Filipino Scares: a Collection of Short Stories

Filipino Scares - An Introduction

I get frightened very easily. I'm afraid of so many things that it's actually hard to list down all the things that scare me. But it's also because of all these fears that I became a big fan of horror films--and horror stories in general.

There's something cathartic about confronting terror and being able to step away from it--either by a commercial break, by walking out of a movie theater afterwards, by putting down a book, or by pausing the thing you're streaming online. It became a reverse-escape of sorts. In stories, I could lose myself. And in the same stories, I could triumph over the things that scare me.

This became a mantra for me, growing up. I even started writing my own horror stories. Silly ones, at the beginning. Stories I would have wanted to submit to the Midnight Society, because of course I was a fan of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?". Or stories I wanted to see as part of the "Shake, Rattle & Roll" film franchise. My stories featuring my monsters.

It was only after graduating college that I started publishing what I wrote online, through a Tumblr blog called Filipino Scares. Mostly because I like writing stories that were anchored in my experiences, and at the time, I only knew about Filipino locales and superstitions.

As the years went on, I became better-traveled and more experienced; but I still liked writing horror stories set in the Philippines best. Because there's something very personal in writing about my own past. My own culture.

So I collected some of the stories I liked best from the ones I wrote on Tumblr, and I added a few new ones to create a collection to share here on Wattpad. Hopefully, even if these stories don't end up scary for you, you'd still find something to like about them.

Thank you choosing to read this collection.

Yours,
Jason.