THE BERBALANGS OF THE ISLAND15:06 Sep 09 2026
Times Read: 83
Professor Hale discovered the story in an 1896 journal.
Not a horror magazine.
Not a fantasy novel.
A scholarly publication.
The title was almost boring:
Cagayan Sulu, its Customs, Legends, and Superstitions.
The author was Ethelbert Forbes Skertchly.
Buried near the end of the account was something much stranger.
People called:
Berbalangs.
Hale read the pages twice.
Then a third time.
The account described a community associated with disturbing supernatural traditions.
Stories claimed they could send their spirits away from their bodies.
Travel.
Feed upon human flesh.
Approach with strange sounds.
And return before the body awakened.
Hale immediately wrote in his notebook:
Historical claim. Single major early published source. Not independent proof.
That distinction mattered.
The 1896 article genuinely existed, and modern awareness of the Berbalang tradition largely traces back to Skertchly's report from Cagayan Sulu, now Mapun.
But a historical document recording a supernatural claim
is not the same thing
as proving the claim.
That was why Hale traveled there.
Not to hunt monsters.
To understand how a story could survive.
THE FIRST NIGHT
An elderly fisherman listened patiently while Hale explained his research.
When Hale finally said the word Berbalang, the man became silent.
“You read the foreigner's story.”
“Yes.”
“He wrote many things.”
“Were they true?”
The fisherman smiled.
“That is not one question.”
Hale liked him immediately.
“What should I ask?”
“Ask what people believed.”
“Fine. What did they believe?”
The fisherman looked toward the darkening sea.
“That sometimes a body remained in one place while hunger traveled elsewhere.”
Hale wrote that down.
“Like astral projection?”
The fisherman frowned.
“Your word.”
“Spirit travel?”
“Another word.”
“What word would you use?”
The fisherman stood.
“Hunger.”
THE SOUND
That night Hale slept poorly.
At approximately 1:40 a.m., he heard something outside.
A low sound.
Then another.
Not a bird.
Not exactly human.
It seemed to move across the village without footsteps.
Hale reached for his recorder.
The sound grew louder.
Then quieter.
Then louder again.
As though several voices were approaching from different directions.
His rational mind began listing possibilities:
dogs,
birds,
wind,
people,
machinery,
expectation altering perception.
The door moved.
Hale froze.
Not opened.
Moved.
As if something on the other side had touched it.
Then stopped.
His recorder captured everything.
By sunrise,
nothing had happened.
No attack.
No supernatural manifestation.
Just sound.
THE BODY
The fisherman returned in the morning.
“You heard them.”
“I heard something.”
“Good answer.”
Hale smiled nervously.
“What causes that sound?”
The fisherman shrugged.
“You came to tell us.”
Hale spent the day interviewing residents.
Some knew the old stories.
Some did not.
Some laughed.
Others preferred not to discuss them.
That alone interested him.
Folklore was not a fossil.
Different people could live in the same place and relate to the same tradition completely differently.
Believer.
Skeptic.
Indifferent.
Curious.
Afraid.
That evening, a young man led Hale toward an abandoned house.
Inside was an old wooden bed.
Nothing else.
“Why bring me here?”
“Listen.”
Hale waited.
No sound.
Then the young man pointed toward the mattress.
“Someone slept here last night.”
The dust clearly showed the shape of a human body.
Hale examined it.
“Who?”
“Nobody lives here.”
“That proves someone entered.”
“Yes.”
“Not a Berbalang.”
The young man smiled.
“Good.”
Hale was beginning to hate that response.
THE RECORDING
Back at his room, Hale analyzed the previous night's audio.
Most of it was useless.
Wind.
Insects.
His own movement.
Then he found something at 1:47.
A voice.
Too faint to notice at the time.
He amplified it.
One phrase became clearer.
English.
Impossible.
“Professor.”
Hale replayed it.
Then again.
Perhaps random noise.
Auditory pareidolia.
The brain forcing meaning into sound.
He almost deleted it.
Then another word followed.
His surname.
“Hale.”
He stopped moving.
Nobody in the village had called him Professor Hale.
He had introduced himself only as Michael.
THE SECOND NIGHT
He did not sleep.
At 1:47 exactly,
the sound returned.
This time from above.
Hale looked toward the ceiling.
Something moved across the roof.
Then another thing.
Then several.
His recorder was running.
A whisper entered through the open window.
“Professor.”
Hale remained silent.
The fisherman had given him one piece of advice:
Do not answer something simply because it knows your name.
The whisper came again.
“Hale.”
Then:
“You wanted documentation.”
Something scratched the roof.
Hale whispered to himself:
“No conclusions without evidence.”
The voice outside laughed.
MORNING
At sunrise,
everything stopped.
Hale checked the roof.
No marks.
No footprints.
No broken tiles.
Nothing.
He returned home three weeks later.
His academic article was cautious.
It discussed:
the 1896 Skertchly report,
the difficulty of relying heavily on a single early source,
later retellings,
oral tradition,
and the transformation of Berbalangs into modern fantasy creatures.
He made no supernatural claim.
That was the responsible conclusion.
Years later,
students sometimes asked:
“Professor, do you believe the Berbalangs are real?”
Hale always answered:
“I believe a real document from 1896 describes them.”
“And personally?”
He would smile.
“I also believe that evidence should determine conclusions.”
That usually ended the conversation.
Nobody knew about the audio file.
Hale kept it on an encrypted drive.
He listened only once each year.
Because every year,
the recording contained one additional word.
The latest version now said:
“Professor Hale. We know where you returned.”
He has not listened again.
— PauloAlves
The historical foundation is real: Ethelbert Forbes Skertchly published “Cagayan Sulu, its Customs, Legends, and Superstitions” in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1896. Modern knowledge of the Berbalangs depends heavily on this unusually influential account, which is one reason the tradition must be presented carefully rather than as independently verified supernatural evidence.
Classification: DOCUMENTED 1896 FOLKLORE SOURCE + ORIGINAL HORROR FICTION.
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