Penanggalan

Introduction

The penanggal or penanggalan is a nocturnal vampiric entity from Malay ghost myths. Its title comes from the phrase tanggal which means to put off or take off, due to the fact its shape is that of a floating disembodied woman’s head with its trailing organs nevertheless attached. From afar, it twinkles like a ball of flame, supplying an clarification for the will-o’-the-wisp phenomenon.

Though often referred to in its native languages as a ghost, the penanggalan can’t be quite simply categorised as a classical undead being. Rather, it is a witch that developed the capacity to take such a shape thru meditation in a vat of vinegar. The creature is, for all intents and purposes, a residing human being for the duration of daylight or at any time when it does no longer detach itself from its body. The penanggalan regularly hunts at night time for menstruation/blood from birth. It additionally hunts for pregnant ladies and younger children.

Physical Traits

The Penanggalan appears to be a regular human woman during the day. However, this horrifying ghoul detaches its head at night and takes to the air on its own. Its internal organs hang below it as it flies, and legend has it that they twinkle like fireflies as it flies through the moonlit night. As it flies, its long, tangled hair fans around it, and its glowing red eyes pierce the night.

While the Penanggalan predominantly makes use of its invisible tongue to drain its prey, it is frequently depicted as having fangs. The range of fangs varies from place to region, with some describing it as having two, like the Western vampire, and others declaring that the common Penanggalan is embellished with a mouthful of fangs.

Family

According to traditional Malaysian folklore, penanggalang is made when an old or young woman uses black magic to attain eternal beauty. Usually a woman makes a contract with the devil and as part of that contract it stipulates that she must not eat meat for 40 days. If you break this covenant, you become a bloodthirsty Penanggalan. In some cases, women died during childbirth and were turned into penanggalans, or were subjected to powerful uncontrollable curses, but this is far less common.

There is another Malaysian story that the original Penanggalang was once a beautiful priestess. One day, this priestess took a ceremonial bath in a tub that originally contained vinegar. She was taking a bath and in a state of deep meditation when a man suddenly entered her room and startled her. In shock, she jerked her head up to look at him, causing her head to be cut off from her body with such force that it is often referred to in Malaysia as the “overreaction of the century.”  In this version of the legend, it’s not entirely clear why the Penanggalans targeted pregnant women and new-born babies.

Another and more plausible version of this legend is that the original Penanggalang was an ugly young woman who was bitter in her single status and fervently jealous of all married women. led to a murderous rampage that eventually killed many innocent pregnant women. As punishment for her heinous crime, the villagers hung her head from a tall tree and tied her legs to a bull. The head was hanging from a tree, but all internal organs remained intact. The villagers were celebrating their victory over evil, but later that night they discovered that the severed head had disappeared, and that they had unwittingly unleashed hellish demons upon their small settlement.

Other names

The penanggalan exists through unique names in exceptional components of Southeast Asia. It is recognized as balan-balan in Sabah, tengelong or tengalong in Kedah, hantu polong by means of the Temuan, leyak in Bali, kuyang in Kalimantan, palasik in West Sumatra, kra-sue in Thailand, kasu in Laos, ahp in Cambodia, and manananggal in the Philippines.

Powers and Abilities

Unlike different vampiric creatures, Penanggalan are solely woman and are capable to masquerade as ordinary human beings throughout the daytime, remodeling into their hideous counterparts solely at night. They have a tendency to prey upon pregnant girls and new-born babies, which is why they regularly decide for professions as midwives. By day, the Penanggalan mostly goes about its day as an everyday woman. At night, however, it twists its head off of its physique and flies out into the night time in search of blood.

Like an harbinger of birth, the Penanggalan perches on the roofs of homes the place female are in labour and lies in wait. As the lady offers birth, the Penanggalan will wriggle its invisible tongue into the residence and start draining the blood of the new mother. In some instances, it may also even devour the placenta, drain the blood of the new-born, and feast on the flesh of its victims as well. While the Penanggalan not often drains its victims entirely, these who have been fed on through the Penanggalan will contract a losing ailment that is nearly inescapably fatal.

Modern Day Influence

The penanggalan was once listed as a monster in the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons rulebook Fiend Folio. In Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others comics, Hellboy travels to Malaysia in 1958 the place a village devoid of Bomoh shaman has fallen sufferer to a demonic penanggalan. In the 2016 Image Comic Cry Havoc a personality named Sri displays that she is a penanggalan and describes how her head detaches from her physique and “slithers round like an electric powered eel”. The Penanggalan is listed as an enemy kind in the 1991 RPG Dark Conspiracy in the complement Dark Races the place it is described as a parasite that resides in a hosts skull, detaching when threatened.