Why So Many Names for the Same Monster?

A reflection written from a Catholic heart ~ inspired by a quiet afternoon talk with my daughter about myths, motherhood, and how even the oldest stories can lead us back to God’s light.

One lazy afternoon, my daughter and I were talking. Ate’s seven, and like me at this age, somehow already fluent in Greek mythology – their tangled loves, rivalries and family trees. I'd been quietly impressed and decided to challenge her.

“Does Aphrodite have any children?” I asked, pretending not to know.

She thought for a moment. “She does," she said finally, “but I just can’t remember the names.”

Almost at the same time, I name the most well-known of the goddess' spawn, “Cupid,” while Ate blurted out, “Eros.”

We laughed. Then I launched into explanation mode: “They’re the same: one Greek, one Roman.”

That led to a guessing game (Zeus and Jupiter, Aphrodite and Venus, Ares and Mars!) and finally, her brow furrowed as she asked, “But why do they have different names if they’re the same?”

It’s the kind of question that seems simple until you try to answer it.

I told her, “Because stories travel. They move from one place to another, and everytime they find a new home, they change a little – just like people do.”

And that got me thinking: If gods can travel and change names across cultures, what about monsters?

Take the Manananggal, for instance. In the Philippines, she is the winged, night-flying creature who separates her body to hunt the living and the unborn. But travel farther across the seas and you’ll meet her again... only now she’s called Penanggalan in Malaysia, Krasue in Thailand, Leyak in Bali.

Same monster. Different name.

So how is it that across such distant lands, we find the same creature – detached, winged, female, and hungry? 

Is it because she’s real? Or because something deeper, something universal in us, keeps bringing her to life again and again?

Across the Archipelago and Beyond: The Many Faces of the Manananggal

The Manananggal feels uniquely ours – born of our humid nights and restless imagination. Her name comes from the Tagalog word tanggal, which means “to remove” or “to separate.”

By day she is an ordinary woman; by night she leaves her lower half behind and takes flight, her wings slicing through the dark. She feeds on life itself (especially that of the unborn) and must return by dawn to rejoin her lower body, or perish if it has been salted or ashed.

She is terrifying because she is divided.
Half woman, half monster. Half flesh, half shadow.

Yet across Southeast Asia, her sisters fly by other names... all hauntingly familiar.

🇲🇾 Penanggalan – Malaysia’s Flying Head

In Malay folklore, Penanggalan detaches her head, trailing entrails like vines as she drifts through the night. She preys on mothers and infants, just like our Manananggal, and fears sharp thorns that can catch her organs midair.

Even her name shares the same root: tanggal. Remove. Sever.

🇹🇭 Krasue – Thailand’s Glowing Phantom

The Krasue is said to glow faintly as she floats through rice fields, cursed for dabbling in forbidden magic. Once a woman, now condemned to hunger, she feeds on the very lives she once helped bring into the world.

🇮🇩 Leyak – Bali’s Witch of the Night

In Bali, the Leyak is a witch whose sorcery allows her to transform into a floating head or animal.
She eats corpses and fetuses, and is feared yet respected – for her dark powers are as close to healing as they are to harm.

🇯🇵 Nukekubi – Japan’s Flying Head

In Japan, the Nukekubi detaches her head to attack the living. 

Her cousin, the Rokurokubi, stretches her neck to supernatural lengths instead – a subtler horror, but born of the same fear: that even ordinary faces may hide something monstrous.

Everywhere, the same woman appears – divided, winged, and hungry.
It’s as if some ancient archetype migrated from island to island, language to language, changing form but never essence.

But why this particular monster?
Why the woman who splits herself apart?

. . .

The Shared Shadows of Humanity

When I first noticed the pattern, I wondered how such specific stories could span so far.

The Manananggal, Penanggalan, Krasue, Leyak... They live across hundreds of islands and cultures, bound by the same dark thread.

So bakit kaya?

