The Aswang in Philippine Folk-Tale Collections

Record summary

Early twentieth-century Philippine folklore collections, including Mabel Cook Cole’s Philippine Folk Tales and Dean S. Fansler’s Filipino Popular Tales, preserve narratives involving the aswang and related nocturnal or shape-shifting beings. Depending on region and source, aswang can refer to a witch, cannibal, animal-changing person, or other threatening supernatural figure; manananggal is a more specific flying or separating-body tradition in later classifications. These books are useful for comparing motif distribution and translation, but they do not document verified attacks or transformations.