Manananggal

From the Tagalog *tanggál*, to remove or to separate. The figure is recorded principally in the Visayan provinces of Capiz, Iloilo, Bohol, and Antique, and is one of the older female spirits of the Philippine record. By day she is unremarkable. By night she divides at the waist. The lower half is left standing in the place of separation. The upper half, with bat-like wings, takes flight. The figure is held to predate, and is recorded in early colonial sources as already widespread. The Franciscan friar Juan de Plasencia, in his *Customs of the Tagalogs* of fifteen-eighty-nine, documented entities recognisable as the manananggal under colonial Christian framing.

The counter-rite is well-recorded across the affected provinces. The lower half, abandoned for the duration of the night flight, is salted, ash-rubbed, or anointed with garlic so that the upper half cannot rejoin it before dawn. Without the rejoining, the figure does not survive sunrise. The archive records the rite as old, public, and still, in some villages, observed.