Gather 'round, y'all, it's ghost story time! (with pictures)
In December-January of 2006-7, my then-fiance (now hubby) and I traveled to Vietnam to visit his family. It was my first time there.
After spending a week or so in Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City) with his maternal family, we went to the historic capital city Hue in central Vietnam to visit his paternal family, which consists of his father and his grandmother.
We took a plane up from Saigon. Then in the taxi from the airport, the hubby turns to me and says very seriously, "I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to not freak out." So I say okay, what, because I goddamn hate surprises. I even hate surprise birthday parties. LOL.
So he proceeds to tell me that his grandma's house is haunted. I was just like, WHAT. THIS SORT OF THING YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME BEFORE. You have to know before we proceed that I'm not a particularly superstitious person, though I love horror movies (the creepy Asian kind) and scary ghost stories. Call me a conditional believer. IMHO there've been so many individual experiences by many different, unconnected people that surely SOMETHING is going on that modern science is as yet unable to explain.
Which doesn't mean I voluntarily go looking for the paranormal.
But he refused to tell me more about it, only repeating that it was haunted. In retrospect, this was more because he didn't want to think about it too much, because he would freak *himself* out. Which did creep me out a little bit, because usually he's not afraid of anything. He's a woobie (to me, at least), but he's a MANLY woobie.
So, headed towards a haunted house. Pretty much, GREAT, WELCOME TO HUE.
The visit overall went really well. His grandma is a bundle of 4-foot awesome. She and I would have profound conversations even though I don't speak/understand a word of Vietnamese besides ordering food -- she'd talk at me for fifteen minutes at a time and I would smile and nod and say 'uh huh' and 'okay' at appropriate intervals. It was great. I probably agreed to have ten boy children without realizing it.
We were put into this attic-type room at the top of the house. To get the layout of this house you have to understand that most Vietnamese houses are shotgun houses made of concrete -- they're basically shaped like a shoebox with interconnected rooms in a row, then additional levels are added on top. So to get to our room, you had to walk all the way to the back, take a left up onto a little staircase, which then dead-ends into the wall at a T-intersection. A left-turn takes you up another staircase into another attic room that housed a huge Buddhist altar, and a right took you up a steep staircase directly into our room.
Our room was upstairs through the metal door on the right.
The other staircase leading up into the Buddhist altar room.
Creepy, y/y?
I spent a lot of time up there, because that was right about when Vietnam started catching up to me. I was sick as a dog with food poisoning as well as a painful skin infection, jet lag, and a number of other really TMI things.
I didn't mind being alone. I only half-believed the haunted house story anyway, and nothing much had ever happened to me before. (In my childhood home I'd hear my name being called and footsteps upstairs when I was home alone, but that could have just been imagination.) I comforted myself with thinking that, even if ghosts do exist, I'm not psychically sensitive to paranormal things.
I kept saying that to myself as things began to happen. I'd be up in our room alone, trying to distract myself from my sheer physical misery by reading a book or working on sudoku and then I'd hear loud footsteps on the staircase to the room. And they were LOUD. I mean, the stairs were cement, so it's pretty evident when someone's coming up. So I'd wait, thinking it was the hubby or a relative coming to get something...and then nothing. Just steps, STAMP STAMP STAMP coming up, and then nothing. I'd get up off the bed and look down the staircase, and the staircase would be empty. The stairs only go to our room, so no one would just be casually taking the stairs to get somewhere else.
I'd also hear my name called, very clearly. The first few times this happened I thought it was the hubby looking for me, and I'd get up and go find him. He'd usually be in the front of the house in the living room with the rest of the family and have no idea what I was talking about. Also, sound didn't carry in the house; to be heard you'd have to basically get to the stairs and call up into the room. After that I just ignored it. If it was an actual person looking for me, then they'd send the hubby to come get me.
After a while, I'd hear actual steps into the room and feel a presence standing there in the middle of the room. At that point I was pretty much I AM READING MY BOOK I AM NOT LOOKING UP OMG THERE'S NOTHING THERE NOTHING THERE.
At this point some people might wonder why I didn't freak out and run away or refuse to be alone in the room. I don't know. I'm still pretty calm thinking about it. At the time (and now) I figured whatever it was had been in the house since before we came, and had never harmed anyone, so why would it try to hurt me/us? IMO most ghosts aren't out to get people.
I mentioned the stepping thing to the hubby and at that point he flat-out refused to be in the room alone, ever. lol.
