January 14, 2026 • 12 mins
During the Cold War, the CIA used the legend of a vampire named Aswang to scare locals into not helping the communists.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave. So this is
short Stuff gidea.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right, and this week we are talking about more
nefarious business by the American CIA. Yeah, during the Cold
War in this case. But first we should probably tell
you just a short bit about the Philippines.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Right, Yeah, there's seven thousand islands in the Philippines, more
than I did not know that, but that's a lot
of io lots. Yeah, there's one hundred and seventy five
different languages. Tagalog is one of the larger language families
or groups are just languages, and because there's seven thousand islands,
(00:44):
there's a bunch of different languages. There's a lot of
cultural different cultural beliefs, but some of the ones are
spread pretty far and wide to cross the Philippines, which
would suggest they're very, very old like folk beliefs. And
one of them that we're going to talk about today
is the Oswan.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
That's right. We don't have an exact correlation here in
the United States, but you might call it like a
vampire potentially because it does suck blood, but it also
feeds on organs. And it feeds on phlim, which is completely.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Disgusting, one of the worst things I've ever heard.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, feeds on flim, unborn children, pregnant women. It can
be a giant pig, it can be a giant vulture.
It can be like a dog shaped thing, and sort
of like, I can't what was the one we did
this past October about the Mexican folklore the album Yeah,
similar to that. I can't remember the name of that one.
(01:42):
But it's one of those deals where like any mysterious
death or unexplained illness, or any kind of misfortune that
might happen, you might blame blame on the Oswog.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Right, and you mentioned a dog. I saw somewhere that
the name comes from OsO Wong, which means a dog
I think can take.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Oh all right, So.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
People are like, okay, great, what's up with the name though?
The CIA vampires thing? What are you talking about you guys, Well,
this is what we're talking about. In the Cold War
in the fifties, there was a guy whose name was
Edward Geary Lansdale, and he worked for the CIA, and
he used the tale of the Oswong to try to
(02:25):
manipulate people into turning against a gorilla army.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
There, that's right. And you know, if you're afraid of
something like this, it's probably because it's truly horrific. Aside
from feeding on phlegm, this thing in humanoid form would
look on rooftops at night. Yeah, and had a long
tongue sort of like a proboscis that it could lower
(02:49):
through what's called a lick hole in the ceiling of
your home. Do you have horrible, horrible words put together,
feeding on flem and lick hole And like we said,
pregnant women, children, it would suck out their insides with
this tongue and essentially leave something you know, devoid of
(03:09):
organs and you know, disemboweled and devoid of blood. It
would suck, suck them from the outside end or inside
out rather right.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, And again like we don't have a good analogy
to this in the West. The best we can do
is like Dracula essentially. But that's that's really eating sucking
or eating blood or consuming blood. Is that's where the
similarities end. That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So Ed Lansdale comes along. He was pre war World
War two, he was an ad guy, and so once
he got in the war, they said, all right, you're
pretty sharp tech. We're gonna move you over to the OSS,
the Office of Strategic Services, which predated the CIA, and
they said, since you're an ad guy, you know what
you'd be great at is psyops, you know, using media
(03:57):
and marketing and propaganda to help win the war, like
demonize the enemy, because that's basically what you do as
an advertiser.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Exactly, and he was a whiz at it. So he
excelled at psyops himself, and he took a different view
of things. He said, normally that when people think about
psyops conventionally, they're talking about dropping leaflets that try to
demoralize the enemy, maybe using like a Tokyo Rose type
to talk about how GI's girlfriends are hooking up with
(04:29):
other guys back home. Those are psyops and they're really
kind of a low hanging fruit. What Lansdale was doing
was really trying to dig into the local culture to
figure out how to turn that culture's beliefs and superstitions
against it to win the war.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's right, That feels like a pretty good time for break. Yeah, yeah,
all right, we're going to come right back and talk
about what happened in nineteen fifty, right after this, all right,
(05:22):
so I promised talk of nineteen fifty, that is when
Lansdale came to the Philippines. He was undercover as the
CIA guy. He was officially there as an Air Force officer,
an advisor to the President of the Philippines, who was
Ramon Magsaysaw.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Mag says, I'm going with magsay say.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Mag says, I don't know why I said. They saw
so he was a sign there in the Philippines because
the US was backing that regime and they were fighting
a war against communist rebels there known as the Hooks,
it was Huks, and they were, you know, they fought.
