Pelesit & Polong

In this week's episode, we're going to Malaysia to look at a deadly duo - the Pelesit and the Polong! How do these two spirits work together to assist their master? Why does this myth encourage kids to squish grasshoppers? Find out this week!

Transcript

INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

I’ve had a busy week full of visitors this week, and as the holidays come up - it gets even busier. I’ll be putting up my tree this weekend and cracking open my advent calendar, because adults can enjoy a little piece of chocolate a day too - jeez.

DESCRIPTION:

But what is this podcast if not a break away into an either ancient or fantasy world I suppose. This week we’re heading on over to the very real Malaysia for two monsters for the price of one - because they work hand in hand, and they are the Pelesit and Polong of Malay folklore.

The Pelesit is generally described as a familiar spirit and it takes the form of a cricket or grasshopper. Nothing fancy about it, it just looks like a grasshopper - it’s not bigger than usual or has scary teeth - just a grasshopper. The Polong however, is said to be a formless spirit, however, some reports are that they take the female form whilst made completely of blood and about the size of the first joint of a finger - so super tiny. There are also sources that say they can take the shape of a kris, a wavy shaped dagger, with the eyes on the handles and the blade being their neck.

But it’s more the creation and what they do that is more interesting than what they look like in this case, which is pretty unusual for one of our monsters.

The Pelesit and Polong go together because they are used like a guiding system and a missile - and are summoned to work together. They are usually only summoned by women, who in turn are granted exceptional beauty and are called mother by the spirits - but the intent is either to seek personal revenge and use them as weapons, or to enact others' revenge and profit, like an assassin. They can be summoned by men, but they don’t get the beauty bonus - and it was a lot more frequently done by women due to this.

So how does it work exactly? Well we need to go into their summoning - the woman would summon the Polong first, by either murdering a man or getting a murdered man’s blood. She would keep this in a flask that is wide enough to fit your ring finger in - that’s important for later. Over the course of a week or two, the woman would say incantations and the Polong would appear when chirping sounds came from the flask. This is where the ring finger comes in, you have to feed this spirit some blood from your finger, which tames it to listen to you. If you don’t, the Polong would go crazy and break its containment to suck the blood out of you. 

Once this is done, you can summon a Pelesit. You can either catch one in the wild, but good luck differentiating it from a normal grasshopper - or you can summon one yourself. This involves digging up a dead child, and on a full moon, taking the corpse to a hilltop that specifically has an ant hill on it, and facing it whilst you have your back to the moon. The woman would then read a bunch of incantations, and the child would stick its tongue out, she would then have to bite it off. Yep - you heard me. You’d have to keep the tongue in your mouth and run to where 3 roads meet, where you would bury it and wait for a Pelesit to turn up. 

The Pelesit becomes a pet to the Polong, and they both become familiars to the person who summoned them. But what do you do with them that is so lethal you could make an assassin business out of? Once you have the target  of your ghostly duo, the Polong would set the Pelesit onto their trail - and the Pelesit would wait until they are asleep, and crawl backwards into their mouths. Whilst they wouldn’t wake up, they would feel it - this is when the Pelesit chirps to summon the Polong, who then possesses the unfortunate victim, and the Pelesit hops back to its ‘mother’.

The possession is pretty nasty, the victim will first start to have bruises that are unexplained show up all over their body, and then they will literally ramble on about cats. This is the final stage of where you can stop the possession, because if it goes further than this, the victim is driven irreversibly insane, and will eventually die. Once it is complete, the Polong will return to its flask with the owner, waiting to be called again. 

I mentioned there that you could stop the possession, and this was only achievable through exorcism. The exorcism is strange and performed by a Shaman, called Dukun in Malay or Bomoh in Indonesia - by asking the Polong kindly who its owner is, if they tell you - you can go ask the person to recall the spirit. However, most Polong don’t like being asked these questions and will make the possessed person lash out or hurt themselves. Sometimes, it would frame someone else as the owner, or it would just not answer - leaving the possessed person to die. You could also fail the exorcism, which meant that the Polong would move to you as soon as the original victim was driven mad - and do the same to you for attempting to exorcise it.

There were some downsides to owning these spirits though, as if you decide to change your ways and get rid of them - it was quite tricky. You would usually have to pass this down to someone else, but if you wanted to truly be rid of them - you would need to bury it in a bottle, but that’s if you can do it before it possesses you for attempting to kill it. The Pelesit can only be killed through decapitation, but that’s only if you can catch it first, but you’re most likely to find it at murder scenes outside of the summoner's home, where it would just chill eating turmeric rice.

ORIGIN:

Now for etymology - we of course, have two monsters here, and unfortunately, I only have the etymology for one which is sad. The word Pelesit comes from the Malay word lesit, meaning to buzz or whizz - which we know that insects do. I’m gutted I couldn’t find a translation for this, but it is what it is I suppose - Google tells me that it translates to pods from Malay, but who knows if that’s correct.

