Fellow ridiculous historians, Welcome to this week's classic episode NOL. We were talking off air a little bit, and this is one of my favorite ones. I went through an obsessive phase with this.
With what the ass wang? It's ass wong? All right? Is a nasty is way funny?
Yeah, Miss Jackson, look at this one as a crossover in a way. This is the kind of stuff we talk about on our other podcast that we do with our dear dear Palt Matt Frederick. Stuff they don't want you to know. This is the story of how the CIA used vampires, weaponized psychology strikes again as weapons of war. Not like they had a stable of vampires that they would like set free on their enemies, you know, who would feast upon their blood, but just the idea of vampires, right.
The aswalm is a fascinating legendary creature monster and it's well established in the folklore of the Philippines. As we'll see in this classic when the CIA needed to take care of a group of communist rebels over in the Philippines, they got super weird with it. They're really thinking outside the box.
You are absolutely right, then, myth making at his finest, you know, for the purposes of control fame as it ever.
Was, same as it ever was.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thanks for tuning in. Do you remember how earlier in in a previous episode, we had said we would maybe do more ghost or monsters spooky stories leading into Halloween.
Wow, yes, yes I do remember that. Then we're a little early for Halloween. But you know what, we're so chock full of monsters that were we just we just got them spelling out of the sides. So we're gonna start early with a story about something called the ass Wang.
Yes, excuse, you're right, You're right, I think either way, you are correct. We were talking about a very specific type of monster. And before we get to it, let's introduce one of our favorite monsters, ladies and gentlemen, super producer Casey Pegram Casey, are you okay that I referred to you as a monsters that love it Casey on the Case? So, growing up, were you into monsters? No?
I mean I'm clearly a monster of myself because I'm meaning cheese. It's on their show, Unshoptable and Behavior borish. Oh gosh, I hate myself now. Of course I love monsters. Yeah, yeah, I was a little frightened of them. I thought they lived under my bed and in my closet. Sure, do you remember that movie The Willies Barely Well, that's a deep,
deep kuy. It has young Sean Aston in it, and it's sort of an are You Afraid of the Dark style campfire tale movie where a second anthology, and there was one in particular where there was a really creepy, uh gangly kind of pumpkinhead looking monster with long, skinny fingers who menaced the children at a middle school, and that stuck with me.
Man, Yeah, it's strange when you think of how profoundly some of those things can impact us as children. I was addicted to scary stories to tell in the dark.
Those covers alone are like nightmare fuel, pure nightmare fuel.
And the guy's a legit folklorest And one of the things I loved about it was that it was different from the usual fair of monstrosity that we see in the US. I've also wondered, I don't know how much the game's done in this, but I've also wondered and marveled at the sheer variety of goblins ghouls, which is monsters in other parts of the world, like just what
we would categorize as vampires. Just that category alone contains hundreds and hundreds of creatures that many people have never heard of, but in their countries of origin, these creatures are taken very, very seriously.
And one of them is the asswhal. Yeah, the Asswong is sort of a pantheon of monsters, right. It's sort of like in Japanese culture, you've got the yokai, which are just kind of a stand in for any kind of goblin or magical creature or whatever. And here's the thing. I wanted to pose this to you before we get too much further. Sure, we're talking about our childhood obsession and fear and you know PTSD associated with monsters, but as a thirty five year old man and Ben, I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna spill your age. You're ageless, but I don't think monsters are real anymore. That is not something that keeps me up at night. It's just normal baseline anxiety that keeps me up at night. Now, that's my monster, yeah, but in other countries that's not quite the case.
That's absolutely true. Hey, can I have some cheese its? Do you have any thanks? Can you guys tell we're recorded on a Friday afternoon, thanks man.
So, yeah, that's absolutely true.
These are taken seriously, and the ass wong is just one example. You'll hear other names for it too, like the tick tick or the clean clean or the osawong.
But I think you're right.
Our fears tend to evolve with us, you know what I mean, Our monsters grow up with us. That sounds way more cryptic than I intended. And in the Philippines, where the asswong originates, they have often been taken very seriously as like a legitimate, credible physical threat to you and your loved ones.
Yeah, it's one of those things where you probably if you grew up in the Philippiness tasty innet but got a good crunch, good trying to do it off the mic, goodbite. Yeah,
that's probably good etiquette. But yeah, I mean, you know, if you grew up in the Philippines, or you know somebody that grew up in the Philippines, chances are you've met somebody that whether they themselves or someone they know, or possibly their grandpa or something, or you know, a loved one will have claimed with full belief to have either encountered one of these creatures, possibly been attacked by one of them, or even maybe know someone who met
their untimely end at the hands or claws or fangs or you knowes dripping intestines. Yeah, can we go through some of let's do this get yeah? Okay?
