Halloween in the Philippines: Undas, Souls' Songs and the Aswang

Halloween in the Philippines: Undas, Souls' Songs and the Aswang

Halloween in the Philippines runs for three days, not one. Costume parties and mall trick-or-treat take 31 October, then Undas, the family visit to the graves, takes 1 and 2 November, the two days the government makes non-working in both 2026 and 2027. The older Filipino door-knock is pangangaluluwa (from kaluluwa, "soul"): singers posing as the dead, printed in a 1934 account.

Families split by work abroad usually swap greetings by link that week. Across SubhSandesh, 48.3% of shared pages are opened on a phone and each page averages 11.1 views; both are platform-wide figures, not Halloween data. Below: the 2026 and 2027 calendar, five ways pangangaluluwa differs from trick-or-treating, what the folklorist Maximo Ramos recorded about the aswang, and how to greet family abroad without trampling the cemetery days.

What is Undas, and where does Halloween fit?

Undas is what Filipinos call All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, 1 and 2 November, the days families go back to their home towns to clean, decorate and sit with their relatives' graves. Halloween on 31 October is the imported, playful eve; Undas is the main event, and it is about the family's own dead rather than monsters.

The Jesuit folklorist Francisco Demetrio described the core of it in a 1993 paper in UST's Philippiniana Sacra: people "flock to the cemeteries, spruce up the graves of relatives, light candles and bedeck them with flowers." He traced the devotion to a belief that the dead keep a special interest in living relatives, helping fishers to good catches, farmers to plentiful corn and rice, and children to grow up healthy.

That belief is why the visit is usually a family reunion with food, not a quick stop. Relatives who rarely meet sit together beside the puntod (tomb) while the candles burn down.

Demetrio also recorded a planting rite for the two days. The planter buries three strands of human hair, nine small hot peppers and nine tapok-tapok seashells in exactly three holes, reciting the Hail Mary while digging.

The calendar: 31 October to 2 November in 2026 and 2027

The days off are 1 and 2 November; 31 October stays a working day in both years. Proclamation No. 1006 sets the 2026 dates and Proclamation No. 1427, dated 8 September 2026, the 2027 ones. The table below sets the three days side by side.

In 2026 the three days run Saturday to Monday, which makes the trip home a long weekend. In 2027 they run Sunday to Tuesday, so check the final word on 2 November before booking a Tuesday-night bus.

Modern Halloween fits into the 31 October slot. Malls run costume parades and store-to-store candy routes, and gated subdivisions set a window for children to go house to house; on the next morning the same families are packing for the province.

Pangangaluluwa vs trick-or-treating: 5 differences

Pangangaluluwa is a Tagalog custom in which a small group goes from house to house at night, singing as the souls of the dead and asking for alms. The fullest early account we found is Toribio de Castro's, printed in Philippine Magazine in November 1934 and reprinted in the journal Folklore Studies in 1958. Each item compares the 1934 custom with trick-or-treat as Filipino children now do it, in the same order: the old way, the new way, the gap.

1. Who comes to the door

In 1934 it was a group of four to eight people, playing the souls of the dead, who sang from early evening until dawn. Today it is costumed children with a parent, usually done within a couple of hours. The singers were the dead; the children only dress as monsters.

2. What is said at the door

De Castro's group rang a little bell, called "Magandang gabi po" ("Good evening", with po for respect) and then sang to a guitar or violin. UP Diliman's dictionary of Filipino music terms, citing Marialita Yraola in a 1977 Musika Jornal, lists four stages: a Pa-hesus opening, reminders of good deeds, verses on the Virgin Mary, saints or village life, then the alms and thanks. Trick-or-treat needs three words.

3. What the household gives

The 1934 householder "knows his obligation well" and handed over a five- or ten-centavo coin. The UP entry calls the gift alms or donations, and gives palimos (begging for alms) as another name for the custom. Trick-or-treaters get wrapped sweets.

4. Where the takings go

The 1934 singers paid for candles and a morning Mass the next day before splitting what was left. The reasoning was devotional: souls guilty of venial sins were believed to wander, begging alms for candles to pray their way into Purgatory. Trick-or-treat candy is simply kept.

5. The trick

This is the surprise in the 1934 text: pangangaluluwa had a real trick. While the singing went on, two or three others quietly took chickens, papayas, squashes or bananas. Next morning, ladders, benches and chairs turned up across the street arranged as a tomb, with candle stubs and chicken feathers beside it, and householders blamed "the hungry wandering souls."

One date problem is worth knowing. De Castro and the UP entry both place pangangaluluwa on All Souls' Day, 2 November, while many current descriptions put it on the eve of All Saints'. We found no source that settles which towns used which night.

