Aswang-Type Viscera-Sucker Shapeshifters

This group gathers Philippine folkloric shapeshifters classed within the aswang tradition as viscera-sucking or self-segmenting beings, rather than the broader catch-all sense of aswang that can also cover werebeasts and witches. Spanish-era ethnographic accounts recorded a numbered set of named aswang types, among them the manananggal, described as appearing at night without its head or entrails before reattaching by morning, alongside figures such as the silagan who tore out a victim's liver. Modern folklore summaries describe aswang broadly as shape-shifting creatures including vampires, ghouls, witches, and viscera suckers, with the manananggal singled out for its ability to separate its upper torso from its lower body and fly in search of victims, most often pregnant women, using an elongated tongue. This node anchors the entities whose own sourced description places them specifically within that viscera-sucker, body-separating branch of aswang folklore, as distinct from the generic aswang label or from other aswang-adjacent beings such as wereanimals or witches that the same umbrella term can also name.