So, as we mentioned, a swong is kind of an umbrella to her, and in different regions of the Philippines you will hear different descriptions of what anaswog actually is. And despite its different variations, it is probably the most frightening mythical creature in this type of folklore. So one thing that's always kind of the common thread is that their shapes shit, they can somehow change shape. The big difference is arrive when we ask what shapes they change into.
So we mentioned that they can have long claws. Do we mention the torso thing yet you.
Alluded to it, Ben, But give us give us the quick and dirty.
So there's the appearance of a person. It's just a torso arms in the head and they're flying, they levitate, and they're intestines dripped down under them.
Just kind of dragging like a train, you know, and.
They eat unborn children and toddlers. Usually they want to eat the livers and the hearts.
Yeah, and there's even one that I think has some sort of specially adapted tongue that they can use to suck out the fetus from a pregnant woman.
Yeah, like a like a very evil mosquito, exactly. Yes, So they're sometimes described as very very thin, they're always described as kind of fast, and some of them make different noises, right, that's going to be importantly.
Yeah, that's right. There's some that look like pigs who make obviously pig type noises, snorting and you know, grinding their teeth, and and they're also quite large. Then they're also like werewolf type oswong that are you about like you would think some of them look more like a regular dog. Some of them look like maybe like a hyena or a jackal of something like that, or just some kind of any kind of like wild kind of
rabid beasts. But then you have the scariest of all that there's a great connection between this and the way we look at these kind of creatures vampires. You've got the ones that look mainly like you.
Or I, but they are still out for blood, livers and hearts, right, because they they can shift into a human form and then shift I guess into their more monstrous forms, as legend would have it. As legend would
have it, Yes, very important, very important. They also have these weird, these techniques that are so fascinating since if you read on mythology dot net just a quick overview of Aswog there, it's apparently common for Aswong to turn plants into doppelgangers of their victims to hide evidence of their hunting from locals. That's pretty cool, man, I mean, that's a pretty I mean it's a dark power, but it's pretty neat power, right. And so they do it
in two ways. They might make a doppelganger of a corpse so it looks like the person died without an Aswog attack. Or they might make a doppelganger of a living person. When they make one of a living person a living victim, then the doppelganger goes to that person's home, they fall ill, and they die. Why are we telling you all of this, Well, we're telling you this because this story comes into play in a very strange and
ingenious way. Shortly after World War Two, the Philippine Army is fighting an insurgency led by communist rebels known as the hook balahp In. Pardon my pronunciation, I am not a Tagolic speaker.
Well, you're not going to try the alternate pronunciation for when they sort of shifted their purposes. That one's even harder. It's got like an ng there said, he pronounced that ng on its own.
So this, this army is having the age old series of problems that organized armies have when they run into gorilla forces.
Right there.
They're fighting an enemy that is often invisible, able to blend in with the local non fighting population, you know what I mean. And they're like, how do we how do we combat this? We need a method of our own.
We need something we could do that will squash this rebellion, and it may need to be an unconventional method because this also just for the background here, these who are also called hucks Huk, they're fighting against the status quo, the wealthy Filipinos who had collaborated with Japanese invaders.
Right because originally they were part of the team. Right during World War two, when the Philippines were leaked up with the US fighting against the Japanese. This group was fighting the good fight, right and then after the end of the war they started they kind of became installed as the de facto militia or military of the communist government.
Right right right, because it's you can see how they feel very short changed in this at this position because the collaborators with the Japanese have grabbed a ton of land afterwards, and they own a bunch of resources, and the inequality of the country, which was already very extreme, is just going to continue as though nothing has changed. So of course they want a rebellion. Of course they want a different government.
And just to try my hand at butchering and pronunciation, they did change the name after this switcheroo happened to huckbo in Baion Lebon Sa Hopon that was also known as the anti Japanese Army.
That was pretty good, man, I thought that was pretty good.
But not only were they against the Japanese army, they ultimately ended up becoming against the Filipino government because they believe that the President Manuel Roxis was a sympathizer with or a collaborator I guess with what the Japanese I'm confused about that.
Yeah, that he was collaborating with them to enrich himself and then also, you know, in his capitalism, So that's obviously not gonna fly with these guys. But there's another another player enters.
