THINGS THAT GO BUMP
I've recently learned of a creature from Filipino lore that has to be the most terrifying ghoul in all of ghoul-dom: the Aswang. While the lore varies as lore is wont to do, the aswang is undead and feeds on children's flesh. By night, she is a wraith, thin enough to hide behind a bamboo pole and with feet that face backward. Some say she makes noises that grow quieter the closer she gets. Unlike a vampire, who at least has the decency to be dead for half the day, she can day walk and appears normal, if a bit shy. Horrified yet? No? When she learns of a pregnant woman, the Aswang will sneak up on her while she sleeps and suck the fetus out through her belly button. She steals babies from their cribs and children from the streets, and in their place she leaves an identical replacement made of banana tree trunks and leaves which gets sick and dies after a few days.
The banana baby is far from the only impostor in mythology. It seems humans have been fearing the invasion of the body snatchers for perhaps as long as we've had bodies.
In Europe, rather than babies made from banana trees, they have changelings - fae creatures who kidnap children and take their place, leaving the unsuspecting parents to raise a sickly, ill-tempered fae baby in their child's place. In Ireland, looking at a baby or its mother with envy might put the baby in the faeries' sights, and they might come and replace the baby with a síofra - a changeling child. To try and fool the changeling child, you could cook in eggshells or lay eggshells near a fire, which would cause the changeling to reveal its true age. If that didn't work, you could always toss your baby in the fire in hopes it will admit its true nature before it burns to death. That escalated quickly.
In Sweden, you might only have to pretend to murder the bortbytingen if it has replaced your child. You can avoid having your unbaptized baby swapped by placing iron or steel near it. The Swedish are not so uncivilized as to actually throw their children into a fire - they only beat them soundly and then threaten to throw them in the fire.
Horrific as changeling and body-snatcher myths are, they were, in their time, far less scary than just not knowing what caused all the awful things that happened to babies and kids. I mean, imagine you're a mom in the Philippines in the 1800s - you put a healthy baby to bed, and he never wakes up. You don't know what SIDS is, much less how to prevent it - all you know is that your grinning, perfect baby has been replaced by a dead body. There's no rhyme or reason to why some pregnancies last and some miscarry - maybe a ghoul makes as much sense as anything else. So society gradually evolves mythology around baby snatchers. And then eventually the myths start to include charms and wards that can keep the baddies away to let folks feel some sense of control. In Vietnam some give their babies insulting nicknames - dog or mud or harlot - to make them seem less appealing to the spirits that might want to snatch them. In parts of Africa, pregnant woman don't accept gifts before a baby's born, in case they're cursed. And once the baby's born, visitors are forbidden for the first few months, lest evil spirits slip in with the guests. And that silver rattle or spoon some aged relative gave your mom when you were born? Those things'll ward off witches, vampires, the evil eye, you name it.
Vampire myths, by the way, are thought to be how humans explained TB before they understood germs. But that's a story for another day.
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