Aswang and manananggal: what Maximo Ramos recorded

The Philippines brings its own monsters to Halloween, and the folklorist Maximo Ramos spent decades cataloguing them. He published "Belief in Ghouls in Contemporary Philippine Society" in Western Folklore in 1968 and The Aswang Complex in Philippine Folklore in 1969, reprinted by Phoenix in 1990.

Film scholar Bliss Cua Lim summarises his work in a 2015 Kritika Kultura article from Ateneo de Manila. Ramos called the aswang complex a "congeries of beliefs" and sorted it into types echoing Europe's vampires, witches, ghouls and werewolves, while admitting they "do not fit exactly." His were-beast is usually a weredog or a werepig, not a wolf.

His manananggal is "an attractive woman by day, buxom, long-haired, and light complexioned" who, at night, "discards [her] lower body from the waist down and flies." Lim lists regional names: wuwug in Boholano, magcucutud in Pampangueño and anananggal in Bicol. Accounts from Aklan, Siquijor, Cebu, Bicol and Bohol describe a rarer kind that splits at the neck instead.

An aswang is usually heard before it is seen. Lim notes the bird cries tiktik and kikik, and wings flapping on the roof, wakwak or kaskas.

Ramos added a warning that still applies: printing an oral story gives it a tidiness living legend lacks. Lim adds that Ramos credited a single question from his UCLA mentor, Wayland Hand, "What's an aswang?", with starting decades of research.

Greeting family abroad over Halloween and Undas

For a Filipino working abroad, 31 October can be silly and 1–2 November should be about the family's dead. Manila is UTC+8 with no daylight saving, so an 8 pm Manila message lands at 4 pm in Dubai (UTC+4) and 3 pm in Riyadh (UTC+3). Original lines to send, Tagalog first with an English gloss:

• "Happy Halloween, anak! Walang aswang dito, pero may kakaning naghihintay sa'yo." ("Happy Halloween, child! No aswang here, but there's rice cake waiting for you.")
• "Kahit nasa kabilang dagat ka, ikaw pa rin ang paborito kong kalabasa." ("Even across the sea, you're still my favourite pumpkin.")
• "Sinindihan ko na ang kandila para kay Lolo. Ikaw naman, buksan mo ang video call mamaya." ("I've lit the candle for Grandpa. Your turn: open the video call later.")
• "Nasa sementeryo kami, katabi ni Lola. May puwesto ka pa rin sa tabi namin." ("We're at the cemetery beside Lola. There's still a place for you beside us.")

Send the first two on 31 October and keep the last two for Undas. For the playful night, the interactive Halloween card with up to six photos takes about 5 minutes; in family mode its closing question becomes "Will you be my favourite little pumpkin?", and you get an email the first time they answer. Its interface is English, but the letter and names can be typed in Tagalog.

For a parent or sibling who will reread it on a break, the premium Halloween page with a 60-second voice note takes about 10 minutes. It holds up to 12 photos, can stay locked until a time you set, and carries one reply of up to 280 characters back to your inbox. Family photos are private, and 38.5% of SubhSandesh creators add a password before sharing.

When the person abroad is a partner and the real message is that you miss them, the miss-you page built for couples apart is the better fit than a pumpkin. It was built for distance, with a countdown to a reunion date and "open when" letters.

When to skip the Halloween card during Undas

Skip it on 1 and 2 November for a family in mourning. Demetrio's point stands: the visit is a devotion to relatives who are believed to still care, and a cartoon ghost reads as a joke at the graveside.

Skip it for a grandparent who is not comfortable in English, because every button is in English. Skip it for a barangay party too: each page greets a single person and cannot invite a whole street. And if you will be at the puntod yourself, light the candle in person; 90.9% of started SubhSandesh pages get published, and none of them replaces turning up.

Sources

• Toribio de Castro, "The Weird Tale of the Twelve Hunchbacks", Folklore Studies 17, 1958 (reprinted from Philippine Magazine, November 1934).
• MUSDIKS, "Pangangaluluwa", Dictionary of Filipino Music Terms, UP Diliman Interactive Learning Center.
• Bliss Cua Lim, "Queer Aswang Transmedia: Folklore as Camp", Kritika Kultura 24, 2015.
• Francisco Demetrio, S.J., "Values in Philippine Folk Beliefs and Customs", Philippiniana Sacra 28 (84), 1993.
• Office of the President, Proclamation No. 1006 (2026 holidays), 3 September 2025, via Lawphil.
• Office of the President, Proclamation No. 1427 (2027 holidays), 8 September 2026, via Lawphil.