Know your Asian ghostie: Hantu Tengelong (part 2 of 2)
Who was she?
She was once a mortal woman but that all changed when she traded her soul for beauty through the practice of black magic.
What does she want?
The blood of pregnant women. She perches on the roofs of houses of women in labour, screeching when the child is born. She then uses her long invisible tongue to lap up the blood of the new mother. Those whose blood the Hantu Tengelong had fed upon is left with a supernatural fatal disease. Is there a cure? Well fight the supernatural with the supernatural I guess and consult a bomoh (witch doctor of sort).
How to protect yourself from her?
Surround your houses with thorns! Not just any thorns, but the thorns of the Mengkuang. That why if she comes, her dangling bits will get caught and cut up in thorny bushes. To be extra safe, women can keep a pair of scissors or betel nut cutters under her pillow as the hantu is afraid of them (why? Not sure really, Raz thinks its probably a paranoia of getting those dangly bits cut off?). People who live in traditional Malay houses plant pineapples under their houses (these houses sit on stilts so they have an ‘under house area’) to prevent the creature from coming in that way.
- Mengkuang Shrub (Photo credit: chekjawa)
Can she die or be vanquished?
Actually, she can be ‘put to rest’ (kill is such a violent word) through the following methods:
- When she gets herself caught in the thorny bushes of the mengkuang, brave men can go get their trusty ‘parangs’ (machetes) and do the deed.
- The many kinds of Parang (Photo credit: Sabah.org)
- If you’re pretty certain there’s one flying about, then the lot of you (strong stomach men only) can spy on her (mind the dripping blood) to find out where she lives. Then the next night she goes out, break an entry into her house and fill her hallow vinegar immersed body (through the hole in the neck) with shards of broken glass and nails then leave of course! She’ll die when she tries to tuck herself back into the booby trapped body as the glass and nails should cut and shred her entrails.
- Of you can just sanctify the body then cremate it before she returns. That way she has no body to go attach back to and after that I suppose an angry brave mob can go hunt her down with their parangs.
