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Forgotten Folklore & Legends That Are Downright Bizarre

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2023 26 min

Vampire Folklore Was Exploited to Beat Back the Reds

Edward Lansdale, left. US-Philippines Society

In 1950, the CIA brought in Air Force brigadier general Edward Lansdale to help with the fight against the Huks. A pioneer in clandestine and psychological warfare, Lansdale believed that psy-ops against insurgent groups should be tailored to the specific culture targeted. The specific culture of central Luzon, where the Huks throve, happened to have a bit of folklore that turned out to be useful to Lansdale. The locals believed in the existence of a shape-shifting vampire called an aswang.

Folklore - An aswang — An aswang. Culture Trip

In Filipino folklore, aswangs drained their victims’ blood with a long, sharpened tongue. So Lansdale mimicked aswang attacks. He abducted and ended Huk fighters, drained their blood, and made puncture wounds on their necks. The bodies were left for other Huks to find – and conclude that their comrade had been drained of blood by an aswang. It proved highly effective, and cleared Huk fighters out of an area. Between that and other counterinsurgency tactics, the Huk Rebellion was crushed within a few years.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.