#2 SOUTH-EAST ASIAN FOLKLORE

Penanggal

The penanggal or penanggalan is a nocturnal vampiric entity of Malay ghost myths.

Its name comes from the word 'tanggal' meaning to remove or take off, because its form is that of a floating disembodied woman's head with its trailing organs still attached.

The penanggalan exists by different names in every country of Southeast Asia.

It is known as 'balan-balan' in Sabah, 'leyak' in Bali, kuyang in Kalimantan, 'palasik' in West Sumatra, 'kra-sue' in Thailand, 'kasu' in Laos, 'ap' in Cambodia, and 'manananggal' in the Philippines.

Though referred to as a ghost, it is a witch/shaman that developed the ability to take such a form through meditation in a vat of vinegar.

Living human being during daytime and a penanggal by night.

To become a penanggal, a woman must meditate during a ritual bath in vinegar, with her whole body submerged except for the head.

Only active in penanggal form at night, the creature regularly soaks its organs in vinegar to shrink them for easy entry back into her body.

The penanggal thus carries an odor of vinegar wherever she flies, and returns to her body during the daytime, passing as an ordinary woman.

However, a penanggal can always be told from an ordinary woman by the smell of vinegar.

So if anyone around you smells like vinegar...

(PART 1)

MORDEN URBAN LEGEND offer alternative views of the penanggal. This includes being the result of a curse, or the breaking of a demonic pact. One story tells of a young woman who was taking a ritual bath in a tub that once held vinegar.

(PART 2)

While bathing herself & in a state of meditation, a man entered the room without warning & startled her.

She was so shocked that she jerked her head up to look, moving quickly as to sever her head from her body, her organs and entrails pulling out of the neck opening.

(PART 3)

Enraged by what the man had done, she flew after him, a vicious head trailing organs and dripping venom. Her empty body was left behind in the vat.

The penanggalan's victims are traditionally pregnant women and young children. As traditional Malay dwellings were stilt-houses, the penanggal hides under the stilts of the house and uses its long tongue to lap up the blood of the new mother.

Those whose blood the penanggal feeds upon contract a disease that is almost inescapably fatal.

Even if the penanggal is not successful in her attempt to feed, anyone who is brushed by the dripping entrails will suffer painful open sores that won't heal without a bomoh's help.

The most common protection against a penanggal attack is to scatter the thorny leaves of any of the subspecies of a plant known as mengkuang, which has sharp thorny leaves and would either trap or injure the exposed lungs, stomach and intestines of the penanggal as it flies.

Once the penanggal leaves its body and is safely away, it may be permanently destroyed by either pouring pieces of broken glass into the empty neck cavity, which will sever the internal organs of the penanggal when it reattaches to the body;

or by sanctifying the body and then destroying it by cremation or by somehow preventing the penanggal from reattaching to its body upon sunrise.

Another non-lethal way to get rid of penanggalan is to turn over the body, so that when the head attached back it will be attached reverse side, thereby revealing to everyone what she really is.

Scary! But she's kinda cute to me, what yall think?