The game, Yeah, the big one, because let's we forget the US is involved and has an interest here, and they want to get those those huckbo's literally running for the hills. So inter Air Force Brigadier General Edward G. I read this originally, and I thought it said Landslide, which would have been an awesome last name for in general, but unfortunately it is Lansdale. And he is a huge proponent of a little something called SIOPS. Ben bless us
with your military history acumen. What's siops? Think?
Everybody knows? Psychological operations also known as psychological warfare. This includes everything from propaganda given to soldiers over the radio to things like ghost armies that we've mentioned before.
Yeah, like in Vietnam, the US military used the sounds recorded sounds of like wailing damned ancestors of the Vietcong and it works. So I would say SIOPS is sort of the art of freaking out your enemy.
Right, Yeah, I think that's a good way to describe. It's intimidation. And Lansdale is very, very familiar with this. There's a great book by an author named Max Boot called The Road Not Taken Edward Lansdale in the American Track in Vietnam, which touches on some of Lansdale's activities. Lensdale is no stranger to siops. He's he's a huge fan of psychological warfare, and he has he has chops, he has some uh, he has some things on his
resume that are unethical but impressive. He orchestrates a campaign in Vietnam that makes nearly a million refugees flee the country because he hired a soothsayer to predict good fortune for South Vietnam and bad luck for the North.
Wow.
Okay, so not firing a shot, just getting into people's heads.
Yeah, yeah, you know. It reminds me of there's anpisode of Money Python where it's like the most dangerous joke in the world and they use it against their enemies and only every like major commander can only hold like one word of the joke at a time, because if they themselves read it in one go, they would be stricken mad or whatever. So they hold it up for the enemy to see, and you see, it takes some kind of a minute have to recognize what it is,
and then they all just laugh themselves to death. Uh, you know, obviously kind of a silly satirical version, but sort of describing this phenomenon that we're talking about here using people's thoughts and attitudes and preconceived ideas against them.
Yes, and we have a quote from Lansdale himself at something called the Asswongproject dot com siwar in the Philippines, Asswong and the CIA. So this is before his Vietnam stuff, by the way. So Lansdale says, a combat sy war squad was brought in to the Philippines. It planted stories among town residents of an Asswong living on the hills
where the Hucks were based. So they spread these They spread these rumors, and then two nights later, after giving the stories time to sort of percolate up to the Hucks, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of a patrol and they killed him. They punctured his neck with two holes as if a vampire bit him, and they hung his body up by the heels to exsanguinate him, to
drain them of all blood. And then they took the corpse and they dragged it back to the trail where the guy would have disappeared, and he just plopped his body out there. So what happened next, Well, they like littered these corpses, you know, all around the area. And it did not go over well with the with the invading forces right or the you know, attempting to overthrow forces right right, the communist rebel groups they returned, they were trying to look for their comrade. And can you
imagine how frightening that is? Like, that's the thing. It may sound silly for people to be frightened of a mythological monster, right, but imagine you work with someone, like think of all your coworkers. You work with someone, You go out to a party with them, they disappear, You come back the next day and you find them with bipe marks and no blood. That's frightening. I might fall for that. I don't know, what do you think, nol.
I mean, you know, tensions are already running high in this in this situation of this like guerrilla warfare. Yeah, here's the here's the kicker though. This was syops on the surface, but syops typically doesn't involve war crimes because you're not supposed to. You know, they're capturing these people and then they're basically torturing and murdering them. Yeah, you know,
they're They're not like putting them in pow camps. They are using them, using their flesh and blood as some kind of crazy horror show to freak out their comrades.
And that brings us to an interesting question here because you know, it's this event is not something that happened across the Philippines for you know, years and years. It was this single operation. But they may not have been actually scared of NEAs Swung at all. They may have just been scared of getting kidnapped and used as you know,
psychological torture for their compatriots. And a HOK squadron at this time was about one hundred to three hundred soldiers, and we don't know whether they were actually scared of of a fictional creature or whether they were scared of the very real and very ruthless as you mentioned Cia, right, Yeah.
He had another trick that he liked to use. Lansdale called the eye of God. And this is much similar to the ghost tape kind of stuff we will hear about in Vietnam, where they basically I don't know if they used a spooky voice over the loudspeakers, but they were like calling out the names of prominent huck you know, the commanders and threatening them with certain death and yeah, I mean, can't you picture it being kind of scooby
doode out like that. Oh, get to the best part though, Oh yeah, yeah, So adding insult to injury, they would also creep into their camp and paint these spooky eyes on the tent or wherever the people were sleeping the house. I guess they had little huts. This is like they were in their villages, I guess.
