Horror roll: The Philippines’ best horror writers reveal their favorite terror tales.

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino culture is so steeped in myth and folklore that we Pinoys enjoy a vast landscape of the fantastic. So, for this Halloween, Supreme got six of the country’s foremost writers of the weird and the supernatural to dish on their favorite horror stories — from films, to television series and urban legends.

Yvette Tan

Tan is one of the most prolific Filipino writers of the horror genre. Her short stories are collected in Waking the Dead.

‘The Heirs’ by F. Sionil Jose

People think canonical literature is “serious,” but this story is a telenovela mixed with silent horror. You don’t know how creeped out you are until you reach the end.

‘Andong Agimat’ by Arnold Arre

Arnold Arre is usually known for lighter stuff, but Andong Agimat is a compelling graphic novel that shows off his range as a dark storyteller and artist. It’s hard to find. I don’t even have my own copy.

‘Yanggaw’

This Ilonggo film isn’t just about what happens when an aswang invades a small town, it’s about how it touches the lives of the community. It’s more about the definition of humanity than it is about monstrosity.

The Film Center tragedy

The urban legend about the Film Center tragedy has got all the elements of a soap opera horror story — greed, tragedy, revenge. Fortunately, Howie Severino disproved the story on his show a few years ago, which raises the question: If the spirits that people claim to live in the building are not of the workers who died there, where did they come from?

Eliza Victoria

Victoria has written some of the freakiest short stories in the local publishing scene. Her stories were recently collected in A Bottle of Storm Clouds.

Erik Matti’s ‘Kagat ng Dilim’

This horror-suspense show on IBC-13 seems so obscure now that at times I wonder if I just dreamt it into existence. But my brother also remembers the show, so it most probably exists. I remember watching an episode starring G. Toengi late at night with my siblings. She plays a young woman on vacation with a group of friends, who are attacked, one by one, by a murderer. In the end, it is revealed that the whole thing is a prank her friends are playing on her, but the experience has broken her brain. The last shot is of her standing in a room filled with her sleeping friends. She looks around, thinking which of her friends she should kill first, and raises an axe.

‘Shake, Rattle, and Roll’

I have fond memories of any of the earlier installments. I liked the episode featuring the “undin,” which must have scared a generation of children who refused to be potty trained, and that episode with yaya Manilyn Reynes and Aiza Seguerra taking on an aswang.

‘Magandang Gabi, Bayan’

I was born on Nov. 1, All Saints’ Day, and watching MGB is the highlight of my birthday. I remember an episode where an old woman was talking about an encounter with a kapre, and something brown and black suddenly passed in front of the camera. Chills! I also enjoyed the ridiculous re-enactments, where dwende food was shown as black rice, probably rice with dinuguan. Whenever my mother served dinuguan mixed with rice, my sister would say, “Pagkain ng dwende!”

Ian Rosales Casocot

Casocot has published several books and has authored several tales of the supernatural, including the memorable “The Flicker.”

‘Stella for Star’ by Yvette S. Tan

A tiyanak story with a gay twist. Tan, who may be our answer to Stephen King, weaves local mythology with a contemporary touch. I was blown away by how the story was faithful to tradition, and yet also how refreshing in its modern mutation: a dread mix of gender politics crossed with the theme of maternal love.

‘Kisapmata’

A film by Mike de Leon, based on the essay “The House on Zapote Street” by Nick Joaquin. The true-crime essay, which is a diatribe against the Filipino machismo, is a gripping enough read from the National Artist for Literature. But as translated to film by the peerless Filipino filmmaker, it becomes a supreme psychological chiller where the bogeyman is, alas, the head of your own family. What do you do when home becomes your own hell and prison?

‘Frozen Delight’ by Marguerite de Leon

This one is definitely out-of-the-box. This is a story of a mass murder, set inside a refrigerator. You read that right. We follow the story of a charmer — an ice pack — who seems to be a natural leader for the other denizens of the icy insides of this commonplace appliance. And then slowly the true nature of the ice pack’s intentions descends on us...