🧬 Because stories travel — like people do

Long before we had maps, our ancestors had boats.
The Austronesian peoples sailed from island to island, trading, marrying, and storytelling. Myths traveled with them, shaped by new dialects and fears.

When one island whispered of a woman who detached her body to fly into the night, another said, “We know her too.”

🧠 Because the fear is universal

Everywhere, humans feared the same things: darkness, childbirth, death, hunger, and the betrayal of what’s familiar.

When mothers died in childbirth or babies were stillborn, grief needed form... and the form became monstrous. 

The Manananggal became the shape of unexplainable loss – the personification of danger at the threshold of life.

🌒 Because the monster is also us

The Manananggal divides herself in two. Perhaps because we do too.

We, too, split ourselves into parts: the one we show, and the one we hide.

Her horror lies not in her wings, but in her resemblance to us – in our own hunger, secrecy, and longing for wholeness.

🌏 Because myth is memory

Some scholars say she may descend from ancient shamanic figures or healers whose roles blurred the line between life and death.

Others believe she mirrors women’s lost spiritual power – the echo of a time when the feminine was sacred before it was feared.

Whatever her origin, she is a living archive... A story that remembers what history forgot.

. . .

Through a Catholic Lens: The Battle Between Light and Shadow

Growing up Catholic, I see in her the old tension between flesh and spirit.

She leaves her lower half behind – a chilling image of what happens when we separate body from soul, goodness from grace.

She cannot survive the coming of light, just as sin cannot endure revelation.

Her repellents – salt and ash – read like sacraments in disguise. Salt purifies. Ash reminds us of our mortality.

In that light, the Manananggal becomes less a demon than a parable... A warning of what happens when we detach from what keeps us whole.

She is what remains when the human abandons the divine.

. . .

As Mga Sinakop: The Monster That Colonisation Made

To understand her completely, we must remember the centuries that rewrote her.

When Spain came to the Philippines, it brought not only faith but fear – fear of the babaylan, the female healers and spiritual leaders of precolonial times. Their power over birth, healing and ritual threatened the new order, so they were recast as witches and monsters.

Perhaps the Manananggal was never a monster at all; only a memory of power the world tried to erase.

A babaylan rendered unholy, her wings clipped by foreign empires.

Our ancestors’ story was divided – one half baptised, the other demonised. And in that split, the Manananggal found her shape: half remembered, half condemned, and wholly misunderstood.

Yet she endures, surviving conquest and conversion; a creature of darkness who reminds us of our fractured light.

* * *

🕯️ Full Circle

I didn't go into such depth with my daughter, of course. To her, mythology is still an adventure; a world of gods, heroes, and creatures that make the universe glow with possibility. 

But that afternoon stayed with me. Because when she asked why the same stories appear under different names, she was really asking why stories last at all.

Maybe it’s because they carry what doesn’t change – love, fear, hope and loss – wrapped in forms that do.

The gods may change names; the monsters may change faces. But what they speak of – our light, our darkness, and our need to understand what haunts us – remains.

I think of the Manananggal that way now... Not merely a creature of horror stories, but a reflection of how we too are split between heaven and earth, faith and fear, memory and forgetting.

She is not proof that evil is real – but that our longing to make sense of it is.

“So… if it’s the same monster, why can’t everyone just call it one name?” My pondering seven-year-old prodded, pulling my thoughts back into the moment.

I smiled.

“Maybe because every place remembers her a little differently – the same way people remember God in different languages, but He’s still one and the same.”

Because stories, after all, are how we remember who we are. And sometimes, to see the light more clearly, we have to remember what the light has already redeemed.

May every story we tell — and every shadow we face — lead us closer to the light that never leaves.

✍️ Author’s Note

This reflection was written from a Catholic heart – as a mother, a storyteller, and a believer seeking meaning in the stories we inherit. It does not celebrate the occult, but rather explores how old fears and myths echo humanity’s longing for redemption. For me, even in the darkest tales, the thread of grace remains... Leading always back to the light.