IS THERE AN ‘ASWANG’?

Old folks believed that ‘aswang’ was real.  They said that there are two kinds of ‘aswang’.  One files which they call as ‘kakak’.  The other walks, they call them as ‘para-asot’.  Sometimes, they would appear as a big dog or a pig, etc.  nevertheless, the two are allegedly ‘aswang’.

When I was still employed with the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) in 1971, I used to prepare my lesson plans a night before.  I had seven subjects, so I need to prepare seven lesson plans.  I spent most of the night preparing my lesson plans for the class the next day.

It was then around 11:00pm and I heard a score of dogs barking at the road.  When dog barks, one reason is that somebody is around.

I went out of the house and saw an old woman of about sixty years old and she was surrounded by at least ten loose dogs.  They were barking but could not come close to the woman.  The old woman wore a colored but faded dress locally called ‘bata’ with a white shawl made of ‘katsa’, white cloth used in bagging salt.  The woman was with a bamboo cane which was taller than her.

The old woman could not walk ahead with so many dogs around her so I drove them away and went back to the house.

The next day, Tinong, the brother of my sister-on-law, slept in the house.  He said that at around 4:00 am, he went to the comfort room.  Inside was a small window where he could see the things outside.  He incidentally saw the same woman, standing by the road and facing a house where a dying man lives.  The house was some one hundred meter from the house.

In the morning, he told us the story.  And how he described the woman coincided with the woman we saw before.

When our neighbors learned of this, they told us the woman used to pass their houses for one week already.

The next night, my brother Edgar and his friend Elyo, who just lived in front of us decided to wait for the woman to appear.  At 11:00pm, they saw her at the distance under the street light.  She saw them also so she did not proceed.  Reportedly, they were suddenly afraid and their hair stood straight.  They managed to run away.  My brother went to his friend’s house while the latter wen to our house.

The old woman was never reported to pass by our house again.  Reportedly, she passed through the other road but stood no longer in front but behind the house, where ‘gabi’ plants abound.  There was no road.  It was also swampy.

Several months passed and we learned that the woman lived near the cathedral.  Her main means of livelihood was candle vending, leading ‘novena’, bathing and changing the clothes of the dead before burial.  He was observed to enjoy smelling the dead.

Question:

What do an old woman for more than a weeks and during an unholy hours stand infront or at the back of the residence of a sick man some five kilometres away from her house?