The Philippine Ghoul or locally known as Bal-bal among the Tagbanua ethnic groups of central and northern Palawan, also called Busaw among the Bagobo ethnic group.
The Bal-bal and Busaw is an Aswang who abduct a dying person or stole human corpses be it still in the funeral or in the cemetery, It's breath smells like of the rotten meat, they have sharpen their fingernails and teeth enough to tear the dead human bodies. They would sneak at the house of the dying sick person for they said the dying person smelled like a ripe jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus).
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| funeral in the Philippines |
The beliefs in ghoul have played a significant role in shaping the Philippine culture particularly on how Filipinos deal with their dead, family, relatives and friends of the deceased gathers at night at the wake to pay their last respect, now a days people play card games and doing chit chat, instant coffee being served as well to keep the visitor awake and this would last about a week before the dead will be finally buried. In the old days when electricity is not yet available in the Philippines people burn a fire all night, sing a song, shouting to keep awake for the funeral. The reason for this practice mainly due to the belief that the ghoul will take away the body of the dead when no one is watching.
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| ghouls eating a corpse |
The oldest surviving literature that mention ghouls is in Arabic literature One Thousand and One Nights, wherein a story of a man who married a woman as the man observe the strange activity of his wife, he then follows his wife one night to which lead him to the cemetery and shocked to find out his wife is a ghoul and feasting on a newly dead corpse. The word ghoul itself is from the Arabic word ghul which means "to seize". the female form is called ghouleh, the term sometimes used by the Arabs colloquially to describe a selfish or greedy person.
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| banana trunk |
What unique to the Bal-bal and Busaw apart from ghoul counterpart in the west is the way how they stole the corpses. They have the ability to exchange the original cadaver with a banana trunk to which to an untrained eye the dead looks the same corpse as it was inside the coffin. The ways to know if the dead was replaced by the Bal-bal or Busaw, the old folks says is to look at the fingerprints of the corpse, corpse with no fingerprint were likely stolen by the ghoul. and by passing the corpse through the house window-Philippine houses in the old times the bahay kubo has an open windows, or dropping the corpse directly to the ground, then it will magically turn the supposed corpse into a banana trunk.
Anthropologist define eating of the dead as necro-cannibalism, the Aghori a Shaivite Hindu sect from India consumes their dead both cooked and raw under open flames, Aghori believes that the dead person is nothing but a matter lacking the life force once it contained, eating the dead is a ritual Aghoris believed that it is both spiritual resource and a subversion of taboos. as well as seeing it as scientific approach to trying to discover a certain matter convert from one form to another form.
Other local names of the ghoul among the various ethnic tribes in the Philippines. The Hiligaynon call it calag, The Tinguian called it ebwa, and the Apayao called it wir-wir.
Other local names of the ghoul among the various ethnic tribes in the Philippines. The Hiligaynon call it calag, The Tinguian called it ebwa, and the Apayao called it wir-wir.