For some reason, that seems even creepier to me, to even creepier than hearing a weird noise, waking up and finding this non consensual artwork, you know what I mean.
But this didn't like, you know, clear the Hucks out overnight or anything. I mean it you know, took about four years before Lewis Tarouk, who had been the leader of this organization for quite some time, actually surrendered and accepted a prison sentence. So you know. I mean, it's really interesting to read about this stuff, and it's certainly
a fascinating type of warfare. That author you mentioned earlier, Max Boot the story says that this tactic was actually considered a war crime because they were killing these Filipino soldiers deliberately instead of you know, capturing them as enemy combatants. And then of course they were mutilating their corpses too, so not a good look, but I guess effective.
I don't know, what do you think, mat Yeah, I mean, definitely not a good look, but certainly effective. And the CIA, so we clarify here, the CIA is telling the Filipino soldiers in the army to attack the communist rebels and use these tactics, and they do work. I mean, by the fifties, I think, as we mentioned, the Hucks are in serious decline and Lansdale will go on to do more of this sort of stuff, especially in Vietnam. As we mentioned before, the type of techniques he applied were
also sometimes called black combat. He also did another psy op. We should mention he would have different messages broadcast. Noel, you had mentioned earlier, the messages warning rebel leaders and so on, but they would also fly planes very low overhead and broadcast messages to make the rebels believe spies were in their midst and they couldn't trust one another. So eventually, nineteen fifty four, the rebels surrender, and there's no argument about it. These tactics were very useful to
Lansdale and to the army of the Philippines. The question that we have to ask ourselves is at what price victory?
You know what I mean?
It's not right to desecrate corpses.
No, no, it's definitely not. And you know, I think our boy Lansdale would go on to use slightly less brutal techniques later in his career, but I guess this was just kind of a different time.
He's also for anybody who wants a little bit of a lost treasure story. He also shows up in the old legend of Yamashita's Go, which is this horde of treasure that was stolen by the Japanese forces during World War Two and hidden somewhere in the Philippines, And according to the story, it's still there and you can go search for it yourself, as many other treasure hunters have
tried over the past few decades. We should mention the existence of this treasure is largely not taken seriously by a lot of experts, but of course, who doesn't want to find it. You can read more about that by checking out work of the author's sterling Seagrave, who claims the gold was secretly seized by the US government after the location was discovered by interrogating and torturing Yamashita's driver, a major Kojima Kashi. And then here's where Lansdale comes in.
Apparently he supervised the torture fun allegedly.
Yeah, okay, he's a hardened mofo. Sure. I mean if he's hanging up dudes by their toes and stabbing him in the side of the neck and draining their blood and for the purposes of spooking some enemy combatants, and then this guy could probably do just about anything. How many.
I guess folkloric believes or mythological monsters do you think people honestly believe in in twenty eighteen, because I've heard in Iceland that people still believe in uh, fairies or no, sure, trolls maybe? Yeah, maybe trolls. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know, man, Like I I want to believe. You're very molder about that. Uh yeah, No, I'm just moldy and sad and beaten down by life. Ben. But no, man, I don't know who are we to say?
Who are we to say that's that's a good question. And you know what that makes me think of? You know, the people who are to say, oh, that was awkward. Let's do some listener mail.
Do it well? Dominic Allen has this to say, Hello, Jents, just listen to your episode on the naming of California, and you asked us to tell you if we ever have seen a griffin, I have seen part of one. Would rather own part of one. Maybe this ties in beautifully with today's episode two. He's asked a question, what mythological creatures do you believe in? Dominic says he owns one.
I shouldn't dilly dally and explain myself. In the thirteen hundreds, there was a man called John manvel Or was there who wrote a book called the Travels of Sir John manvel Or did he? In this travel book, he visits Asia and talks about the weird and wonderful people and creatures that live there, one of them being a griffiin this is also one of the more boring creatures he
talks about. He states that griffins are from a country called Bakaria and had talons so long this is a quote, so long and so large, on great upon his feet, as though they were horns of great oxen, or of bugles, or of kine, so that men make cups of them to drink of. So what I meant was I have a drinking horn which is made from the supposed claw of a griffin. I interjected with that supposed at least
that's what I tell people. I'm part of a fourteenth century living history group in England and it is a great conversation piece, as drinking horns weren't as popular in that time, but a griffin claw is a fascinating thing. The travels of Sir John Manvil could be a good podcast topic. I agree the people in the book are pretty ridiculous. Thanks for the podcast, look forward to more
as they come. Always be ridiculous. Not going to be a problem, Dominic, No, we literally are contractually obligated kid doing this show, like we get in trouble if we don't.
