{
  "title": "GABI NG LAGIM",
  "category": "[RADIO-SERIES]",
  "article": "The decades of the Fifties and Sixties are today considered the “golden age” of radio drama in\nPhilippine broadcasting. In the forefront of this thespic wave was DZRH, the key station of the\nManila Broadcasting Company, which introduced many dramatic genres into the mainstream of\nFilipino urban culture: soap operas, adventure thrillers (Kapitan Kidlat), and detective mysteries\n(Johnny Davao). But supernatural fantasy was largely unknown to island listeners until 1959\nwhen a young man named Froilan Villegas created the very first Filipino horror series, Gabi ng\nLagim. “I thought of this wonderful new direction in radio,” he remembers, “and it was a great\nopportunity to be a pioneer and go first. But what should be the name of the program? I\nremembered that I had possessed an English book with the title of Night of Terror, and for that\nreason I thought of Gabi ng Lagim. But that was not enough. The title needed to stand out and to\ndraw the listener’s attention at the very opening... So I worked out the beginning words of Gabi\nng Lagim from the Bible.”\nThe series was first aired on August 18, 1959 on a Tuesday evening at 8:30. It was an instant\nsuccess and, according to Villegas, by the second week of broadcast the program was number one\nin the ratings charts.\nGabi ng Lagim last broadcast for radio was in 1984. The TV series was first shown in 1963 on\nChannel 11 on Wednesday at 7:00 to 8:00. It was a live show then as there were no taped shows at\nthat time. The last broadcast for the TV series was in 1966.”\nThe sources for the Gabi ng Lagim scripts were as diverse as the many horror traditions of the\nworld, but Villegas reworked them all to place them squarely within his own milieu and that of his\nlisteners. He recalls that he did adaptations of “stories from Europe like Dracula and other known\nhorror stories but they all revolved around Filipino characters and the Filipino way of life.” And of\nall the supernatural manifestations that he portrayed in his scripts, the ones that elicited the\ngreatest audience response were the ones that drew most heavily on the native folklore. “It was\nthe stories,” affirms Villegas, “from the remote barrios in the Philippines about aswang, kapre,\nmanananggal, and duwende that were the favorites of the listeners.”\nThe mythology of the islands boasts some of the most fearsome monsters of any in world\nfolklore—what has been called “the whole underworld of Filipino lower-class mythology.” And\nchief among these beings is the aswang.\n“The aswang concept is most usefully understood,” asserts folklore scholar Maximo Ramos, “as\na congeries of beliefs about five types of mythical beings identifiable with certain creatures of the\nEuropean tradition: (1) the blood-sucking vampire, (2) the self-segmenting viscera sucker, (3) the\nman-eating weredog, (4) the vindictive or evil-eye witch, and (5) the carrion-eating ghoul. Thus\nwhen Philippine folk speak of the aswang, they generally refer the physical traits, habitat, or\nactivities of these five types of mythical beings, and sometimes also of other mythical entities like\nthe demon, dwarf, and elf.” Ramos refers to “the formidable tangle of beliefs about the lower\nmythical beings known by a wide variety of local names in an archipelago like the Philippines’\nseven thousand islands and some eighty-five native language—languages, not just dialects, since\nthe speakers of one tongue cannot communicate with those of any other…”\nRamos: “The belief that ghouls were scared off by noise and loud talking may have contributed\nto the vociferousness of Filipinos when in groups… It is often quite easy to spot groups of Filipino\nstudents abroad, because they are usually the most boisterous at gatherings. Filipino art forms\nlike television shows, radio plays, and stage presentations seldom have quiet moments.”\nAnd in the backwaters and far-flung villages of the islands, belief in these creatures still remains\nstrong. As recently as 2003, three men were arrested in a remote part of Negros Occidental for the\nbeheading murders of an elderly husband and wife whom they had long suspected of being\naswang. Claiming in their confession that they wanted to put an end to the couple’s “evil powers,”\nthey had also originally intended to take the heads of their victims to the river nearby and “bury\nthem to ensure they would not return to their bodies.”\n“‘Aswang’ have a way of materializing in times of want,” comments Conrado De Quiros in\ndescribing how anthropologists view the situation. “It’s the people’s way of coping. They project\ntheir fears to the outside world, in the form of unholy creatures, which despite their fearful\ncountenance were capable of being destroyed… Maybe so. But anthro-pologists themselves,\nparticularly in the godforsaken places of this country, of which there are plentiful too, have been\nknown to glance behind them on a dark and lonely road in the witching hour.”\nAs with many other classic radio spine-tinglers, fans of Gabi ng Lagim liked to listen to the\nprogram in the dark, as a means of increasing their goosebump quotient. Oftentimes, though, the\ndarkened setting was not a deliberate choice but rather an expected (but no less annoying)\noccurance of routine household life. In the days before ??? \u0000idwest\u0000ly the power system,\nelectrical failures and outages were notoriously frequent. People who were stuck in the dark had\nto find something to do, and, for many, tuning in to a good creepy ghost story on a transistor\nradio was a preferred option. “As a kid,” one former listener reminisced recently in Pinoy Central,\n“I remember listening [during the blackouts] to radio horror dramas like Gabi ng Lagim. Of\ncourse, I never dared do this alone. The studio production seemed all too real to me that they did\ngive me a scare.” “With Ben David’s abysmal voice,” declares Business World writer Doy Ariola,\n“that program scared me witless as a kid when I was alone in bed during a blackout.”\n“My love-hate relationship with AM radio began early,” recalls Manila Times columnist Ruben\nD. Canlas Jr., “when as kids we used to cling tightly to our pillows, bedsheets pulled over our\nheads and sweating rivers as we listened to the classic Gabi ng Lagim, a horror radio drama that\nalways scared us till our hair stood on end… Today, there are hardly any radio dramas. And if\nthere are, they are more in the ‘realist mode’, no more fantasies and horror, which is a pity since\nfantastic themes are easier and cheaper to produce in radio (you only need sound effects, not the\nexpensive computer-churned visual effects).\n“The things that really scared me out of my wits when I was a kid,” recalled listener Conrado de\nQuiros in 2001, “were not the movies I saw and the komiks I read but the radio programs I\nheard… I still remember one radio program that brought a chill to my heart, which was ‘Gabi ng\nLagim.’ From the moment Ben David—yes, the guy with the big voice and exaggerated way of\ntalking—introduced the program, along with much unearthly noises and the distant baying of\ndogs, you were glued to the spot. And not get much sleep the rest of the night. It would of course\nhave been so much easier not to listen to the program, but all the boys at school would be talking\nabout it next morning, and the truly horrifying prospect of being left out, or worse being the butt\nof jokes, would be sufficient fortification for enduring the terrors of the night. Though barely,\neach squeak and sighing of the wind, particularly on dark and rainy nights, bringing much news\nof foreboding.”\nDe Quiros (2004): Gabi ng Lagim “featured some pretty awesome voice talents. What made the\nradio horror stories more terrifying than the movies was that it relied on the power of\nsuggestion… Doors creaking, wings flapping, wild noises in the night—all these, or the simulation\nof them, terrified more than the sight of nocturnal denizens creeping up on the hero and heroine\nin the movies.”",
  "origination": "DZRH, Manila (MBC).",
  "duration": "August 18, 1959-ca. 1984.",
  "personnel": "Ben David (announcer), Froilan M. Villegas (scriptwriter, producer).\nCASTS: Jose Chua, Julie Fe Navarro, Mario O’Hara, et al.",
  "extant_recordings": "Unknown.",
  "chronology": "",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}