INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

Guess who’s back? It’s me, thank you for bearing with me whilst I was off adventuring! I had a lovely time off on my holidays, Edinburgh is one of the most amazing cities I have been too and I had a lovely time being with my partner for a solid week, which we haven’t been able to do since COVID came along. 

Then I headed off to Copenhagen for a conference, but had a brilliant time with my amazing Danish, American and English colleagues, but gutted that I didn’t get to see the Little Mermaid statue up close as I didn’t have time. Also, I went swimming in the canal, which was, in hindsight, a terrible idea as firstly - jellyfish, and secondly I had a horrendous cold when I got over to Denmark and I managed to give myself a lovely chest infection for when I got back home. Yippeee!

Either way, very happy to be back - I’m going to do that same break next year too, and I’ll do another one in March for my birthday, just so I can have a little me time for a bit. 

Also, whilst away, we hit 4000 downloads! Ahhh how exciting! I can’t believe how many people actually tune in each week, which is about 200 now - thank you so much for taking the time to listen to my ramblings, I truly appreciate every one of you.

DESCRIPTION:

So enough about that - let’s get onto our monster of the week! This week we’re heading back over to the Philippines to look at the spooky Sigbin! You might not have heard of this one, as it’s a particularly localised creature and is not very well known outside of the Philippines, but they’re pretty freaky - so I thought WHY NOT.

Sigbin are described as looking, kind of like a goat, kind of like a donkey, or kind of like a kangaroo. They have long flexible tails that they use as a whip, with sharp teeth, red eyes and long ears that they can perfectly clap along to Sorry you’re not a winner to. No joke though, they can clap their ears, which I actually can’t imagine without either thinking of the Cha-Cha slide or maybe the YMCA.

They are said to have a horrific smell, so much so that it makes you want to vomit, and also highlights that one is close by, that’s if you can see one of course. They can be completely invisible to all beings, especially humans, who they actively prey upon. If you do manage to see one, they will appear to have their head between their legs, like a dog who knows he’s in trouble, but also, walking backwards - which is only one of this monster’s super unique and weird characteristics.  

So I said they munch on people. But what do they eat specifically and how, I hear you ask?

They are actually almost vampiric in nature, they suck blood from their victims, but not in the usual vampy way of biting their limbs/necks and draining them, but by draining their shadows. How creepy is that!? Their favourite meal is children, because of course it is - it’s said that a Sigbin will only leave its lair during Holy Week, which is Easter in western terms, looking for children that it will kill for their hearts, which it’ll then turn into hella fashionable amulets. Not sure what they do with them from that point, but I love the idea.

They are also known to eat leftover corpses of both animals and humans, which apparently causes that horrific smell that identifies them. If animal carcasses are found in the wild, sometimes this is even blamed on the Sigbin, especially if there are loads of bodies around.

ORIGIN:

Now this myth really started going in the Visayas Islands and Mindanao, which are the two biggest island chunks in the Philippines, which include the capital city of Manila and the other biggest city in the two regions, Davao. However, it seems that the most reports of this monster are from the island of Cebu, which is one of the central Visayas Islands, which is home to a gorgeous woodland and mountainous landscape. 

A good thing to remember here too is that the Philippines is an archipelago which has over 7,500 islands. So it's supernatural folklore is incredibly diverse and varies from region to region, so sometimes it can be really easy to track down, but sometimes quite the opposite.

For this monster, it’s pretty tricky. There’s no distinctive time when this myth started going around, however, we know that the rumours are definitely quite old considering that they have made their way into folklore and mythos. Also I can’t find any etymology for the name either, which really sucks - but at least we have enough information to give you a good description. 

Now apparently, there are families in the Philippines known as Sigbinan or "those who own Sigbin". Their members possess the power to command Sigbin, mostly to keep intruders out of their property, kind of like a guard dog. They’re said to keep them in jars made of clay, and let them out in the nighttimes, although, not sure how that works with the shadow eating aspect, as there are no shadows in the dark - maybe they wait near lampposts or something. They’re said to be incredibly lucky if you do ‘own’ one of these monsters, and you do have to feed them blood into their little jar - so they sound like too much upkeep for me.

If you cast your mind back to the Manananggal episode, I talked about the mythical demons in Filipino mythos called Aswang. They are basically a classification of demons and monsters in their folklore, and the Manananggal is certainly one of them, however, the Sigbin is not. The Aswang are actually said to keep them as pets, rather than them being treated as equals to them, which I think is a good thing? The only other pet they keep are mythical birds known as a Wak-Wak, who again act as a vampiric creature. They will send both creatures out when they cannot find human prey, to find animals for the Aswang keepers to feed on. Both are known as familiars, much like a witch and a black cat or a toad, to both Aswang and to their Sigbinan families. 