There was one REALLY freaky incident, though. The room had a really big window next to the bed, that overlooked the roof. I was lying there on the bed, when a cat started yowling right underneath the window, practically next to my ear. IT WAS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE GRUDGE, I SWEAR TO GOD. I wigged out and yanked myself up to look out and maybe throw something at the goddamn cat (yes, I know, if this was a horror movie that'd be when some crazy demon-woman in rice-powder and long black hair yanks me through the window and eats my brains) but there was no cat at all. And the roof is really high in relation to the other houses (we were on the equivalent of the 3rd or 4th floor) so how could a cat have gotten up there?
We were more scared at night. I'd refuse to open my eyes for fear I'd actually see something, because I felt something. The hubby insisted on being on the inside of the bed (I didn't tell him about the cat thing until way later) smashed up against my side like a koala. Then one night we heard loud scratching at the window. And we were totally, FUCK NO, WE'RE NOT GOING TO INVESTIGATE. Because, like I'd said, we're really high up. There are no trees or plants (or anything) near the window for a branch to be rubbing against it -- plus there was no wind.
But okay, all this was livable, at least for me, and hell, I figured most of it was the result of an overactive imagination. I was more scared of Vietnam's fauna. Ask me about the frog in the toilet incident sometime. Goddamn ghost never even came close to giving me a heart attack like that. Motherfuck.
Then on the second-to-last day (we were leaving the next morning) we got up to go on a river cruise to visit the historic sites along the Mekong (?) river. We got downstairs to discover men hard at work, digging up the floor. The hubby talked to his dad, then hustled me out of the house, refusing to answer any questions.
It was when we were about to get underway on our day-trip that he told me that his dad had had some colossal bad luck that year, and had brought in a diviner (or something) to have a look at the house and figure out if it was bad feng shui or whatever. My father-in-law is a professional feng shui practitioner himself, but apparently you can't do it for yourself.
This practitioner friend basically told him that there were bodies buried under the house.
The dad hadn't wanted to tell me this because he was afraid that I would freak out. *snerk* At this point I was like, REALLY?? COOL, I WANT TO WATCH! The hubby was like, ER, NO, WE ARE LEAVING NOW OMG. Haha.
When we got back that night, we found out that they had found the remains of three bodies and had cleared them out, and the family was doing a Buddhist ceremony out front, burning incense and whatnot. If you watched The Eye, that's what the protagonist's family was doing out in front of their apartment building to appease the ghost.
These are where they found the bodies, two in one hole and one in the other. I find it really interesting that the practitioner friend pinpointed precisely where the bodies were.
BTW, we're very lucky these photos have survived, because when my FIL found out I had them, he insisted that I delete them because the ghosts could come through/negative energy/whatnot. He was so adamant that I did, but it turns out the hubby had copies saved to an old harddrive.
It turns out, the river behind the house was man-made, and when they were digging it out a long time ago, a lot of laborers died and were buried around the area. Also, the area floods regularly every year like clockwork, which doesn't help the creepiness of the house because there are waterstains on the wall higher than your head, and so probably people die in those floods too. The hubby at this point, was OMFGGGGG I'M SO GLAD WE'RE LEAVING SOON THOUGH I LOVE YOU GRANDMA whereas I was disappointed that I'd missed out on seeing the bodies. I'm weird, I know.
When we left the house the next morning to return to Saigon, the hubby started telling me the experiences that the family had had. He hadn't wanted to talk about it before while we were still staying *in* the house, and to be honest I'm sort of glad he didn't told me before, because I might've taken my own experiences more seriously at the time.
Grandma's sister (or something, I forget the exact nature of their relationship) was staying w/ them. One day she was home alone, downstairs. Suddenly she saw a bright light emerge from the Buddhist altar room, dash down the stairs, and then whisk up into our room.
When my mother-in-law was pregnant with the hubby, she was coming down the stairs from our room when she felt a hand SHOVE her down the stairs. (which sort of contradicts my own theory about the spirits not being malevolent. Hrm.)
When the hubby was a toddler, he'd been playing alone inside while the family sat outside. Suddenly he screamed and ran outside, screaming and sobbing like he'd been frightened out of his wits. They never figured out what had frightened him so badly, and being a toddler, he couldn't tell them.
So yeah. Haunted.
There haven't been any more sightings or experiences in that house since they found the bodies.
