Batibat

In Ilocano accounts the Batibat is a spirit that dwells in trees. When such a tree is cut down and the wood is repurposed—especially as a support post for a house—the spirit is displaced and ‘‘made homeless.’’ The folktale logic emphasizes that the Batibat then inhabits what remains of its tree or the post and forbids humans from sleeping near that post; violation of that prohibition provokes the Batibat's vengeful response.

Sources describe the Batibat as taking the form of an ancient, grotesquely obese, tree-dwelling female spirit. The description emphasizes an aged, corpulent female figure closely associated with the tree in which it resides.

When a person sleeps near a post or remnant of a felled tree that housed the Batibat, the spirit is said to transform into its true form and attack. The attack is described as suffocating the victim and inducing sleep paralysis and waking nightmares; culturally the Batibat is linked to the local experience and term for nightmare and to nocturnal, potentially fatal sleep afflictions.