But also that's so amazing. This really inspires me to ask more questions on the show. Dominic. Thank you for also bonus points. If you can send us a picture, man, Oh yeah, we'd love that. And I assume that you're not doing the fourteenth century living history thing all the time, just because you did send us an email. This arrived via email, not via pigeon or parchment or a pigeon carrying parchment, But that's awesome. I would love to see a picture of this drinking horn. And I'm completely on
board with the travels of Sir Manville. Our next listener mail is one that uh, I think both of us are really gonna dig. It is from Darren T and it's titled hangus the Monkey. Hi, says Darren. I listened from the start, but it's my first time writing. I've just heard your recent podcast on the Heartlepool Monkey. I live in Thornaby on Teas, ten miles up the road
from Hartlepool, Heartlepool. He notes his tea side, not Tyne side, and he goes on to say I was taught about this as a lesson on propaganda and racism in primary school, showing how people with nothing to go on but propaganda about how all Frenchmen are short, wild and hairy can lead to this stuff. Whether this is a true story or not, it works as a great teaching tool, although I personally don't believe it is true. I think it was just an excuse for mocking nickname for people from the area.
Here's the part.
You're like nol like Mackhams, which are people from Sunderland, and Smoggies, which are people from Middlesbrough. But it's a bit of fun. Thanks for the hours of entertainment, Darren. Ps. You pronounced all the time side towns and cities correctly. Thank you, Casey. Can we get a Hallelujah clip? Perfect? So I gotta say, Darren, thank you for writing. I am loving these very specific derogatory nicknames. Mackhams, Smoggies. Does every town in England have one of these? We don't
have anything like that for Atlanta. I guess people just say redneck, right it's true. Well, maybe if you're listening you can suggest a cool mocking nickname for people from Atlanta.
I will say this about that episode. I do think we kind of glossed over the fact that this was an interesting teachable moment about racism and othering and this idea that this monkey supposedly was, you know, immediately identified as being a Frenchman, and that was how Frenchmen were depicted in these political cartoons of the time. So you know, I think there's a something to be said about that. And I don't know if we mentioned this in the episode either, but there is actually a play about the
Harleypool Monkey. I thought we did. I think we did, but if we didn't describe it, it's so cool to look at because it's this really amazing puppetry. I don't know if you're familiar with the play Warhorse, that's got this amazing, like multi layered puppetry sculpture kind of stuff, and that's what the Harleypool Monkey play is about. And it does kind of take a little liberty and talk more about that, like the way we treat immigrants and
things like that. So it's a there's kind of a twofold story there.
And thank you again to Dominic and Darren for writing in. Thank you fellow ridiculous historians for giving us a list in to day. While we're thanking people, let's go ahead and thank our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Thanks also to our research associates Eves Jeff Cod who helped us out with this one, and also Christopher Hasiotis who continues to be a mensch and we love him dearly. I think we might actually have him on. We might have him on for an episode. Yes, Yes, he's coming back. It's two. We're over overdue. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
And thanks to thanks to Jonathan Strickland ak the Quizzor for not showing up on this episode.
I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of him.
I hear that laugh in the distance and I don't think it's Casey piping it through the headphones.
It haunts me at night man.
Yes, and speaking of haunting, we want to hear some of your favorite ridiculous historical events involving the supernatural or allegations thereof. You can tell us about these on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and we particularly like to give a shout out to our Ridiculous Historians Facebook page. It's one of the classies joints on the Internet.
Yeah. And in one last little plug, Ben and I recently appeared on a three part episode of Behind the Bastards, which is a really, really amazing show out of our La Wing hosted by Robert Evans, who is just a cracker jack writer and researcher. And he was kind enough slash sadistic enough to have you and I on for a four hour podcast marathon about the infamous Alex Jones.
Yeah, it's a it's a great listen. Robert's a great guy. It is not for children. Now, there is strong language.
Yeah, if you want to hear me and Ben Effan and Jeffin, that's the place to do it.
And mature themes. But that was a good shot. Yeah, and follow behind the bastards. If you like us, you're gonna really dig that show.
It's true and all three parts of that trifecta are out. Now.
It's a lot. It's a real commitment. It's a road trip. But yeah, that's that's it.
Man.
Let's uh, let's try to continue our habit of not desecrating corpses to win wars.
Yeah, not digging up pope corpses to make points. I don't know. All right, Well, happy Halloween, y'all. Yeah, not even it's Halloween all year. Send us Jesus. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.