Power of belief, fear of the unknown

Folklore holds unresolved mysteries and intriguing narratives. Our culture and history have been preserved through folktales, legends, and myths.

As a graduating student, I decided to write a thesis anchored to my hometown’s folklore narratives and I found myself conversing with diverse communities who shared different and varying stories emerging from their culture and traditions. I discovered that these kinds of stories reflect the way they perceive life.

I heard volumes of stories, each an enthralling tale. From mystical forests, manggagaglaw, religious apparitions, mythological entities, and bewitching telltales, but the one that crept up my terrified consciousness and gave me nightmares is a story that my grandmother herself told me. The tale about the “tikbalang.”

Tikbalang is one of the terrifying and unearthly creatures believed to lurk in the forests at night and victimize the innocent. This humanoid creature with its grotesque characteristics of a horse is believed to exist only in folklore as a fruit of imagination meant to scare youngsters. Though the tales about tikbalang are passed down by mouth from generation to generation and have been savored and given a new form, the one that I’ve heard from my grandmother is enough to presume that the tikbalang isn’t a creature from tales and folklore but an entity that truly exists.

It was in the 1950s when people from a small Batangas town went through famine due to the casual slaughter of livestock in the area. According to my grandmother, every night, her father’s farm animals would make an agonizing sound as if something was crashing through the farm. They would wake up in the morning to their animals lifeless. This incident alarmed the townsfolk. It sparked suspicions that there was something or someone behind these heinous acts. It could be someone’s dog or a thief from another sitio, but a middle-aged farmer named Juang Tulingan, a friend of her father, was very certain that the behind these killings was not a dog or a thief, but a tikbalang.

According to him, the tikbalang fancied preying on small and farm animals. It uses its strong hooves to kill its victim, eat it, and drink its blood to push everything right through its huge belly. Sometimes, the tikbalang steals hogs and brings them to another nest to avoid starvation. However, tikbalang doesn’t eat humans; it kills. The monster could injure a human to death if threatened. It could leave you with broken ribs or skull from its strong kicks. The frightening monster also possesses a great memory.

One night, Juang Tulingan and several men in town including my great-grandfather, decided to capture the tikbalang. Armed with itak and paleta, they waited for the tikbalang to appear at the poultry farm where it will have its festive and bloody dinner. As the animals began to ramble, they knew the tikbalang was near. Suddenly, the monstrous creature appeared, causing some men to flee, but Juang Tulingan managed to strike its leg with his itak. The last thing that they saw was the tikbalang running through the pitch-black darkness of the forest.

Days passed and the town lived peacefully after the horrifying encounter with the tikbalang.

One Sunday afternoon, the townsfolk found Juang Tulingan ablaze, running, and asking for help. The man on fire survived and the reason why he was set aflame sent chills right down everyone’s spine. Juang Tulingan was on his way home from the forest when he decided to burn some twigs. The fire grew large, and smoke crawled around the forest, making the surroundings white and unbreathable. Suddenly, a strong force from his back threw him on the fire. He easily fell on the fire and burned himself. He miraculously survived. Once recovered, Juang Tulingan found a horrifying discovery. He saw two circular bruises on his back shaped similar to a horse hoof. He came to a realization that the tikbalang that they tried to capture might have remembered his face and decided to kill him as a vengeance.

Life was back again after the nightmares brought by the tikbalang. They never heard or experienced horrors at night and the monster was never heard or spotted again and was believed to have left the area. Juang Tulingan died weeks after the incident.

This story about the tikbalang is a cliché for everybody. I’m uncertain if this narrative occurred in real life but I’m pretty sure that this tale was created as a guide to life; to be brave in the pursuit of clarity.

As I continued to gather related data for my undergraduate thesis, I realized that the power of belief and the fear of the unknown is what immortalizes these stories. These tales seem to share a common facet, to scare people and give them the idea that we might coexist with beings beyond what’s visible. Although humanity has not proven the verity of such entities, we must remind ourselves that all is well in following and believing in the stories that might seem to be untrue.

Is the tikbalang a monster that only exists through orality and fiction? We don’t know. Perhaps, they’re out there, in the woods, above the trees, near a river stream, or in your backyard, watching and silently waiting for its prey.

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James Permejo, 21, is a student of English and a campus journalist at Batangas State University-The National Engineering University.