In the fields: The Aswang
A story of the Aswang — The most feared creature in the Philippines
This is a story told to me by my wife, she is a Filipino and lived in a small province called St-Sabel in Negros Occidental in the central Visayas region of the Philippines. Below is how she recounted the story to me word by word.
My wife's story of the Aswang
When I was a child around 10 years old. My parents asked me to go to the sugar cane field and collect some vegetables from the farm.
Not wanting to go alone I asked my best friend at the time to come with me to the farm. In my hometown, we grow our vegetables near sugar cane fields because of the ample supply of water and rich soils. The roads to the vegetable patch are very narrow and weave in and out of the rows of sugar cane.
As we walked towards the farm, we broke off a stalk of sugarcane and sucked on the sweet juice. It was not uncommon for us to eat the sugar cane stalks, many children did this as it was a delicious snack. — “Mag Sarap”.
As we got closer to the vegetable gardens, the sugar cane was getting taller and as a child, they seemed so large back then.
We entered the vegetable patch to collect the vegetables but we noticed someone was there hunched over looking at the ground.
