Have you watched the movie Babadook where the mother read a creepy pop-up storybook to her child?
That’s it. Except for the part of the book.
We don’t have a book or any bedtime storybook.
It’s usually our helper/nanny who puts me and my brothers to sleep. So bedtime story is like an are-you-afraid-of-the-dark series for us.
Of course, we didn’t tell our parents about it because we liked it.
If you ask me, in our country, grown-ups tell scary stories to children to frighten them so that they will behave and will try to fall asleep as soon as possible. Don’t worry, it’s a typical Filipino thing. I grew up normal, I think! 😀
“Go to sleep or the boogeyman will get you!” This is the most common adult-demanding-us-to-sleep-right-away phrase.
“What is a boogeyman? How will I prevent it from eating me?” Oh, asked the little me from 26 years ago.
“Well… the boogeyman is a …”
So, the storytelling begins.
By the way, it depends on what kind of boogeyman people mean.
A boogeyman could be… yes, the obvious shadowy figure from the closet. It could also be a manananggal, a beautiful woman who splits her body in half after rubbing a special oil on her body, grows a pair of wings and flies in the middle of the night to look for her victims. Or a tikbalang, a man with a head, and a tail of a horse. Or a kapre, a big black hairy man with red eyes who smokes a cigar and lives in a tree. And more and more…
When I was 9 years old, my father would come home for 3 months after being deployed from other parts of the Philippines. Every night, he would turn the radio on and listen to horror radio anthologies.
Imagine what I have to go through. 😦
No wonder I can’t sleep alone at night. I can…with the lights on!
How can you sleep when in the middle of the night, you can hear tiny people (duwende or elves) arguing on your pillow, right in front of your face?
Ask my younger brother, he heard them too.
My childhood bedtime stories influenced me a lot. It gave me a wild imagination, running freely in an enchanted forest found at the end of a rainbow.
xoxo,
Sometimes I wonder how much children can avoid terrifying themselves — when I was a child, I kept freaking myself out by deliberately hunting down ghost stories to read in the library and then having nightmares about them!
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That’s so true. Our curiosity excites us. Even up to now, it still excites the children inside us. 😁
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Exactly! There’s this really fascinating part in Stephen King’s “Danse Macabre” when he talks about how all horror writers, if you look at them closely, have a very child-like aura about them. I sometimes wonder if he wasn’t onto something there.
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Yes, could be. His concepts are really intruiging.
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My father often told us scary stories before bedtime too! And then he expected us to actually go to sleep, hahaha!
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They think it’s the easiest way for us to sleep! Oh adults! Haha!
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What is it with us Filipinos and ghost stories? I wasn’t interested in stories that didn’t involvery the supernatural!
Ps.
Loved Babadook AND your blog!
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I think it’s because of our ancestors. Oh wait! Are you Filipino?
Thank you for the follow. I followed you a month ago but I think something went wrong when I tried the hosting in wordpress. Anyway, followed back again! I like supernatural stuff too! 🙂
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Yes I am Filipina. .. my Mom is so I’m half. And our family lives in Hawaii.
I have two blogs, so you may,have followed that one first. Anyway its all good. Read ya later:-)
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Oh okay that’s nice! See you around! 🙂
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