The Hooks fought you know, pretty heroically in the Philippine
(06:03):
Army against the Japanese in World War Two. But after
the war, they, along with their leader, whose name was
I guess Louis Taruk, said nuts to this government to
borrow Josh Clark term because the Philippine Trade Act of
nineteen forty six basically said the American government gets equal
rights to the natural resources, and the Hawks weren't down
(06:25):
with that.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, And I'm not sure if the Hooks were actually
like communists or if they were just labeled as communist
insurgents to help drum up public support against them, right,
because they really were this revered like infantry that really
helped get the Japanese out of the Philippines, and the
US troops even fought alongside of them. But after they
(06:47):
broke with this American backed administration, they were pushed on
a non grad they had to be gotten rid of
because they weren't just like protesting, they were carrying out
real of war to try to overthrow this US backed regime.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I guess yeah, not only US back, but sort of
US elected, because those supposedly free elections in the Philippines
that brought this party into power, were totally rigged by
the CIA and US operatives. So it was all dirty
dealing going on in the CIA back then, not like these.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Dings, not like today. By the way, since we're talking
about the CIA, have another show recommendation for you. It's
called The Agency Colon Central Intelligence. It's a really stupid name,
but it is a really well done, suspenseful but also
really dramatic show. It's Michael Fossbender. Richard Deeer does it
(07:45):
like I've never seen him act like he is in
this one, Jeffrey Wright. It's just this really great show.
It's a great cast. Everybody does wonderfully, even the people
I've never heard of before. Everybody does great.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Do we should do a little fifteen minute show once
a week where we recommend stuff to people.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
That's a great idea. Where'd you get that idea?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I don't know, let's hear from you. Do people want that?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Let's find out?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
All right. So some of these cywor tactics, they got
busy doing their stuff, like kind of doing research on
the Filipinos and like what would kind of what would
sway them, what would work? They did some studies of
the people, like especially the peasants living in the Hook areas.
One of this sort of I guess sort of low
hanging fruit like you were talking about that they use
(08:31):
was they would fly over these areas with you know,
kind of low flying light aircraft to broadcast curses in Tagalog.
If anyone was like, if you're a villager and you're
going to help the Hook soldiers, this curse will befall you.
That sort of worked a little bit. He would also
paint the what's called the Eye of God. It was
(08:52):
just kind of a scary looking thing on houses of
Hook sympathizers, like on their front door, and that would
kind of scare people out, but kind of nothing like
what he did with Oswog.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Right, No, this was definitely a different level than those
other ones that you mentioned, because there was a CIA
trained that Lansdale helped oversee group of government Filipino government
military operatives. That's a really clumsy way to put it,
but they were basically set out. They were unleashed on
(09:26):
this village where a bunch of Hook rebels I think
one hundred to three hundred of them were in camp
nearby and they were intimidating the villagers into being quiet,
giving them supplies, that kind of stuff. So the CIA
found out about this and they really wanted to get
this Hook detachment out of this area. And this is
(09:46):
when they unleashed this Oswang rumor. They basically had these
Filipino commandos go into the village and start a rumor
that the Oswog was haunting this area where the Hook
rebel were camped out.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, and you think, all right, well, that doesn't sound
much different than the other thing. Like they're spreading a
rumor that might scare them into not helping these local
soldiers right there in the nearby hills. But they took
it one step further and they had these agents go
in and oswong them. Basically, they would kidnap hook fighters
(10:24):
and disembowel them and clean them out Oswong vampire style
and leave their bloodless corpses behind.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Well. I saw also one of the things that they
did was put puncture holes in their neck and drain
them of blood. And that is not really oswang at all.
That's Dracula stuff, and that's just shoddy research of a
poor quality if you're really trying to scare off people
based on their superstitions.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, I mean there was a guy that wrote a
book about this, in addition to Lansdale wrote his own memoir.
But there's a researcher. I think it's like, same was Clark.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
What's Jordan Clark he talked to? I think he talked
to Dave Ruse who wrote this for Houstiff Works.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh okay, well he basically back to what you're saying
is like, if they would have done their research, they
would have believed that the true local creature they were
scared of was not oswog. It was a self segmenting
kind of oswog, but it kind of strictly fed on
the fetuses of pregnant women and was not a blood sucker. Right,
And he's also not sure that like this thing worked,
(11:30):
but he's not sure if it worked because they thought
it was an oswog or whatever. The local I can't
even how do you pronounce that? Mena menon angall. Yeah,
I think it was the local boogeyman. If it worked
because they thought it was that, or if it was
because they were like, holy crap, these they're so twisted.
