Anting-Anting Stories, and Other Strange Tales of the Filipinos

In the smoking aftermath of a colonial battle, a Filipino scavenges the dead for a chief's anting-anting, a charm that renders its bearer invincible. This single image unlocks a collection of strange tales where Filipino folklore confronts American occupation, and superstition becomes a form of resistance. Sargent Kayme, writing in the early 1900s, gathered stories rooted in oral tradition: tales of enchanted talismans, spirits with unfinished business, and ordinary people caught between the rational violence of empire and the irrational demands of the supernatural. These aren't gentle folk tales. They carry the ferocity of a colonized people who found power in invisible things when guns and gallows belonged to someone else. The anting-anting recurs like a heartbeat, sometimes protective, sometimes deadly, always demanding a price. For readers hungry for folklore outside the Western canon, or anyone who believes the best ghost stories are really about power, this collection offers entry into a world where belief can save you or destroy you.