Pennangalan

The pennangalan is a unique type of vampire from Malaysian folklore.

A pennangalan is always female. By day, it appears human, but by night, its head and internal organs separate from the body and fly in search of victims. Before it can rejoin its body, a pennangalan must soak her swollen internal organs in vinegar, which will shrink them such that they'll fit back into her body.

In popular fiction

The pennangalan was a monster in the Dungeons & Dragons RPG, featured in the first edition Fiend Folio.

Comicbook writer/artist Mike Mignola used the creature in a Hellboy story titled simply "The Pennangalan" which appears in e-comic form as an extra on the Hellboy animated DVD, "Blood and Iron" & also the comics anthology "The Dark Horse Book of Monsters" & the trade paperback "Hellboy: The Troll Witch & Other Stories".

Another appearance of the creature in comic form is the short story "Head Prolapse elegy" by Shintaro Kago, about the travails of a pennangalan who wants to have a normal relationship with a man, but is repeatedly thwarted by the fact that her head and organs tend to separate when she has an orgasm.

The pennangalan was featured in the Malaysian movie "Mystics in Bali". In the movie, a caucasian researcher becomes an apprentice to a Leyak witch as part of an academic study of the religion. The witch turns the woman into a pennangalan.