Filipinos will tell you that common beliefs in the Philippines include ghosts and other types of spirits. Engkanto are one of these spirits. They are sometimes known as sirens or elves in other cultures. This is one of those beliefs that has been passed down for centuries. People still make reports of coming into contact with these creatures.

Engkanto are very human-like in the facts that they age, have male and female versions, can become ill or even die. They come in many forms including blue eyes, golden hair, and fair skin.  The female spirits typically have a more red complexion than the males. These creatures stay in areas with large trees and surrounding nature, but they may choose to stay closer to humans. Some Engkanto are good and some are bad. There are many variations of the tales.

The dangers that come with these spirits is nothing to look over. Engkanto are known for negative health effects and negative influence on luck. Those that anger the Engkanto have suffered depression, madness, illness, and some even disappear as a result of possession. A true story of an encounter that comes directly from a Filipino close to me goes like this:

“One day, my brother went out to cut wood in the forest. He came across a lake and saw a piece of wood, so he went to cut it. The piece of wood turned out to be a fish, and when he cut it, he became very sick. He wasn’t really getting better. He got really skinny and a couple weeks later he was still sick. A man from town who talks to spirits came and offered his help. The man said that the spirit told him to make an offering. The options for the offering were a pig, or my brother’s life. My mom’s parents raised pigs so they took one and sliced its neck. We took the pig’s blood and drew crosses everywhere on the house to keep the spirits away. My brother got better shortly after that. The man that talked to the Engkanto said that the fish that my brother cut actually had the spirit of a child inside. Apparently the child’s parents’ spirits were the Engkanto haunting my brother. When the man asked the spirits, ‘What did this man do for you to make him this sick?’ The spirits responded saying, ‘He killed my child.'”

Engkanto and other spirits are not taken lightly in the Filipino culture. There are countless stories that warn people about the spirits. There are rules that you have to follow to not upset Engkanto. These rules are still passed down and enforced in the present-day Philippines.

Orang Minyak, better known as the “Oily Man”, has been around since before a movie was created for the character in 1958. This is a Malaysian urban legend that continues through present-day life, the most recent sighting being 2018. Orang Minyak starts with two causes for the origin story:

1. a product of sexually frustrated young men turning their sex-drive into a form of dark magic to win over the one they love.
2. a local legend derived from folklore of witch-doctors.

Since this story dates back to the early 1900s, there have been many different interpretations of the legend. As the legend goes, Orang Minyak must find and rape 3 virgins each day over a week’s time. This is not consistent with more current sightings of the man, so many just assume his basic goals are to rape and steal expensive appliances (weird). His descriptions also take many different forms including:

• Weight: variation from skinny to obese
• Height: variation from tall to below average
• Eye Color: yellow, gold, red, or jet black

One part of the description of the man remains consistent, oil. The “Oily Man” gets his name from the characteristic that his entire body is covered in black slippery oil that does not drip.

There have been so many sightings and concerns about Orang Minyak that women begun to create ways to avoid being raped by the man. One tactic is to only go out during the daytime and be ready to fight during the night. The reason that it is okay to do in the daytime is that a man walking around town covered completely in black oil would be obvious and suspicious, so Orang Minyak only comes out at night. The second tactic to avoid rape is to wear males’ clothing in order to make the “Oily Man” think that there is a man near by (that makes sense).  These tactics only work for those who believe that Orang Minyak is a human, but some believe that he is a supernatural being. In the case that he is a spirit, there is only one solution: bite your own left thumb and cover it with a magically treated cloth known as a Batik (because everyone has one of those lying around).

There are reports of sightings of the Orang Minyak all over the internet and in police records. No one knows if it is simply an urban legend or if people use this urban legend to their advantage (I’m feeling the latter). There will be links of women’s stories of attacks by the Orang Minyak at the bottom of this blog. In the meantime, I would really love someone to make a movie about this that was not made during the 1950s. Stay safe and hide your expensive appliances.

