They're Out There

-Pidge

Heck yeah you won't. I will never be parted from my jacket.

Like in American movies there’s always the whole “ghosts aren’t real” “monsters aren’t real don’t mess with me” but with Filipinos you say “so one time I saw a manananggal outside my window” and the response you get from even the soberest most serious grounded people is “oh what happened, how old were you when it happened?”

Like you have a younger kid talking about how they saw a white lady ghost in the bathroom one time and an old and sensible great uncle will chime in with how their house was FULL of ghosts and how they wouldn’t leave their rooms at night because that’s when the tiny black figures of crawling children would wander the house, though they could leave the door open and see them padding by in the corner of their periphery or hear them on the wooden floor when they were getting into bed

I can tell people about how I used to be harassed by a duwende (dwarf) with malicious intentions and how it took an albularyo (medicine man) blessing our houses with talismans to make it go away and they’d be like “oh that’s cool, did the duwende leave or is it just hanging around not bothering you”

When it comes to pinoy monster movies you completely skip over the bit about “what the hell that creature is” and all you get is “what is that” “aswang” “OK what do we do about it”

And it’s not even just a provincial thing, any city born person will just accept that oh, an aswang might kill you if you wander out tonight, so don’t do that

-Keith

Why are you so funny you sandy sock? You’re supposed to make poems and look at the rain sadly not spout nonsense with a straight face then do that cute lil giggle thing!!!! Fucking sandy sock.