Penanggalan: Asia’s Disembodied Vampiric Witch, Fact or Superstition?

I feel the need to add a couple of disclaimers before we start this episode. The first being that this story is a bit…gruesome in more ways than one. I’ll do my best to stay true to the story yet also keep it family-friendly, but if you don’t do well with gore or you have young kids in the car, this one might not be for you. And second, I would like to take a moment and remind our audience that these episodes, both our longer format and these shorter, solo-hosted detour episodes, are picked completely at random. It’s a cool process involving a dart and an atlas, and a globe, and… well, go find us on social and check it out. But the reason I say this is because I personally would have never sought this out to be my weekly story, but alas, fate hath brought us here. So without further ado…

This week we’re taking a detour to Borneo, the largest island in Asia that is said to be home to a disembodied, nocturnal witch that feeds on the em, monthly excretions of fertile women. Oh, and apparently, it can fly.

I’m Cody, and you’re touring Cryptids Across the Atlas. 

Off the coast of southeast Asia rests the third largest island on earth. At 288,000 square miles (which is about 20,000 miles bigger than Texas, for reference) and with elevation from sea level to peaks upwards of 13,000 feet, Borneo is a vast landscape with amazing spectacles to witness. This tropical wonder is largely covered in a variety of diverse rainforests. Its plant life varies from oaks, teak, and conifers to amazing creatures like elephants, orangutans, and the clouded leopard. It’s even home to the Corpse Flower, the largest and most putrid-smelling flower in the world. But if the legends are true, this giant flower isn’t the only corpse you might find in this Asian island oasis. 

Things had been a bit odd for the past year or so. Strange lights in the sky and weird noises in the night; were becoming more and more common occurrences. Security guards at the local lemonade factory had started to grow accustomed to the out-of-place commotion. But on July 22nd, 2008, it became a lot harder to dismiss the strange activities they’d been witnessing. 

The overnight guard noticed the CCTV monitor alert him. Motion had been detected outside the factory. He glanced up, and when he saw it, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Floating along the edge of the factory wall next to the adjacent field was what appeared to be a woman… or at least part of one. She had long, dark hair hanging off her angry, defined face, and dangling below, where her neck should have been, was nothing more than her esophagus tethered to her lungs, stomach, and intestines. She bobbed up and down in the night, emitting a sinister glow. 

The guard on duty, smitten with terror, pulled out his phone and snapped a photo to prove he wasn’t crazy. I mean, this was just a thing from old tales passed down. It was just a story, wasn’t it?  No one would have believed him if he went back and told his family, friends, or co-workers that he had seen a Penanggalan.

The Penanggalan is an ancient monster told from generation to generation in many Asian cultures. Like the werewolf or even the Yara-ma-yha-who we covered a few weeks back, In Malaysian folklore, the Penanggalan is a creature that was once a normal person. It is said to be the product of a woman who has mastered the arts of black magic. To become a Penanggalan, a ritual must be completed where the witch would soak herself in a vat of vinegar while performing an entrancing meditation. Upon proper completion, her head, followed by her entrails, would slip out of her neck where she would be free to roam the night and feed on the menstrual drippings from fertile, young women who had recently given birth. Hiding under her floorboards or bed frame, the Penanggalan would slip its long, syringe-like tongue out from its mouth and siphon the blood from its victim. The blood bond then slowly drains the life from the mother, causing her to contract a form of chronic wasting disease while strengthening the Penanggalan. After the Penanggalan finishes her late-night snack, she ghastly floats back to her home, where she then soaks her organs in vinegar, causing them to shrivel up. Then she drifts back into her body and locks her head back in place. 

Many versions of the Penanggalan have cropped up throughout history. Some claim it’s a witch, others say it’s the result of a woman bartering with demonic entities, while others claim that a man walked in on a woman while she was bathing, and she jerked around so fast it caused her head to fly right off her shoulders giving her the freedom to fly after him and hunt him down for vandalizing her privacy. But no matter which story is told, there’s one thing everyone agrees on: this creature is not something you want to ever witness firsthand. 

The Penanggalan is like a weird fever dream. The idea that something this outlandish could be out there seems pretty unbelievable. Yet, even reaching into our modern age with smartphones and CCTVs, people claim these things have been witnessed. There are dozens of modern sightings across Southeast Asia as recent as 2017. Many of these sightings are more strange light phenomena, similar to many of our ghost-lantern and light orb tales. There, these occurrences are often accredited to the Penanggalan, given its supposed eery nocturnal glow that can be seen from quite a distance. 

Superstitions have a way of tricking us into conforming reality to our beliefs. Confirmation bias is a lot easier than scientific research. Take the whole floating orb thing. Many scientists have found instances of swamp gasses that cause a similarly strange, spherical glow. Heck, I’ve seen some of this myself at our local ghost light location. When you know what you’re looking at, it’s pretty obvious. And then, of course, there’s ball lightning, that natural rarity when static electricity takes on an orbital form and hovers over the earth for upwards of a minute or more. 

But can every occurrence of an orb of light be one of these two things? Maybe there’s an answer out there we haven’t yet nailed down. In the case of our overnight security guard, one scientist thinks he has the answer. Dr. Chawan Koopipat, A professor and expert in photography and video technology from Chulalongkorn University, reviewed the CCTV footage firsthand, and while he did verify that the footage was in no way tampered with or altered, he did notice something quite interesting. Dr. Koopipat hypothesized it was all a trick of the eye and our perception of the lighting. With movement in the upper corner of the frame, a light source reflecting off the wet ground, and sitting next to an unkempt field, everything blurred together into that culturally familiar image. 

It makes sense when you frame it through that logic, but what doesn’t make sense is what showed up in the photo our security guard took of the CCTV footage with his smartphone. Because on the edge of the photo, not only can you make out the Penanggalan, but you can also make out the image of an old woman. But not just any old woman, it’s an old woman the young man recognized. The woman he saw in his photo was nonother than the old woman who lived in his village, the one they all thought might be a witch. But don’t worry, she has since passed on, and with her passing, all the strange occurrences seemed to have stopped. 

So if you ever find yourself wondering what that strange glow off in the distance is, or if you catch a subtle whiff of vinegar, and especially if you recently gave birth to a happy, healthy baby, keep an eye out for the Penanggalan. Oh, and hang thorns around your doors. They say that’s the best way to keep it away. After all, if you were a floating sack of organs, getting caught in a thorn bush would be no laughing matter, even if you were busting a gut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penanggalan

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/monster-mythology-penanggalan

https://monster.fandom.com/wiki/Penanggalan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasue