Believe it or Not – The Allure of Superstition

Let’s take a look beyond the border, into a parallel world that is everyday reality for most Filipinos but utterly baffling to those of us who are content with living in just one reality at a time.

In the Philippines, all kinds of supernatural beliefs are woven into daily life and culture. Some Filipinos will firmly deny believing in such things, yet the majority seem to know something that we foreigners – those of us who pride ourselves on keeping our feet planted firmly on solid ground – will never fully grasp.

Most of us expect life to be logical and safe. Most Filipinos, on the other hand, seem to require something more magical and ambiguous – something they can’t quite put into words, and something we can’t really understand without an act of faith.

Whenever I’ve talked about these things or visited various faith healers, fortune-tellers, and mystical practitioners with whom I happened to cross paths, I’ve tried to hold on to the idea that there must, in the end, be a rational explanation for everything.

A Wink at the Illusionists

My first brush with Filipino “miracles” dates back to childhood, when I read a newspaper article about psychic surgeons performing operations with their bare hands in some distant, exotic land. The article featured photos of a “surgeon’s” bloodied hands and patients who had allegedly survived major procedures without a single surgical scar.

Years later, I went to see these performers myself on the outskirts of Baguio City – and I’m still impressed. These days, though, I am impressed only by how masterfully they execute their medical sleight-of-hand.

Once, in the Batangas region, a well-known female fortune-teller arranged the candles I had purchased from a local sari-sari store (a small neighborhood convenience store) into a circle on the table and asked me to light them. After a few minutes, the candles began to go out one by one with the precision of a metronome. No one was near the table, and there were no visible strings, wires, or contraptions above it.

One evening, our domestic helper burst into the room, visibly shaken. She claimed to have seen a face in the ancient balete tree that was growing in our backyard – a face resembling the devil, with slanted eyes and horns. When I asked our neighbors, they confirmed that they too had seen the same creature in our tree on several occasions. I never saw it, no matter how deliberately I stared at the tree from every possible angle.

Years ago, in Mindanao, I witnessed a local shaman fall into a trance, levitate briefly, and speak in three different voices: his own, that of a small child, and that of a woman claiming to be a European royal. The performance was so skillfully executed that the 500-peso “donation” requested afterward didn’t feel unreasonable at all.

Shamans, fortune-tellers, and clairvoyants, by the way, cannot charge for their services – doing so would strip them of their magical powers. Voluntary donations, however, pose no such threat.

On the Other Side of the Border

These phenomena aren’t limited to rural communities that are often perceived as being stuck in the past. The tabloids sold on city streets are full of “news” about ghosts, vampires, and mermaids – stories that occasionally even make their way into more respectable newspapers.

In these articles, eyewitnesses recount their experiences without the slightest concern for cause and effect, as if the events took place in a different dimension altogether. This balancing act between physical reality and mysticism is part of the fabric that holds Filipino life together.

It’s fascinating how quickly people absorb the spiritual atmosphere of their surroundings. I’ve noticed in myself how urban rationalism begins to erode after just a few days in the country’s most remote corners, where experiences differ radically from anything familiar

In such a world, everyday life unfolds in a kind of borderland – between two realities, sometimes on this side, sometimes on the other. Villagers appear perfectly sensible and modern while fixing engines or repairing malfunctioning household appliances. Then, suddenly – sometimes mid-sentence – they slip into a long-lost century, one that requires an entirely different set of knowledge and skills.

In this Filipino borderland, there’s a constant sense that everything could suddenly become something else. It’s like mistaking a shadow in the forest for a familiar human figure – just as you’re about to call out a greeting, reality shifts, and you realize you’re staring at a tree trunk.

Unbelievable Beliefs

Daily Filipino life is rich in practices and beliefs liberated from the constraints of common sense and the shackles of science. Below are a few examples that, if followed, can instantly make life more interesting – and far more symbolic.

• Never point at a haunted house or a large tree; it brings bad luck. If you do, bite your index finger immediately to undo the mistake.
• Cutting your nails or sweeping the house at night brings misfortune: you’re cutting and sweeping away good luck.
• Dreaming that your tooth falls out means a close relative will die soon.
• Never flip a starfish upside down or point at a rainbow, or you’ll cause heavy rain.
• If you accidentally bite your tongue, a friend is speaking badly about you behind your back.
• When passing through an area inhabited by spirits, you must say “Tabi-Tabi Po” to show respect.
• If you get lost in the forest, turn your shirt inside out to confuse the spirits that have messed up your sense of direction.
• If a spoon or fork falls, it means a visitor is coming. A spoon represents a woman, while a fork represents a man.
• After a wake, the coffin must be taken out through a window, and a plate must be broken inside the house, so the dead won’t return to bother the living.
• When leaving a cemetery, you must light a fire and walk through the smoke, so spirits won’t follow you home (crumpled newspapers serve this purpose well).

