I'm Not Sure But Maybe It Was An Aswang

Most of the "weird" experiences I had were just stored in a rusty chest in my memory bank. It is because our father used to tell us that there is no such thing as paranormal. But Mom told me now that I am grown up, that our father's third eye is actually open and the reason he tells us not to believe in the paranormal things are for us not to pay much attention to it because he thought it would scare us. So, growing up I had witnessed odd things happening and didn't freak out because I was telling myself that there was nothing not normal about those things but just coincidences. But, coming across this site made me change my mind because I now know that from different parts of the world, people experiences such things.

I discovered that this site's community is no longer new to the story of Philippine's ghoul or we call it "aswang". A few years back, in 2006, I was living with my sister in an apartment here in Cebu. It was a 2-storey apartment occupied by a family on the ground floor, us in one of the two rooms upstairs and the other room was occupied by an old couple waiting for the construction of their house to be completed. Adjacent to the family's unit is the landowner's unit. Actually the apartment was not first class. The second floor was made of wood and outside our rooms on the second floor was a hallway leading to a staircase (and again everything was made of wood). I will never forget what happened this particular night.

Our landlady was 5 months pregnant. Me and my sister were sleeping when I heard this growling. At first it sounded like a cat in heat. I just ignored it because it was in the middle of the night (I was so sleepy) and I had school the next day. I covered my ears with a pillow and went back to sleep. After 15 minutes I think, my sister woke me up asking me what the sound was and I said probably a cat, she told me she does not think so, I said IT IS JUST a cat. A few minutes later she woke me up again and asked me to listen. We heard something scratching the hallway floor and what scared me is that, it did not sound like a cat scratch. They were loud scratches (I could compare it to bear scratch which I never heard of but it was what I think would a bear scratch would sound like, it sounded like long scratches but fast.); I even thought the scratches made a hole on the floor. Just then I remembered our pregnant landlady. I told my sister to take a look at whatever it was through the slightly closed jalousies, at first she hesitated but then agreed (I used the reason that she is older so she should do it), she said she saw red eyes and a silhouette of a big dog. It seemed that the creature didn't know we are already awake, because it did not stop at what it was doing. Since both of us were afraid to go outside and face it, what I did is grab my baseball bat and smashed it on the wall directly beside the creature. We heard it jump away through our neighbors roofs and to let the creature know we are awake, I talked to my sister in a really loud voice, and then in a few moments went out the room to the hallway (with the bat just in case, I just wanted to scare it off, not face it. I'm chicken too you know). We checked the floor but there were no signs of scratches, which was weird.

I would say it was not a dog because we have a door at the end of the hallway and we lock it before sleeping. But it was an open hallway because it also served as our terrace, but it is not possible for one to be in the hallway if not through the door which was locked.

The following day, we told the landlord about it, and he said they heard it. He added that they were scared because their bed were right below that hallway and thought the scratching sounds on the floor coincides to the landlady's stomach's location below.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Is it just a stray animal, or there is an "aswang" in the city?