Sightings of the “Oily Man”

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/05/12/attacked-by-orang-minyak-woman-says-man-in-red-underwear-tried-to-rape-her/

https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2018/04/351725/teen-girl-attacked-orang-minyak-kelantan-village

Out of the many dangerous items in the house, an electric fan might not be the first thing you would be cautious of, but in Korea, they would be concerned about that fan. An urban legend that has cycled throughout Korea created a superstition that running an electric fan at night with a closed door and closed windows can lead to death.

Some say that news of ‘fan deaths’ started circling around Korea during the 1920s and 1930s and that the cause of these rumors is unclear. Others say the rumors started during the 1970s when the Korean government was very poor and decided to spread the rumors in order to get citizens to conserve electricity. It is said that the rumors started with warnings of possible facial paralysis and nausea from the fans and eventually evolved into a warning of possible asphyxiation.

Causes of fan deaths include heat stress, hypothermia, and asphyxiation. If you do not keep air moving in the rooms, besides using the fan, it supposedly puts you at risk for your body being prone to any of these life threatening conditions. The heat stress becomes an issue if the air coming from the fan is warmer than your body temperature. Hypothermia comes from the idea that your metabolism slows down at night, making you more prone to temperature changes and therefore more prone to hypothermia. Fans are believed to lead to asphyxiation by oxygen displacement, or the idea that there would be more carbon dioxide in the room than oxygen if the room is not well-ventilated.

Multiple cases of ‘fan deaths’ have been reported by Korean media over the years. Approximately 20 cases of these deaths involving asphyxiation were reported from 2003 to 2005. The government issued a safety alert about this problem in 2006 when Korea experienced “asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners” to be in the top five most common accident or injury for that summer.

No matter when this legend first started, the danger of electric fans has been passed down through generations. The warnings that people receive about fans vary from getting a simple cold after sleeping with a fan on to an uncle died of asphyxiation after forgetting to turn the fan off at night. Science, and some common sense, can disprove the existence of ‘fan deaths,’ but it has become a habit for South Korea as a whole. The legend is now just a part of Korean culture. Many Koreans cannot explain their own legend past, “My grandparents told me…” or “My parents said…” The rumors will continue to spread into new generations for the foreseeable future.

Dolls are creepy. Little girls play with Barbies and baby dolls, but when you have old porcelain dolls, they can be used in horror films. No one actually thinks that these dolls are evil or possessed, but they are associated with possession, making them creepy. What if there was a doll in our reality that was in fact possessed? Would it be treasured? Would it be destroyed? Apparently, the doll would be treasured because there is a possessed doll currently held in the Mannenji temple.

Okiku, also known as “The Haunted Doll of Hokkaido,” is possessed by the spirit of a little girl, causing it to grow human hair by itself. The doll was bought in 1918 by a seventeen-year-old boy named Eikichi Suzuki. He bought the present for his two-year-old sister as a souvenir after a trip to Sapporo, Hokkaido. The girl played with the girl everyday until she died from a sudden cold a year later. The parents kept the doll in remembrance of their daughter and built a household alter to pray to everyday. One day while visiting the doll, the family noticed that the doll’s hair had grown longer. The family moved out of Hokkaido in 1938 and decided to leave the doll behind on the island. They left the doll in the hands of those at the Mannenji temple, where it can still be found.

Presently, Okiku’s hair has grown down to its knees, when it originally started as chin-length hair. Another creepy quality that Okiku is said to have is growing teeth. If you look very closely, you might be able to catch sight of the teeth in her mouth. The monks at the temple have trimmed the dolls hair before, so the hair would be longer if they left it alone. The monks report dreaming of Okiku telling them to trim her hair before actually doing it themselves. Science has been able to reveal that the hair belongs to a human child, but no one knows why. Science cannot explain why the hair keeps growing either.

Novels, movies, games, and plays have all been created based on Okiku. The way that Okiku is portrayed in these arts has even creepier elements than the hair or teeth, such as the dolly giggling and moving around. She is a very famous doll that many tourists and curious inhabitants of Hokkaido go to visit still today.