Ekek (also Ek Ek)

Region/Culture: Southeast Asia
Mythos: Philippine Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A nocturnal hybrid of bird and human whose call grows fainter as it draws closer, used to mask its approach toward sleeping prey.
Role in Mythos: Counted within the wider aswang taxonomy of the Visayas as a vampiric night-hunter that preys on pregnant women and the unborn.
Relation to Humans: The Ekek is universally hostile, treated in village lore as a creature that targets households expecting a child and feeds on the fetus through a long, threadlike proboscis. By day it is said to pass as a neighbor, which makes the threat domestic as well as supernatural.

Out in the barrios after midnight, when the rice fields go flat and silver and the dogs have given up barking, the cry comes from far off. Ek-ek-ek. The sound is small, almost peevish, and that is exactly the problem. An Ekek’s call is loudest where the creature is not. The closer it draws, the softer the voice becomes, until at the window the sound is barely a thought, and by then there is no point listening anymore.

It is a bird-shaped human, or a human-shaped bird, depending on which old woman you ask. The wings span wider than a man is tall and beat without a whisper. The legs end in claws that grip clay tile, bamboo gutter, the splintered edge of a window shutter. The face holds something of both natures, and the bill is the deciding mark. By that bill alone, the village separates the Ekek from the Wak Wak, which otherwise looks much the same and patrols the same nights. The Manananggal is a different problem altogether: she cuts herself in half at the waist and flies off without her legs, while the Ekek’s body stays in one piece. Beyond those distinctions, the Ekek belongs to a family of nocturnal predators recognized across the Visayas, lumped under the broad and bristling name aswang.

The folklorist Maximo Ramos arranged the aswang into five rough kinds: the blood-drinker, the viscera-sucker, the weredog, the witch, and the ghoul. The Ekek is not so easy to place. It shares the viscera-sucker’s appetite and the Manananggal’s geometry of attack, but its body remains a single piece. Some accounts treat it as a creature of its own. Others cast it as the lesser cousin or even the familiar of a more powerful aswang, sent out to confuse listeners with its misdirecting cry while the real predator approaches in silence.

In life, the stories suggest, it was a woman. The variants split here. In one telling, she was beautiful and vain, and a shaman or a slighted lover answered her cruelty with a curse that gave her wings and a hunger she could never settle. In another, she was simply unlucky, marked early, set apart from the village by something the village could not name. Either way, dusk pulls her into the shape she now wears, and by full dark she is in the air, and by morning, when she returns to whatever house she keeps, she is again something that can pass for a neighbor.

What she goes looking for is a sleeping pregnant woman. She lands above a thatch or tin roof and listens. The body beneath her is warm. She extends a tongue or proboscis, long as a rope and thin as a wire, threading down through whatever surface stands between her and the womb. She drains the unborn. The fetus dies first, then sometimes the mother, sometimes not. The cry goes on while she feeds, distant in the ears of anyone awake, the small ek-ek-ek echoing across the fields from a direction that is not the direction she is in. By the time the household pieces together what has happened, the wings are already gone and the sky over the rice is empty again.

The Ekek belongs to the warm wet of a Philippine night. Banana leaves drip. The smell of damp earth presses in through the screen. A coconut palm rattles once and goes still. These are the conditions of the encounter, and the conditions also of the Ekek’s defenses. It is a creature of the dark hours, of overlooked roofs, of houses where a baby is on its way and no one has thought yet to hang a clove of garlic or salt the threshold. Lit candles bother it. Whispered prayers bother it. A whip-tail of stingray, the spine of a sablay fish, salt, ash, vinegar, and the right Latin words from a priest who knows the right Latin words, all of these are said to drive it back.

Its powers are the ones the night gives it. It flies without making the sound that should accompany flight. It throws its voice the way a ventriloquist throws his, so that the call seems always to come from somewhere it is not. It can shrink the long proboscis back into a face that smiles at the market the next morning. It carries the appetite of something starved on the other side of being human and cannot fast its way out.

Its weaknesses are the ones the night also keeps. Dawn breaks it. So does any household that has been warned in time and prepared the small old defenses with care. It cannot detach. That is the only mercy. Whatever happens to the lower body happens to the upper, and the upper does not get away. Catch the Ekek on the ground, with the right weapon and the right blessing, and you catch all of her.

The cry stays in the ear of a Filipino village long after the speaker has gone. Mothers near term still listen for it at the open window. The faint sound is the one to fear. The loud one is just the wind moving through a story.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Ekek?

The Ekek is a winged, bird-like creature from Philippine folklore, especially the Visayas, where it is counted among the aswang. It hunts at night and is known for the high “ek-ek-ek” cry it gives in flight. Its closest relatives in folklore are the Manananggal and the Wak Wak.

How is the Ekek different from the Manananggal and the Wak Wak?

Unlike the Manananggal, the Ekek cannot detach its upper torso from its lower body; the Ekek flies as a single, intact creature. Unlike the Wak Wak, the Ekek has a bird-like bill, which is the small but decisive feature that separates the two in old folk descriptions. Otherwise, all three creatures move through the same Visayan night and prey on similar victims.

Why does the Ekek hunt pregnant women?

The Ekek targets sleeping pregnant women because it feeds on the unborn. It lands above the roof and extends a long, thin proboscis or tongue down through the ceiling to drain the fetus inside the womb. This habit places the Ekek in the same predatory tradition as the Manananggal and is the reason the creature is feared most in households expecting a child.

What does the Ekek’s “ek-ek-ek” cry actually mean?

The cry works in reverse of what intuition suggests. When the Ekek’s call sounds loud and clear, the creature is far away; when the sound grows faint, it is close. Old folk warnings hold that the faint cry at the window is the dangerous one, while a loud cry across the fields means the household is, for the moment, safe.

How do you protect against an Ekek?

Traditional Visayan defenses against the Ekek include salt, ash, garlic, vinegar, and the spine or tail of a stingray or sablay fish, often paired with prayers or blessings from a priest. Lit candles and prepared thresholds are said to keep the Ekek from approaching a house where a baby is due. Dawn breaks its power and forces it back into ordinary human form.