AI illustration
Robinsons Galleria snake
In the 1990s a rumor said a half-snake, half-human being lived in the basement of Robinsons Galleria. The story claimed it watched women from the fitting rooms. The owner's family called it false in 2008. The mall later joked about it in an ad.
Folklore is retold; versions differ.
Sources: Wikipedia: Robinsons Galleria (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikidata (CC0)
The story
This story is false. It is a mall rumor, and it has no basis in fact. In the 1990s, people in Metro Manila began to say that a creature, half snake and half human, lived in the basement of Robinsons Galleria. The mall is on EDSA at Ortigas Avenue in Quezon City, and it opened on 12 January 1990.
The rumor said that the creature watched women in the fitting rooms and that it was kept as a lucky charm. Variants named famous people. They are not repeated, because no evidence supports any of them. Wikipedia treats the tale as a modern urban myth.
The story spread again in 2010 after a video on YouTube claimed to show the creature. The mall owners have rejected the rumor. Later, the mall made a joke about it in an advertisement in 2018, and again in a social media post in 2025, at the start of the Year of the Snake. The rumor is a good example of how an urban legend moves by word of mouth and then by the internet.