A year or two later they tore down the house and built a newer, more modern one in its place. We went back to visit for Chinese New Year's in 2009, and it was just like any other normal house.
THE END.
After spending a week or so in Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City) with his maternal family, we went to the historic capital city Hue in central Vietnam to visit his paternal family, which consists of his father and his grandmother.
We took a plane up from Saigon. Then in the taxi from the airport, the hubby turns to me and says very seriously, "I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to not freak out." So I say okay, what, because I goddamn hate surprises. I even hate surprise birthday parties. LOL.
So he proceeds to tell me that his grandma's house is haunted. I was just like, WHAT. THIS SORT OF THING YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME BEFORE. You have to know before we proceed that I'm not a particularly superstitious person, though I love horror movies (the creepy Asian kind) and scary ghost stories. Call me a conditional believer. IMHO there've been so many individual experiences by many different, unconnected people that surely SOMETHING is going on that modern science is as yet unable to explain.
Which doesn't mean I voluntarily go looking for the paranormal.
But he refused to tell me more about it, only repeating that it was haunted. In retrospect, this was more because he didn't want to think about it too much, because he would freak *himself* out. Which did creep me out a little bit, because usually he's not afraid of anything. He's a woobie (to me, at least), but he's a MANLY woobie.
So, headed towards a haunted house. Pretty much, GREAT, WELCOME TO HUE.
The visit overall went really well. His grandma is a bundle of 4-foot awesome. She and I would have profound conversations even though I don't speak/understand a word of Vietnamese besides ordering food -- she'd talk at me for fifteen minutes at a time and I would smile and nod and say 'uh huh' and 'okay' at appropriate intervals. It was great. I probably agreed to have ten boy children without realizing it.
We were put into this attic-type room at the top of the house. To get the layout of this house you have to understand that most Vietnamese houses are shotgun houses made of concrete -- they're basically shaped like a shoebox with interconnected rooms in a row, then additional levels are added on top. So to get to our room, you had to walk all the way to the back, take a left up onto a little staircase, which then dead-ends into the wall at a T-intersection. A left-turn takes you up another staircase into another attic room that housed a huge Buddhist altar, and a right took you up a steep staircase directly into our room.
Our room was upstairs through the metal door on the right.
The other staircase leading up into the Buddhist altar room.
Creepy, y/y?
I spent a lot of time up there, because that was right about when Vietnam started catching up to me. I was sick as a dog with food poisoning as well as a painful skin infection, jet lag, and a number of other really TMI things.
I didn't mind being alone. I only half-believed the haunted house story anyway, and nothing much had ever happened to me before. (In my childhood home I'd hear my name being called and footsteps upstairs when I was home alone, but that could have just been imagination.) I comforted myself with thinking that, even if ghosts do exist, I'm not psychically sensitive to paranormal things.
I kept saying that to myself as things began to happen. I'd be up in our room alone, trying to distract myself from my sheer physical misery by reading a book or working on sudoku and then I'd hear loud footsteps on the staircase to the room. And they were LOUD. I mean, the stairs were cement, so it's pretty evident when someone's coming up. So I'd wait, thinking it was the hubby or a relative coming to get something...and then nothing. Just steps, STAMP STAMP STAMP coming up, and then nothing. I'd get up off the bed and look down the staircase, and the staircase would be empty. The stairs only go to our room, so no one would just be casually taking the stairs to get somewhere else.
I'd also hear my name called, very clearly. The first few times this happened I thought it was the hubby looking for me, and I'd get up and go find him. He'd usually be in the front of the house in the living room with the rest of the family and have no idea what I was talking about. Also, sound didn't carry in the house; to be heard you'd have to basically get to the stairs and call up into the room. After that I just ignored it. If it was an actual person looking for me, then they'd send the hubby to come get me.
After a while, I'd hear actual steps into the room and feel a presence standing there in the middle of the room. At that point I was pretty much I AM READING MY BOOK I AM NOT LOOKING UP OMG THERE'S NOTHING THERE NOTHING THERE.
At this point some people might wonder why I didn't freak out and run away or refuse to be alone in the room. I don't know. I'm still pretty calm thinking about it. At the time (and now) I figured whatever it was had been in the house since before we came, and had never harmed anyone, so why would it try to hurt me/us? IMO most ghosts aren't out to get people.
I mentioned the stepping thing to the hubby and at that point he flat-out refused to be in the room alone, ever. lol.