Power from Magical Objects

Even as the world becomes increasingly technological, faith in the power of amulets and talismans remains unshaken. Tradition dictates that for every human need, there exists a magical object to protect, heal, and empower its bearer.

Talismans and amulets are fully charged by blessing them in church, dipping them in holy water, or muttering a suitable incantation before use. These spells are the same kind of phrases European magicians used centuries ago to demonstrate their connection to mystical forces.

Nearly every Filipino carries some kind of amulet or talisman – usually costume jewelry adorned with mystical symbols borrowed from the Church or the Freemasons. Inside, there may be scraps of paper bearing obscure Latin phrases for an extra boost.

Small crosses and crucifixes are especially popular, functioning as talismans in their own right. Young men often wear a single bullet around their necks, styled to emphasize its macho appeal and, not coincidentally, its phallic undertones.

Ghosts Among Us

Belief in ghosts and spirits is also widespread in the Philippines. Ghost stories draw their imagery from horror comics, where Western monster icons collide with everyday Filipino life.

Every village has at least one haunted house, where some local horror has been transformed into a supposedly true story. I recall one case I couldn’t initially explain rationally. Later, I discovered a logical explanation – but I learned just how powerful and real this borderland is for local people.

My Filipino partner and I once woke in the middle of the night to loud partying in a simple nipa hut in the middle of nowhere. We lay still, listening to the clinking of plates, drunken singing, and bursts of laughter outside.

Then it hit me – the sounds were coming from behind our hut, where there was nothing but dense, impenetrable jungle. “Don’t be scared,” my partner whispered in the dark. “They’re just mumu (ghosts). They’re only messing around. They won’t hurt us.” Maybe so – but I am hardly equipped to understand such a world at face value.

Sometimes it feels like life in the Philippines resembles rural Europe several decades ago. Back then, too, my childhood world had haunted houses, supernatural beliefs, and straw figures posed with scythes on barn roofs.

The Most Terrifying of All

The most famous and versatile monster in Filipino folklore is the aswang, a catch-all term for shape-shifting, vampire-like creatures. An aswang can be any malevolent being that transforms from human into animal – commonly a dog, cat, bat, or even a pig – to disguise its true nature.

Unlike vampires, aswang live nearly normal lives by day, transforming at night into monsters that prey on human blood and entrails. Their favorite delicacy is the fetus growing in a pregnant woman’s womb. By day, an aswang may be identified by bloodshot eyes or feet that turn backward when running.

Protection against aswang involves prayers, garlic, and a special oil that begins to steam when an aswang is nearby. The oil is made from coconut, vinegar, local herbs, and the urine of the people being protected.

The Exhausting Limitlessness of the Borderland

The allure of the Filipino borderland of magical realism lies in its nuance and its defiance of logic. It allows people to be pious and mocking, skeptical and fanatically devout at the same time. Life is a constant rejection of the Western either–or mindset, where folk tales and beliefs rise alongside reality to guide daily existence.

Our Western either–or thinking is embedded in language itself, where we create separate terms for everything that falls outside what is scientifically proven – “alternative medicine,” “alternative theory.” In Filipino life, no such division exists. The Filipino mindset is closer to “simultaneous medicine” or “simultaneous theory.” A clever way to avoid making the wrong choice?

This borderland extends even to modern machines and devices. Filipinos can keep machines running and repair them skillfully without understanding the theories that make them work. Their attitude both accepts and denies technology: nuts and bolts are fine, but the physics behind them is of no interest.

We see brand-new cars with random wires dangling from dashboards, motorcycles fitted with bizarre contraptions meant to “improve” performance. Filipinos seem to have an almost compulsive need to perform a kind of psychic transformation on machines, so they’ll function properly in this borderland reality.

The world begins to resemble quantum physics, where phenomena can behave as both waves and particles. In the same way, the borderland is ambivalent and ambiguous – making life feel intensely vivid yet strangely self-contained and inward-looking

The Unbearable Charm of the Borderland

The endless stories and beliefs of the borderland are something I first learned to tolerate, then to appreciate as an elixir that animates everyday life. Life in the Philippines is a continuous collective act of creativity, filled with beliefs, mysteries, and stories.

And although I remain the James Randi of my own life – a skeptic at heart – viewing the Filipino borderland from the perspective of an either–or world is like peering into a mental kaleidoscope – an experience worth revisiting now and then, especially when everyday life starts to feel dull and meaningless.

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