Witchcraft: Fact or Fiction?

To counter the aswang: onions! Or you could simply tell them to go away by naming the suspected aswang when is starts hounding your house at night.

According to popular belief, you could actually tell if an aswang is in the room if ordinary oil starts to boil.

My encounter with the “aswang”

This writer was at home in Capul for the semestral break on October 1992 when Nanay thought that she saw somebody outside the house at about 8 o’clock that evening so she called me to go home from a friend’s house nearby. Our walls and windows back then were made of nipa and my bed was close to the window. As I lay on my bed, I heard some noise on the roof then it went down to the ground outside my window but I thought it was just some stray cat. As I was about to sleep, I put my left leg on the windowsill when a hand suddenly grabbed it. I was startled so I shouted that there is an “aswang” outside. Tatay, who was in the other room with Nanay quickly got the bolo and chased the aswang outside. I actually heard running footsteps towards our backyard then the dogs start howling and followed the “aswang” around the village. The howling stops at the plaza which is just a house away from ours then we hear footsteps again outside my window. I could not sleep that night.

Hilo-an

The hilo-an is an ordinary person who has the power to poison anybody through a deadly concoction from mysterious plants. Some people believed they get the poison from a deep see aquatic plant which they insert between their nails. The victim will experience an unbearable stomachache which if not countered could lead to his death.

The victim must vomit out the poisoned food to be out of danger but there are cases that the poison is very fatal that the victim dies after a few hours. To counter hilo, a person must take a black seed (which name escapes at the moment) before he goes to a social gathering. But if he has already taken the poison, one way to counter it is by taking a cup-full of coconut oil so that the poisoned food is vomited out.

The hilo-ans are very unpopular in the community and they are actually real people living among the community. They are not usually invited in any social gatherings like weddings, baptismal or birthdays but if they are present, they are given separate foods and drinks and their leftover are buried in the ground because it is not even fit for animals.