For Halloween, Pea visits Siquijor, an island with a reputation for witchcraft, magical creatures, and love potions, and interviews tourists and locals about their superstitions. The answers range from common customs like pagpag and usog to firsthand ghost sightings, possessions treated by an albularyo (local healer), a mother's working love potion, and a family that says it descends from witches.
Pea's setup
- Halloween in the West is candy and scary movies, but many Filipinos genuinely believe in monsters and ghosts as part of everyday life
- Siquijor is known for witchcraft, magical creatures, and potions that can make you fall in love or hit you with a deadly curse
- If you think nobody takes this seriously in the 21st century, "check this out"
Ella, Julia, and Dwyane (a group visiting from Cebu)
- Pagpag: after visiting a burial or wake, you must stop somewhere else before going home so the spirits of the departed don't follow you back. Pea asks, "What about if it was cute?" (No.)
- One of them has seen a ghost: a glowing white figure looking at a crib, "that was my last memory of it"
- Fear of Siquijor: growing up, family warned that Siquijor isn't a place for a good vacation and you'd bring bad spirits home. Now older, this person sees it as a nice destination, "a cheaper version of Boracay or Siargao." Even their tuk-tuk drivers asked whether they believe in the creatures. They say they're fine with it
- Julia was scared as a kid because of barang (sorcerers) and aswang, but that faded as she got older and she really likes the island
- Pea asks about attractive men. Answer: "There's a lot of good-looking people here"
- Love potions
- One considered buying one, but her mom warned that if you buy one for your boyfriend, he'll fall in love with someone else instead. It backfires
- Julia was tempted but heard it brings bad karma ("magabaan")
- Another (Pea calls her "Langga") doesn't believe in them: if someone truly loves you, they'll accept you as you are without potions
- Witchcraft: one comes from a religious Christian family. Asked if they wanted anything from Siquijor, the parents said no, don't bring anything home because you might bring witchcraft back with it
The possession story (a young woman)
- Grade 4: an unseen kid her age and height sat beside her in class and kept asking her to go outside and play during lessons. She'd cry and refuse because they had class. She was the only one who could see him, and classmates called her crazy. Her teacher found it creepy and had her parents take her home
- Grade 5: she collapsed with her hands twisted. Her panicked family took her to an albularyo, who said she was possessed by the spirit of a woman who had died
- Treatment: pray the rosary at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., and return to the albularyo every Wednesday and Friday for "the magic thing"
- It took more than a month, and she was out of school almost two months
- Grade 10: a big tree on campus was rumored to have something living in it. The students didn't believe it, and the big branches were cut off
- Afterward more than 30 students were possessed, including her
- She threw a wooden chair through an entire glass window
- Classmates said five people were holding her arms and she easily threw them off. She was told she spat on a priest who was there
- When she came to she remembered nothing. Her skirt and polo uniform were torn, and she had bruises and wounds
- It happened the day before an exam, so she got exempted. The school told her parents to keep her home at least a month
- That was the last time, about 7 or 8 years ago. She thinks it was the albularyo, not the priest, who cured her
Another interviewee (usog, fairies, ghosts, duwende)
- Usog: your stomach hurts, like someone put a curse on you. It mostly affects babies and happens when someone is too fond of them ("oh you're so cute, baby")
- The fix: a little saliva (not spitting on the baby) traced in a cross on the baby's stomach, the soles of the feet, or the forehead
- Pea asks if that's unhygienic. Answer: it's okay "as long as the baby will be fine"
- Fairies live in the forest. Disturb them and you get sick with blisters or rashes on your skin. The cure is the albularyo, the local healer in the barangay, rather than a medical doctor
- Has seen many ghosts, both here and in Valencia, Quezon. They look "blurry," so you can't tell if it's a man or a woman
A man (Kuya) on duwende (dwarfs)
- Dwarfs live in mounds. If you accidentally pee on a mound, your private parts get bigger
- Pea: "Well, guys should go there and pee a lot." He says no. Asked if he's experienced it: "Maybe"
A dancer on ghosts and good witches
- As a child practicing dance at school at night, saw a ghost dressed all in black with no visible face. Knew it was a ghost from the creepy feeling. Froze and couldn't speak to call anyone
- Believes in witchcraft because her ancestors are from Siquijor. Thinks the witches are good because they can heal
A woman whose mother used a love potion
- She often goes to Siquijor. Growing up, her mom used a love potion on her current partner, not on the interviewee's father
- The man was married; both he and her mom were separated, and her mom was "fighting for this guy." They've been together a long time and are still together
- She hasn't tried a love potion herself but believes in it
A woman whose family says they are witches
- Her most-believed superstition is witchcraft because, according to her family, "we are one of them." She doesn't think she has powers, but her ancestors did
- What witches do: hex people who were rude to them
- Has she explored her powers? No. "Well, I hope so, cuz I don't like the people around me." Then she backtracks: hexing is bad, and if people are nasty she'll just pray
- Pea asks how witchcraft and prayer don't clash. Her answer: He will always be with you
A woman with a ghost sighting and a tikling
- Playing hide and seek at school, she hid in the comfort room at the back of the school and saw a girl ghost in blurry white, face not visible, not fully transparent. She ran
- Her family said she was making it up, but she now believes "what you see is what you believe"
- In her hometown, everyone had to go inside at 6 p.m. every day because creatures walk around. She disobeyed her mother to explore and says she saw a tikling, a bird-like creature, transform into a human with her own eyes. "They really exist. My mother told me."
Pea's closing
- Filipinos are pretty superstitious, "but what if we're right?" If you hear a weird sound at night, don't assume it's nothing. "It could be a half bird, half man, dwarf creature with a giant thingy"
Outro gag
- Pirate "Captain P": if you've abandoned ship in the West and want a Filipina first mate, "there's nothing like the Philippines to put a little fire in your hole"
- "For all you new seamen, stay off me poop deck. Don't be asking me to blow the man down, and keep your hands off me booty"
