Chapter 12: Tikbalang

Tikbalang or tigbalang (demon horse) is a half-man and half-horse creature. It has a horse's head, the body of a human but with the feet of the horse. It travels at night to rape female mortals. The raped women will then give birth to more tikbalang. They are also believed to cause travelers to lose their way particularly in mountainous or forest areas.[15]Tikbalang are very playful with people, and they usually make a person imagine things that aren't real. Sometimes a tikbalang will drive a person crazy. It is said that a person can render the Tikbalang's tricks futile somehow by wearing their shirt inside out. One can avoid the tikbalang all together by just keeping quiet or by asking politely to pass it by. The tikbalang is not particularly dangerous to humans though and it can even be tamed. Legends say that when rain falls while the sun is shining, a pair of tikbalang are being wed. Since horses only arrived in the Philippine archipelago during the Spanish colonization (thus, the borrowed term 'kabayo'), there is a theory that the image of a half-horse, half-man creature was propagated by the conquistadors to keep the natives afraid of the night. There are stories claiming that the tikbalang are actually half-bird, half-man creatures, much like the Japanese tengu. The Tikbalang (/ˈtikbaˌlaŋ/) (also Tigbalang, Tigbalan, Tikbalan, Tigbolan, or Werehorse) is a creature of Philippine folklore said to lurk in the mountains and forests of the Philippines. It is a tall, bony humanoid creature with the head and hooves of a horse and disproportionately long limbs, to the point that its knees reach above its head when it squats down.[1] In some versions it is a transformation of an aborted fetus sent to earth from limbo.