For the history of these two monsters, I have more bad news - there’s not much on this either. However, from what I could gather, it was mentioned in Hikayat Abdullah, which was a book written in 1849 by Abdullah bin Abdul al Kadir, who was a Malaysian writer and considered one of the most culturally impactful writers from this region across time. He mostly worked with the British and Dutch as they invaded the Malay archipelago as a translator, and the Brits apparently found his stories of Malaysian folklore to be very entertaining, one of them being Sir Thomas Stanford Bingley Raffles, who was a major figure within the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the British invasion of Asia. He is still known very well throughout places like Singapore, but of course - he massively benefitted from taking advantage of native people and claimed that he discovered the already well established country - typical.

Anyway, this book was an autobiography of his travels and he claimed that he had seen a Pelesit, working very hard on getting to a certain location to, assumingly, possess someone. However, what this doesn’t tell us is when the myth started - but assuming that this was a word of mouth type monster, it had most likely been one that has been passed down for generations at this point in the mid 1800’s.

But what we do know is that the Shamans who would exorcise these spirits, Bomohs, have existed and been vanquishing demons since the prehistoric tribes - and Malaysia has been inhabited since 40,000 years ago with native people, so we don’t really know. Whilst belief in these types of monsters still does exist within this culture, the landscape of Malaysia has changed from Shamanic belief to Islam - and Bomohs are generally seen as untrustworthy now, so the solution to this monster has at least taken a nose dive in regards to wide belief. It is still encouraged to squish grasshoppers if you see them in your house in Malaysia, just in case a Pelesit is prepping to jump in your gob for the night - so at least that part has remained, at the behest of the grasshoppers I’m sure.

I’m also not too sure if we can call this a moralistic creature, but maybe the folktale moral here is that even though they are an easy way to get rid of someone you want to murder, you are always at risk of this solution turning against you - and that stain will last forever on your eternal soul or something like that.

Let’s talk crickets and grasshoppers because they are realistically our real life examples of these monsters this week Pelesit are supposedly based on bush crickets, which are pretty big grasshoppers - but they are nocturnal and can mimic noises made by humans. Also an important question here is why does the grasshopper go in anyone’s mouth - easy answer is that bugs are dumb, and I’m sure as much as we are told that we eat 8 spiders in our lifetime in our sleep, maybe we eat as many grasshoppers if they get into the house.

Malaysia does have a history of eating insects, however, it is not common in modern times. Although crickets and grasshoppers are some of the most common bugs to eat and apparently are delicious when fried and insects are halal, so maybe we should all switch to eating them. Of course, I would rather starve - but I’m a big wimp. 

I honestly can’t think of anything mythical to compare this to and searching mythical creature bosses or commanders just brought up lots of video games, so the only general thing I can think of it something like Satan or the Devil himself who can command other creatures to do things for him, or the Bokkenrijders that we covered from Dutch folklore who work for a Devil - otherwise, I’m drawing a blank on this one - it’s certainly a unique pairing!

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Now onto modern media, of course I cannot find anything bar an episode of Marvel Anime: Blade that covers either of these monsters. So I’m going to go over some fun summoned monsters this week.

For art, go for independent art this week as I can’t find any that aren’t, as it’s not a really common monster!

In movies, we have; Big Trouble in Little China, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks & The Box. 

For TV, we have; Supernatural, The Winx Club, Gargoyles, Fairy Tail, The Owl House, The Trap Door, The Little Prince, Harley Quinn, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Merlin & The Outpost. 

In video games, we have ones such as; Elder Scrolls, Bayonetta, Dark Souls, My Lovely Wife, Dofus, World of Warcraft, Eternal Darkness, Shin Megami Tensei, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Fate, Baldur’s Gate 3, Total War: Warhammer, Chaos Legion, Champions Online, Diablo 2, Wakfu, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Keeper 2, Exile: Avernum, Golden Sun, Divinity: Original Sin 2 & Touhou Project.

My book recommendation this week is Red Onion, White Onion and Other Malay Legends and Folklores by M A Badrie for some Malay folklore stories if you’re interested in mythology in this part of the world!

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?

I really hope not, this sounds horrible - and I’m just talking about the grasshopper in mouth part. The whole summoning sounds gross, as well as the monster itself, but I suppose if you’re really that desperate to be a mob boss with spirits in tow - this would be an easy way to do it. 

I said it earlier, but I think this monster is probably a cautionary tale somewhere on what you send out will come back to you tenfold - I don’t imagine these summoners have enough people to hate and they end up getting driven mad themselves eventually, so I guess the moral is be wary of the hate you put out into the world. 

Do I think there are sentient grasshoppers out there that are commanded by little blood ladies - probably not, but I will be much more aware of grasshoppers in the springtime following this episode now. I spooked one of my friends who has a general fear of bugs talking about this - so that’s enough joy for me to get out of this one.

But what do you think? Did the Polong and Pelesit coordinate possessions in Malaysia? Let me know on Twitter!

OUTRO: 

This is a type of monster I’ve not really covered before, the idea of having a tag team duo is awesome and I was so surprised when I was doing the research on this one at how they worked together. I hope there are some more like this around in other mythologies I can bring you!

Next week, we’re heading over to Germany and looking at a pretty legendary monster, a household or mine shaft spirit who can either help or hinder - get ready to discover some new rocky elements with the Kobold next Thursday!

For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube, Threads and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.

Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.