our uncle had hired some workers to fill up the well with rocks and dirt. What we couldn't understand was why we were never allowed out in the backyard anymore. There were more occurrences of course, demons and such, but so tired now. Maybe I'll come back.
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