I found a really cool encounter story when searching online for this. A teenager was walking home in the afternoon and heard what she thought was clapping in the distance. She went to take a look, and found an old house, surrounded by about 20 Sigbin. She was horrified, as usually these are invisible, and to see so many was absolutely petrifying. Also, one was staring directly at her. She ran for her life, straight back home and kept looking back to see if they were chasing her, thankfully they were not - but apparently this woman was properly traumatised by this event, no wonder really.

There was apparently a caught Sigbin back in 2017, which was put on Youtube with over 3 million views. However, any person could just tell that this was a bear of some kind, which was clearly suffering. I don’t recommend the video, it’s so horrible. But it turns out, it was a hairless sun-bear, and he was released back into the wild happily and healthy, which is wonderful news.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

To catch these in modern culture is pretty difficult honestly, this is the part I really struggled finding any information about this week. For art, I would recommend looking at the independent artists for this one, only as they’re a very elusive little creature and so no one has done any ‘official’ art of them, if that makes sense - the only one I can suggest is that of Jhun Entico, which I actually think is quite cute.

You can also see some pictures of the ‘captured’ Sigbin from the case I mentioned earlier, and the apparent sightings too in the dark, but I would not recommend looking too closely into those, mainly because it’s probably faked and they’re a bit frightening.

We’re a bit short on the movie from too, however, there are three movies from the Philippines that have Sigbin mentioned, such as in Sigbin from 2017, Babang Luksa from 2011 and Ugong from 2012. 

Same with TV I’m afraid, but they are in some more popular western programs such as My Little Universe - which is in the My Little Pony universe here. And of course, like most of our creatures, they’re in Supernatural at some point. However, a really cool find here is that there is a new anime series on Netflix called Trese. Which is about a warrior-shaman—who assists the Metro Manila police in solving supernatural crimes. It’s going to have A LOT of Filipino creatures in, so one for you anime monster fans!

The only game I could actually find them in is Pathfinder, which comes up a lot in this podcast - but I can’t seem to find them in anything else from my research - if you know of any other mentions, please do give me a DM.

Lastly, my book recommendation for this week is definitely going to be The Creatures Of Midnight: Mythical Beings from Philippine Folklore by Maximo D Ramos. I mentioned his book series in the Manananggal episode, and he is very literally the expert on all things Filipino mythos and cryptid, so if you are interested in that mythology, please do go and check out his books!

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed? With this one, I’m going to say probably not - only because if you look up any art of them, you will see that they look awfully either like kangaroos, or dogs. Dogs make sense - they might have had an issue with rabies and this was a bogeyman tale to scare children away from going near them - but the kangaroo thing is pushing it a little. Considering that kangaroos are only really found in Australasia, it’s gonna be a big jump to get from Aus to the Philippines. 

However, there is speculation that the legend may be based on sightings of an another, almost myth monster; they have literally just discovered a cat-fox on the nearby island of Borneo, which is carnivorous, and walks on its hind legs like a person - so it has been rumoured that sightings of Sigbin may actually be sightings of a member of the cat-fox, which is also pretty cool.

However, I like the idea of these - much like most of the monsters we cover. The idea that they suck blood from shadows is really creepy, and honestly, some of the ‘photos’ taken of them over the years are considerably scary, with people referencing a creepypasta character called Rake, I do not recommend looking this up if you’re of a sensitive disposition like me, but apparently these sightings also look awfully like this guy - so who knows, maybe one or the other is real. 

Personally, I’m happy for the Sigbin to be around rather than the Rake - like I’m not gonna sleep well tonight after looking at comparison pictures in the name of podcasting. 

OUTRO: 

That was an interesting one! I found this one a little tricky to find loads of information on, it’s a bit elusive - but I think it’s still a fairly interesting creature and I love covering Filipino monsters, I think they are some of the cooler ones!

Next week we’re heading over to Ancient Egypt to look at the wise bird boys, the Bennu. Come flying next week to learn all about these historic birds from ancient Egyptian myth!

For now thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk.

Also with this, I’ve updated the website so that you can find all of the books, movies, video games and TV shows that I’ve mentioned each episode, because I know most of you aren’t listening with a pen and paper in your hands! This can be found in the Resources section of the site.

As always, come join the fun next week and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.