Phantom?

My friend Dennis Dy Ko took this picture on San Agustin Church, and frankly,  I have no idea what that "thing" that appeared in the picture.

Zombie – The Walking Dead

As a result of those TV shows, motion pictures, books, computer games, who would say that you don't know anything about zombies…  or isn't that right?

So, when you hear the word “zombies,” what enters your mind are those walking dead who wants to consume your brains. However, zombies are not really what they are supposed to be.

Today, we have two types of zombies – one is more religious/supernatural and the other is more into the science fiction genre. So get ready to read this article so you’ll know what to do before the coming Zombie Apocalypse. 

Aswang

Aswang by Cantada

Is it a ghoul? A vampire? A lycantropy? A hexer? Or even a god? Trying to describe the mythical aswang can be very hard. Different ethnic groups have a different description of it, but one thing is clear, the aswang is one of the most frightening of our lower myths.

The Day The Dancing Stops (Ozone Disco Tragedy)

After 18 years, the Ozone Disco is again in headlines. The Sandiganbayan 5th Division just convicted seven former officials of the Quezon City engineer's office and two private individuals  of graft in connection with the deadly fire at the Ozone Disco Club on March 19, 1996, 

They get 6 to 10 years of jail terms.

What? Just 6 to 10 years?

The Manananggal

When we talk about the manananggal, we sometimes say that it is a type of aswang, as if they are the same mythical creature, but unlike the aswang who is a shape shifter, a manananggal is more of a self-segmenter. 

Bram Stoker Did Not Model Dracula On Vlad The Impaler.

It's one of those so-called facts that everyone knows: Bram Stoker's character Count Dracula was loosely based on Vlad the Impaler. But while there's no doubt that Stoker took the name from Vlad III's patronymic, it's doubtful that the Impaler was actually the basis for the famous vampire.

Read HERE for more.

Mythological Creatures of the Philippine Folklore

                                                                                                                        Picture taken from www.travelbook.ph

Zombie Trivia

From: Taringa! La realidad acerca de los "Zombies"

The traditional idea of a zombie doesn't kill people nor eat their brains.

In Haiti, zombies are not figures of terror. In fact, these zombies are not capable of harming anyone. Instead, the zombie— a creature between life and death, an outcast, something with no will of its own—is a fearful symbol of human bondage. The word zombie was first recorded in 1819, by the poet Robert Southey from two African words, "nzambi" (god) and "zumbi"" (fetish) and it has something to do with the Voodoo religion of South America.

According to the belief, a bokor sorcerer, through a combination of drugs and black magic, puts the living into a deathlike state, then resurrects their ‘‘corpses’’ as slaves who perform grueling labor on some South America’s sugar plantations.

A Few Trivias About Werewolves

                                                                                                                                                       Artwork from Magic The Gathering

The earliest examples of the werewolf legend can be found in Greek mythology. King Lycaon was

transformed into a wolf as a result of sacrificing a baby to Zeus. Lycaon was a king of Arcadia, son of Pelasgus and Meliboea, who tested Zeus by serving him the roasted flesh of a guest from Epirus in order to see whether Zeus was truly omniscient.

Zeus found out King Lycaon's vile sacrifice so he transformed the king into the form of a werewolf and killed Lycaon's fifty other sons with lightning bolts. The slaughtered child, Nyctimus, was restored to life.

Hammer Time!

Thanks to the Christian English translation of the Bible, the word chaspah in Exodus 22:18 was translated into the word “witch.” Pope Innocent VIII, believing literally in Exodus 20:18, issued a bull in 1484 designed to root out witchcraft in Christian Europe. Thanks to these two Dominican inquisitors, Henrich Institoris (Kramer) (c. 1430–1505) and Jacob Sprenger (c. 1436–1495) and their book "Malleus Maleficarum," A Hammer for Witches – we have now stereotyped witches as evil and Satan spawn. In this book, definite instructions were given to the prosecution of witches. The infamous Witch Hunt that has killed over nearly tens and thousand of innocent women as three hundred years of persecutions raged was the result of this book.

FYI: Warlocks are not Male Witches

                     Picture from WiseGeek.com

Thanks to Hollywood and other misinformation from local TV and reading materials (who were not written by a witch of course), we now think that a warlock is a male witch. That is not true. A male witch is called a “witch.” 

Now, how about a warlock?

The name “warlock” came from a Saxon word, wǣrloga that means an "oath-breaker." Simply put it, a warlock is a witch that broke his oath of not hurting or harming anyone.

But not every pagans agree. In other witches community, warlocks are known to be a “spell singer.” This was derived in Norse myth from the poetic eddas, a song called the Vardlokkur  which is sung to ward off evil spirits during a religious ceremony.

Death Knockers

There is this old legend that says if you hear three knocks that seemingly have no cause, someone you know will die. Silly, right?

Many believed that door knockers are spirit, who knocks your door in the middle of the night. It is believed that, whenever they come and knock your door, somebody will die on the next day. 

There are many legends of death knockers all around the world. Here's the Philippine version:

[From Wikipedia]

The Kumakatok (door knockers) are a group of three robed figures believed by many in the Philippines to knock on doors in the middle of the night, bringing bad omens. They allegedly look like humans but wear hoods which obscure their faces to some extent. One resembles a young female while the other two look like old people.

A visit from the Kumakatok is usually an omen of death, as either the eldest or an ill member of the house visited will subsequently die. The visits are supposedly more frequent after a disease outbreak. Residences of Luzon and Visayas at one time painted white crosses on their doors to ward off the Kumakatok. This trend was said to cause the trio to switch from residences to government buildings, hospitals, and even churches.

Reported sightings of the Kumakatok have decreased significantly since World War II. One explanation is that many buildings were destroyed at that time, leaving the Kumatakok few doors to knock upon.

[Reference: Paraiso, Salvador; Jose Juan Paraiso (2003). The Balete Book: A collection of demons, monsters and dwarfs from the Philippine lower mythology. Philippines: Giraffe Books. ISBN 971-8832-79-3.]

The Voice from the Grave: The Basa Murder.

On the evening of February 21, 1977,  the Chicago fire department was called to put out a blaze in a high-rise apartment building on the North Side. Two firefighters crawled into Apartment 15B through black smoke and saw that the fire was in the bedroom. A mattress lying at the foot of the bed was blazing. Within minutes, the firemen had put the blaze out and opened the windows to let out the smoke. When they lifted the waterlogged mattress, they found the naked body of a woman, with her legs spread apart and a knife sticking out of her chest.

Is that an orb?

An orb sighted?

Yesterday a friend told me that he heard someone "pssssttt!" somewhere in the dark corridors at the 3rd floor of a certain old building in Escolta. I took some pictures and well...

Haunted Tour - Awesome!

Sorry, I can't reveal the exact address of that very big haunted house.

I don't want to say "It's all REAL" and I don't want to say "It's all FAKE," anyway It's a huge mansion in Quezon City built in the 1980's... No history of violent death on the house, but it's standing in a place once a dumping ground of those summaries executed, freaky accidents and suicide victims.

Together with the Profilers of the Unknown, we heard moans, heavy footsteps, the voice of an old woman calling out loud, the feeling of being watched, strange footprints from a dusty floor, laughing and running kids from the garden and above all, one of our tour companions is not what you think he is.

Scary...

For more information about the Profilers of the Unknown, visit the site:

http://profilersoftheunknown.webs.com/ or "like" their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/profilersoftheunknown.

  

[Travel and accommodation was organized with the help of Mr. Ross Flores Del Rosario of http://www.wazzuppilipinas.com,  and the community of bloggers of https://www.facebook.com/wazzuppilipinas ]