They're sucking the blood out of and draining blood out
(11:51):
of people to make it seem like so like, either way,
don't mess with these guys. It's awful.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, but it worked, it didn't win the war. Jordan
Arc points out, like this worked this one time. I
think it was only used one time, and it did
dislodge those hook insurgents, but the war was run by
grinding them out. They basically fought over the years, and
Louis to Rock finally surrendered in nineteen fifty four. I
(12:20):
think he secured a pardon for himself and his troops.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And he said, did you see what happened with the
ostwoan years back. Yeah, and they were just like, that's it.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Does that mean? Sure? Stuff is album? All right? Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave. So this is
short Stuff gidea.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
That's right, and this week we are talking about more
nefarious business by the American CIA. Yeah, during the Cold
War in this case. But first we should probably tell
you just a short bit about the Philippines.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Right, Yeah, there's seven thousand islands in the Philippines, more
than I did not know that, but that's a lot
of io lots. Yeah, there's one hundred and seventy five
different languages. Tagalog is one of the larger language families
or groups are just languages, and because there's seven thousand islands,
(00:44):
there's a bunch of different languages. There's a lot of
cultural different cultural beliefs, but some of the ones are
spread pretty far and wide to cross the Philippines, which
would suggest they're very, very old like folk beliefs. And
one of them that we're going to talk about today
is the Oswan.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
That's right. We don't have an exact correlation here in
the United States, but you might call it like a
vampire potentially because it does suck blood, but it also
feeds on organs. And it feeds on phlim, which is completely.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Disgusting, one of the worst things I've ever heard.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, feeds on flim, unborn children, pregnant women. It can
be a giant pig, it can be a giant vulture.
It can be like a dog shaped thing, and sort
of like, I can't what was the one we did
this past October about the Mexican folklore the album Yeah,
similar to that. I can't remember the name of that one.
(01:42):
But it's one of those deals where like any mysterious
death or unexplained illness, or any kind of misfortune that
might happen, you might blame blame on the Oswog.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Right, and you mentioned a dog. I saw somewhere that
the name comes from OsO Wong, which means a dog
I think can take.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Oh all right, So.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
People are like, okay, great, what's up with the name though?
The CIA vampires thing? What are you talking about you guys, Well,
this is what we're talking about. In the Cold War
in the fifties, there was a guy whose name was
Edward Geary Lansdale, and he worked for the CIA, and
he used the tale of the Oswong to try to
(02:25):
manipulate people into turning against a gorilla army.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
There, that's right. And you know, if you're afraid of
something like this, it's probably because it's truly horrific. Aside
from feeding on phlegm, this thing in humanoid form would
look on rooftops at night. Yeah, and had a long
tongue sort of like a proboscis that it could lower
(02:49):
through what's called a lick hole in the ceiling of
your home. Do you have horrible, horrible words put together,
feeding on flem and lick hole And like we said,
pregnant women, children, it would suck out their insides with
this tongue and essentially leave something you know, devoid of
(03:09):
organs and you know, disemboweled and devoid of blood. It
would suck, suck them from the outside end or inside
out rather right.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, And again like we don't have a good analogy
to this in the West. The best we can do
is like Dracula essentially. But that's that's really eating sucking
or eating blood or consuming blood. Is that's where the
similarities end. That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So Ed Lansdale comes along. He was pre war World
War two, he was an ad guy, and so once
he got in the war, they said, all right, you're
pretty sharp tech. We're gonna move you over to the OSS,
the Office of Strategic Services, which predated the CIA, and
they said, since you're an ad guy, you know what
you'd be great at is psyops, you know, using media
(03:57):
and marketing and propaganda to help win the war, like
demonize the enemy, because that's basically what you do as
an advertiser.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Exactly, and he was a whiz at it. So he
excelled at psyops himself, and he took a different view
of things. He said, normally that when people think about
psyops conventionally, they're talking about dropping leaflets that try to
demoralize the enemy, maybe using like a Tokyo Rose type
to talk about how GI's girlfriends are hooking up with
(04:29):
other guys back home. Those are psyops and they're really
kind of a low hanging fruit. What Lansdale was doing
was really trying to dig into the local culture to
figure out how to turn that culture's beliefs and superstitions
against it to win the war.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's right, That feels like a pretty good time for break. Yeah, yeah,
all right, we're going to come right back and talk
about what happened in nineteen fifty, right after this, all right,
(05:22):
so I promised talk of nineteen fifty, that is when
Lansdale came to the Philippines. He was undercover as the
CIA guy. He was officially there as an Air Force officer,
an advisor to the President of the Philippines, who was
Ramon Magsaysaw.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Mag says, I'm going with magsay say.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Mag says, I don't know why I said. They saw
so he was a sign there in the Philippines because
the US was backing that regime and they were fighting
a war against communist rebels there known as the Hooks,
it was Huks, and they were, you know, they fought.
