Folklore and myths from different countries are full of vampires or at least vampire-like creatures and the Philippines is no exception. The archipelago is full of tales featuring bloodsucking creatures. In this case, we have the mandurugo from old Tagalog folklore.
The mandurugo (means, “one who draws blood”) which is a female bloodsucker lures men with her beauty, for she is very attractive, so she may feed on their blood. As the belief goes, the mandurugo would marry a healthy youth to ensure a constant supply of fresh blood every night. While the husband is fast asleep, she sucks his blood. When she feeds, the tip of her hollow tongue tapers to a needle point and pricks the victim’s neck and sucks a bit of his blood. Or she inserts her tongue into her husband’s mouth – the needle-like tip of her tongue pricking the insides of the mouth – and sucks the flowing blood while seemingly kissing him passionately. The husband loses weight rapidly, weakens and withers away as the days go by clueless that his declining health is caused by his blood-thirsty wife.
When the mandurugo has drained her husband dry and dead, she assumes the form of a bird-like creature and flies off to look for another healthy youth to marry and feed on.
The mandurugo also feeds on others, not just men. At night or early morning before dawn – in her bird-like form – she perches on the roof of her chosen victim’s house and, while the household is fast asleep, she lowers her long, thread-like tongue through a hole on the roof directly above her target. She pierces the victim’s jugular vein with the needle-like tip of her tongue and proceeds to suck the blood. In the olden days some would make a concoction of duhat (Java plum) mixed with ginger, manzanitas bark, yantok (a fruit-bearing rattan), blood and makahiya (mimosa) leaves and used as an offering to the mandurugo, so she wouldn’t harm those in the household.
There are speculations that the mandurugo arose from kinnara or kinnari, beings who have bird-like bodies including wings and the head and breasts of a woman, who were betrayed by their human lovers, turning into bloodsucking creatures to exact revenge on men.
The mandurugo will remain young and beautiful as long as she consumes blood.
The Girl with Many Loves
There was once a young woman who was one of the most beautiful to live on the land. She married at the age of sixteen. Her husband, a husky youth, withered away in less than a year. After his death, she married again, with the same result. She married a third time and then a fourth. The fourth husband, having been warned, feigned sleep one night holding a knife in his hand. Soon after midnight he felt a presence over him and then a prick on his neck. He stuck the knife into the creature on top of him. He heard a screech and the flapping of wings. The next day his bride was found dead some distance from the house with a knife wound in her chest.
References:
Bane, Theresa. Encyclopedia of Beasts and Monsters in Myth, Legend and Folklore. McFarland, 2016
Blanco, Manuel. Flora de Filipinas, Volume 1. Vibal Foundation, Quezon City, 2017
Demetrio, Francisco R., S.J. The Inaugural Exhibit, Exhibit Room One Guidebook. Xavier University, Cagayan de Oro City, 1986
Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. 1999
Ramos, Maximo D. Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology. University of the Philippines Press, 1971
Art & Fiction + Philippine Folklore & Mythology 