‘Kinatay’

This is an unbearable film. Much of the carnage is done out of sight of the camera, but the dread stays with us. This is not exactly torture porn, but the dread is indelible like the incisions and slashes of an Eli Roth film. The true horror is that this is an exact retelling of what goes on, usually unreported, in our country.

Karl De Mesa

De Mesa is the author of the novella collection News of the Shaman and the co-editor of the online horror anthology Demons of the New Year.

‘Shake, Rattle and Roll 1’

The halimaw sa banga and the carnivorous ref? Those things scared the sh*t out of me. Peque Gallaga is a genius. Classic!

‘Tropical Gothic’ by Nick Joaquin

This is still the manual, psalm, and benchmark of Pinoy gothic. Everything from “May Day Eve” to “Doña Jeronima” is an education in how to use prose style as a stiletto.

‘Seek Ye Whore’ by Yvette Tan

The swan song of my friend from her debut book Waking the Dead and not just because she’s my friend. A pitch-perfect study in layered, rousing terror, as well as a literal deconstruction of the female as object, seducer and destroyer.

‘Balintataw’

This old, early ‘90s TV series had the creepiest, eeriest, chant-centered main theme ever. It went something like “hakatakamtakam.” I still get chills thinking about it.

‘Ang Mga Manananggal’ by Tony Perez

Though the whole Cubao Pagkagat ng Dilim book was a great foray into psychological horror meets folklore tropes, this story, about two sisters who have non-penetrative gang bangs but kill anyone who does try to screw them, was insightful and inspiring. So much so that I made a whole screenplay in college based on it for film writing class. And it almost got made into a movie.

David Hontiveros

Hontiveros is the author of the Penumbra novellas, which mix horror, local folkore and dark fantasy.

‘Itim’

Only one answer really comes to mind: Mike de Leon’s Itim (known internationally as The Rites of May), where a photographer (Tommy Abuel) returns to his provincial home for Holy Week, and a mystery awaits. The skill and style with which De Leon builds mood and atmosphere in this, his feature debut, really left an impression on me and to this day, nearly three decades after I first saw it, it still stands as the best Filipino horror movie I’ve ever seen, and is also one of the best horror films I’ve seen, regardless of country of origin.

Douglas Candano

Douglas Candano’s stories tread the line between erudite academic freak-outs and biographies of the weird. His stories are collected in anthologies like Philippine Speculative Fiction and PEN Anthology of Contemporary Filipino Fiction.

I often read about the paranormal and find myself steering random conversations towards the sharing of supernatural experiences. While all these stories are interesting in various ways, a few have really stood out through their uncanny ability to be recalled during sleepless, early morning hours. Some of these have already become urban legends, spreading different versions of the ghost who mockingly joins the stranded student in prayer, or the faceless lady in white who appears in the bathroom mirror while one is taking a leak. Others, like a story that my friend P. once narrated over a few beers a couple of years ago, are more unique.

According to P., starting from when he was four years old, he has been visited by an apparition of a Latin-speaking salt-and-pepper haired crone on his birthday at a regular interval of four years. Although the crone only appeared to him in a dream and did not go near him during his fourth and eighth birthdays, during his 12th and 16th birthdays, it appeared while he was still awake, moving towards his bed before disappearing. Since P. went to Manila for college and spent his 20th birthday without any incident, he thought that the quadrennial birthday visits had finally ceased. However, during his recent 24th birthday, P., now working in a government office in Manila, was again visited by the crone, which now appeared to him limbless and was working its stumps to approach his bed.

Though I’m not entirely certain about the exact reasons why, P.’s story never fails to fill me with dread whenever I think of it. I guess its continuous evolution may be a factor as I first heard it a few months before his 20th birthday. Additionally, while recurrence and the macabre are common features in horror, the unknown motivation behind the quadrennial birthday visits, combined with the crone’s menacing gestures and sudden absence of limbs, makes the story memorable.