The Hooks fought you know, pretty heroically in the Philippine
(06:03):
Army against the Japanese in World War Two. But after
the war, they, along with their leader, whose name was
I guess Louis Taruk, said nuts to this government to
borrow Josh Clark term because the Philippine Trade Act of
nineteen forty six basically said the American government gets equal
rights to the natural resources, and the Hawks weren't down
(06:25):
with that.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, And I'm not sure if the Hooks were actually
like communists or if they were just labeled as communist
insurgents to help drum up public support against them, right,
because they really were this revered like infantry that really
helped get the Japanese out of the Philippines, and the
US troops even fought alongside of them. But after they
(06:47):
broke with this American backed administration, they were pushed on
a non grad they had to be gotten rid of
because they weren't just like protesting, they were carrying out
real of war to try to overthrow this US backed regime.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I guess yeah, not only US back, but sort of
US elected, because those supposedly free elections in the Philippines
that brought this party into power, were totally rigged by
the CIA and US operatives. So it was all dirty
dealing going on in the CIA back then, not like these.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Dings, not like today. By the way, since we're talking
about the CIA, have another show recommendation for you. It's
called The Agency Colon Central Intelligence. It's a really stupid name,
but it is a really well done, suspenseful but also
really dramatic show. It's Michael Fossbender. Richard Deeer does it
(07:45):
like I've never seen him act like he is in
this one, Jeffrey Wright. It's just this really great show.
It's a great cast. Everybody does wonderfully, even the people
I've never heard of before. Everybody does great.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Do we should do a little fifteen minute show once
a week where we recommend stuff to people.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
That's a great idea. Where'd you get that idea?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I don't know, let's hear from you. Do people want that?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Let's find out?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
All right. So some of these cywor tactics, they got
busy doing their stuff, like kind of doing research on
the Filipinos and like what would kind of what would
sway them, what would work? They did some studies of
the people, like especially the peasants living in the Hook areas.
One of this sort of I guess sort of low
hanging fruit like you were talking about that they use
(08:31):
was they would fly over these areas with you know,
kind of low flying light aircraft to broadcast curses in Tagalog.
If anyone was like, if you're a villager and you're
going to help the Hook soldiers, this curse will befall you.
That sort of worked a little bit. He would also
paint the what's called the Eye of God. It was
(08:52):
just kind of a scary looking thing on houses of
Hook sympathizers, like on their front door, and that would
kind of scare people out, but kind of nothing like
what he did with Oswog.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Right, No, this was definitely a different level than those
other ones that you mentioned, because there was a CIA
trained that Lansdale helped oversee group of government Filipino government
military operatives. That's a really clumsy way to put it,
but they were basically set out. They were unleashed on
(09:26):
this village where a bunch of Hook rebels I think
one hundred to three hundred of them were in camp
nearby and they were intimidating the villagers into being quiet,
giving them supplies, that kind of stuff. So the CIA
found out about this and they really wanted to get
this Hook detachment out of this area. And this is
(09:46):
when they unleashed this Oswang rumor. They basically had these
Filipino commandos go into the village and start a rumor
that the Oswog was haunting this area where the Hook
rebel were camped out.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, and you think, all right, well, that doesn't sound
much different than the other thing. Like they're spreading a
rumor that might scare them into not helping these local
soldiers right there in the nearby hills. But they took
it one step further and they had these agents go
in and oswong them. Basically, they would kidnap hook fighters
(10:24):
and disembowel them and clean them out Oswong vampire style
and leave their bloodless corpses behind.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Well. I saw also one of the things that they
did was put puncture holes in their neck and drain
them of blood. And that is not really oswang at all.
That's Dracula stuff, and that's just shoddy research of a
poor quality if you're really trying to scare off people
based on their superstitions.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, I mean there was a guy that wrote a
book about this, in addition to Lansdale wrote his own memoir.
But there's a researcher. I think it's like, same was Clark.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
What's Jordan Clark he talked to? I think he talked
to Dave Ruse who wrote this for Houstiff Works.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh okay, well he basically back to what you're saying
is like, if they would have done their research, they
would have believed that the true local creature they were
scared of was not oswog. It was a self segmenting
kind of oswog, but it kind of strictly fed on
the fetuses of pregnant women and was not a blood sucker. Right,
And he's also not sure that like this thing worked,
(11:30):
but he's not sure if it worked because they thought
it was an oswog or whatever. The local I can't
even how do you pronounce that? Mena menon angall. Yeah,
I think it was the local boogeyman. If it worked
because they thought it was that, or if it was
because they were like, holy crap, these they're so twisted.
They're sucking the blood out of and draining blood out
(11:51):
of people to make it seem like so like, either way,
don't mess with these guys. It's awful.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, but it worked, it didn't win the war. Jordan
Arc points out, like this worked this one time. I
think it was only used one time, and it did
dislodge those hook insurgents, but the war was run by
grinding them out. They basically fought over the years, and
Louis to Rock finally surrendered in nineteen fifty four. I
(12:20):
think he secured a pardon for himself and his troops.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And he said, did you see what happened with the
ostwoan years back. Yeah, and they were just like, that's it.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Does that mean? Sure? Stuff is album? All right? Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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