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Dear Sara –
Is there really such a thing as an Aswang, a creature that turned up in a recent episode of GRIMM?
– Worriedly,
Anna J.
Dear Anna –
The Aswang is a staple of Filipino folklore, though (so far as anyone knows) it doesn’t exist in reality. It has long roots in Filipino legend. The Aswang is a shapeshifter, most often female, who looks – and most of the time behaves – like a normal person. However, at night they transform into a creature – usually a dog, though cats, boars, bats and birds are all Aswang shapes. Aswangs like to eat fetuses and small children; they sometimes leave doppelgangers in the place of what they have taken, but these facsimiles quickly sicken and die. Where the Aswang differs from what was shown in GRIMM, is that, first, the creatures tend to leave their neighbors alone and hunt far from where they live. Second, if one Aswang marries another, the new mate often becomes an Aswang, but they rarely reproduce. There are two ways to identify an Aswang: if your reflection is upside-down when reflected in another person’s eyes, that person is an Aswang; likewise, if you bend down and look at someone between your legs and they are noticeably different, you may be confronting one of the creatures. (If they ask what you’re doing, say you felt faint and needed some blood to your head.) There is at least one Filipino horror movie on the subject, entitled (what else?) ASWANG.
It’s In The Bag,
Sara Bellum,
Editor-at-Large
Buzzy Mag
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