There was one REALLY freaky incident, though. The room had a really big window next to the bed, that overlooked the roof. I was lying there on the bed, when a cat started yowling right underneath the window, practically next to my ear. IT WAS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE GRUDGE, I SWEAR TO GOD. I wigged out and yanked myself up to look out and maybe throw something at the goddamn cat (yes, I know, if this was a horror movie that'd be when some crazy demon-woman in rice-powder and long black hair yanks me through the window and eats my brains) but there was no cat at all. And the roof is really high in relation to the other houses (we were on the equivalent of the 3rd or 4th floor) so how could a cat have gotten up there?
We were more scared at night. I'd refuse to open my eyes for fear I'd actually see something, because I felt something. The hubby insisted on being on the inside of the bed (I didn't tell him about the cat thing until way later) smashed up against my side like a koala. Then one night we heard loud scratching at the window. And we were totally, FUCK NO, WE'RE NOT GOING TO INVESTIGATE. Because, like I'd said, we're really high up. There are no trees or plants (or anything) near the window for a branch to be rubbing against it -- plus there was no wind.
But okay, all this was livable, at least for me, and hell, I figured most of it was the result of an overactive imagination. I was more scared of Vietnam's fauna. Ask me about the frog in the toilet incident sometime. Goddamn ghost never even came close to giving me a heart attack like that. Motherfuck.
Then on the second-to-last day (we were leaving the next morning) we got up to go on a river cruise to visit the historic sites along the Mekong (?) river. We got downstairs to discover men hard at work, digging up the floor. The hubby talked to his dad, then hustled me out of the house, refusing to answer any questions.
It was when we were about to get underway on our day-trip that he told me that his dad had had some colossal bad luck that year, and had brought in a diviner (or something) to have a look at the house and figure out if it was bad feng shui or whatever. My father-in-law is a professional feng shui practitioner himself, but apparently you can't do it for yourself.
This practitioner friend basically told him that there were bodies buried under the house.
The dad hadn't wanted to tell me this because he was afraid that I would freak out. *snerk* At this point I was like, REALLY?? COOL, I WANT TO WATCH! The hubby was like, ER, NO, WE ARE LEAVING NOW OMG. Haha.
When we got back that night, we found out that they had found the remains of three bodies and had cleared them out, and the family was doing a Buddhist ceremony out front, burning incense and whatnot. If you watched The Eye, that's what the protagonist's family was doing out in front of their apartment building to appease the ghost.
These are where they found the bodies, two in one hole and one in the other. I find it really interesting that the practitioner friend pinpointed precisely where the bodies were.
BTW, we're very lucky these photos have survived, because when my FIL found out I had them, he insisted that I delete them because the ghosts could come through/negative energy/whatnot. He was so adamant that I did, but it turns out the hubby had copies saved to an old harddrive.
It turns out, the river behind the house was man-made, and when they were digging it out a long time ago, a lot of laborers died and were buried around the area. Also, the area floods regularly every year like clockwork, which doesn't help the creepiness of the house because there are waterstains on the wall higher than your head, and so probably people die in those floods too. The hubby at this point, was OMFGGGGG I'M SO GLAD WE'RE LEAVING SOON THOUGH I LOVE YOU GRANDMA whereas I was disappointed that I'd missed out on seeing the bodies. I'm weird, I know.
When we left the house the next morning to return to Saigon, the hubby started telling me the experiences that the family had had. He hadn't wanted to talk about it before while we were still staying *in* the house, and to be honest I'm sort of glad he didn't told me before, because I might've taken my own experiences more seriously at the time.
Grandma's sister (or something, I forget the exact nature of their relationship) was staying w/ them. One day she was home alone, downstairs. Suddenly she saw a bright light emerge from the Buddhist altar room, dash down the stairs, and then whisk up into our room.
When my mother-in-law was pregnant with the hubby, she was coming down the stairs from our room when she felt a hand SHOVE her down the stairs. (which sort of contradicts my own theory about the spirits not being malevolent. Hrm.)
When the hubby was a toddler, he'd been playing alone inside while the family sat outside. Suddenly he screamed and ran outside, screaming and sobbing like he'd been frightened out of his wits. They never figured out what had frightened him so badly, and being a toddler, he couldn't tell them.
So yeah. Haunted.
There haven't been any more sightings or experiences in that house since they found the bodies.
A year or two later they tore down the house and built a newer, more modern one in its place. We went back to visit for Chinese New Year's in 2009, and it was just like any other normal house.
THE END.