Babi Ngepet is a hostile ghost that can be encountered in the haunted school in DreadOut.
Description
Background
See More: Babi Ngepet (Wikipedia)
The Babi Ngepet is a boar or swine demon in Javanese mythology. According to local myths, the creature is believed to be the manifestation of a person practicing dark magic in order to help people become rich instantly, but in exchange they must sacrifice their humanity, allowing themselves to be transformed into a boar-like demon. The human-animal transformation is similar to shapeshifting or lycanthropy in the Western folklore.
Appearance
The Babi Ngepet takes the appearance of a boar-like creature, albeit much larger and ferocious looking. When looking at it with the bare human eye, the Babi Ngepet just looks like a regular large boar. When seen through camera, it attains a human-like face instead of a regular boar snout, as well as muddy-colored skin and a bloody mouth.
Game
DreadOut
Act 1
Linda encounters the Babi Ngepet in the north-east hallway from the exit door on the first floor. She finds it laying on the ground blocking her way. It will stand up and attack her when she tries to take the school key from its neck. After Linda defeats the Scissor Phantom and obtains the scissors, the Babi Ngepet can be found sleeping on the ground in a corner of the room with collapsed walls. With the scissors in her inventory, she then can cut the key loose from the Babi Ngepet's neck to make her way towards her escape.
Strategy
Nothing seems special about the Babi Ngepet's fighting strategies. It mainly attacks the player by ramming into them and knocking them down. Switch to the camera view, and hit it once the screen is distorted. After three shots, the player can drive it away easily. Another way is to lure the beast into a room. While it is stuck into a door, take its picture just one time to drive it away.
If the player is being chased by the Babi Ngepet, the player can temporarily escape to the second floor by climbing upstairs and wait until if it's safe. The player will never encounter the Babi Ngepet on the second floor as it only patrols the first floor. The player can also tell if it is in close proximity if the player hears snorting or the jingling of the keys around its neck. The player can't defeat this ghost, as it is purposely designed in the game to advance the storyline.
Interpretation
The skeptical view is that it was probably a traditional way to explain the unexplainable loss of fortune or a mysterious theft in the village, by blaming the wild boar roaming the village in the night. Or probably it was a means of traditional pest control; to get rid of wild boars from eating and destroying rice fields, tomato fields, or barns. The association of the boar with magic concerning fortune probably originated from Javanese pre-Islamic and pre-Hindu-Buddhist beliefs that associate the boar with domestic richness, fortune and prosperity, similar to its connections with Celengan, which means piggy bank in Javanese language. The word Celengan is derived from word Celeng which means boar.
Trivia
- Upon defeating the Babi Ngepet by taking it's picture three times, it will flee and increasingly becomes smaller.
- If the player gives chase to the room with the collapsed walls, the player can catch a glimpse of the Babi Ngepet going into the giant crack in the wall, presumably to hide.
- The Babi Ngepet's characteristics have a slight resemblance with the concept of a 'Piggy Bank', a traditional container to store money with the shape of a pig.
- In Keepers of the Dark, the player can hear it's oinking in "Haunted School" (Room 106) but it is nowhere to be found.