The Amomongo Attacks at Sag-ang, La Castellana, Negros Occidental

Mount Kanlaon is an active volcano on the island of Negros. The sources describe it as having "many caves". At its foot lies Barangay Sag-ang, in the municipality of La Castellana, Negros Occidental. In Visayan folktales, amomongo was already a word for an ape or gorilla. In May 2008, according to the Visayan Daily Star, something "victimized chickens and a goat, who ate their intestines".

June 2008. Two nights. On the nights of June 9 and 10, two men of Sag-ang were attacked separately in Sitio Cabungbungan. No surviving account says which man was attacked on which night.

Salvador Aguilar told police that a "hairy creature with long nails" attacked him. He escaped. He was treated at the La Castellana Emergency Clinic for scratches on different parts of his body. Elias Galvez was attacked too. His companions rescued him.

Residents described what they had seen. It was "about 5 feet and 4 inches tall" and "looks like a monkey", and they called it amomongo. Later coverage described "a hairy white ape with long, sharp nails". The two men showed authorities scratches on their face, back and hands. ABS-CBN, as cited by Wikipedia, reported medical records of "numerous scratches on their faces, backs, and abdomens".

Barangay Captain Rudy Torres "confirmed reports of the existence of such creature". He said it "usually strikes where there are no barangay tanods", the village watchmen. Inspector Teddy Velez, the La Castellana police chief, confirmed the residents' reports. He alerted his policemen and the village watchmen, and instructed them on what to do if the animal appeared again.

Mayor Alberto Nicor was firm on one point. The amomongo, he said, "is not a witch or 'aswang' but a wild animal". He suggested residents set out bait to capture it. He offered two theories: "This is one possibility because there may be no food now in the mountain." Or, as he put it, "it might be that 'amomongos' habitat has been disturbed by humans, thus, it runs wild."

Gilbert Bayoran reported the story in the Visayan Daily Star on 13 June 2008. On 16 June, Sun.Star Bacolod ran the headline "Residents on alert vs 'wild monkey'". ABS-CBN News followed the same day. No capture was ever reported. No photographs. No tracks, hair or casts.

The victims and police spoke of a wild monkey. Nicor pointed to hunger or disturbed habitat. A 2020 SunStar feature, asking whether Amomongo is "the 'Bigfoot' version of the Philippines", mentioned unnamed experts who suggested an albino gorilla, while noting that the Philippines has no native apes. Wikipedia attributes to "the scientific community" the view of "a legend mixed with mistaken identity". Writing on the Centre for Fortean Zoology blog in 2011, Dale Drinnon proposed a relic orangutan population behind Philippine ape-men such as the Kapre, though he did not explicitly apply it to the Negros attacks.

The amomongo lives on in older stories too. In "Amomongo and Iput-Iput (The Ape and the Firefly)", collected by Damiana Eugenio, a boastful ape is defeated by a firefly. The Aswang Project and a string of cryptozoology sites keep the 2008 case alive. In 2021 an animated short, Ang Amomonggo sa Aton, set the creature on Negros in 1985.