A Haunting in Vietnam

Author's note: The event of this story is true and happened to my parents when we visited Vietnam in 2006. Names have been changed for privacy.

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I heard the knife before ever seeing it. The sound it made cut through the quiet night, sharp and clean. Sleep was settled in my bones, invisible strings tugging my eyelids, and I struggled to fight it—but something in my guts screamed at me to wake. I ripped the strings and opened my eyelids— rubbing at the blurriness.

Strange noises teetered at the edge of my awareness, but lucidity hadn’t found me yet. Rolling over, I looked to see if my husband stirred or perhaps this was sleep paralysis. A condition I often get when I'm exhausted. He was fast asleep—no surprise after an eighteen-hour flight. I nudged his shoulder gently, feeling the sense of unease unravel in my core. I still couldn’t make out the words, but I knew something was wrong. 

There was an itch on my ankle, a choking feeling against my skin. I looked down — it’s suspended in the air, tethered to the dining room table leg with a piece of plastic rope. Adrenaline flooded my senses, and I tugged at the rope haphazardly with one hand. It was useless; my fingers were weak with disuse mixed with REM sleep. I kept tugging but the knot didn’t budge. 

“I caught the thief, I caught the thief,” a female voice sang into the darkness, her voice sweet and full of malice. 

 “Stop it!” a male voice hissed, struggling to maintain a whisper. 

Suddenly, my sleepiness became anxiety. Dread knotted my stomach and I pushed my husband again. This time, he rolled over towards me and wiped the drool from his mouth.  

“Mmhmm…?” he groaned softly, sleep grinding his vocal cords. 

“Untie my leg for me!” I said urgently, “something is wrong!”  

I could see his expression change. His relaxed brows now knitted together in confusion; sleep slowly rescinding. 

“What?” he asked, pushing himself off the floor. 

We had been sleeping on the tile ground because there was no AC in the living room. He fished his fingers through the rope and made quick work of the knot. “What is going on?” he whispered, eyes full of bewilderment. Behind us, the voices were still bickering. 

“Calm down! Calm down...please!” The male said, louder this time.

The sound of a struggle followed. Then, the sound of footsteps pattering quickly in the darkness. 

My eyes widened when I saw her, thin like a sheet in the pale moonlight, almost translucent. For a moment, I thought I was still sleeping. The woman stood in the darkness like a painted doll but exaggerated and wrong. Light reflected her cavernous cheekbones that jutted out angularly against a too skinny jaw. Black eyeliner smeared on her eyelids against messy blue eyeshadow. I could see her sunken clavicle held together by taut skin, the sinew in her neck casted dark shadows on her skin. Against her body, a red evening gown sat wrinkled and out of place.

I swallowed to stifle a scream, terrified at the sight before me. Then, it dawned on me. I knew her— Lu, my sister-in-law’s cousin. She was always a topic of gossip; her husband isn’t the faithful type. More eerily, she was said to dance and sing at midnight on the balcony, but I've always chalked it up as silly rumors.

 “You messed with the wrong people. I’ll teach you!” Lu said slyly, each syllable long and dripping with something icy.

I saw Lu that morning, completely normal—sweet and soft spoken yet this raspy voice didn’t seem to belong to her. She reached for the knife on the ground and took it into her bony hand. My fingers trembled as I fought the urge to run. There was nowhere to go but past her. 

My husband pushed me backwards against the wall, barricading my body with his. The kitchen light flickered behind her, revealing the mold-stained walls of the kitchen. Regret hit me like a typhoon. I knew something was off with this house the moment I stepped foot in it, I felt its damp and heavy aurora, like each corner harbored dark, unspeakable secrets passed down through generations. A mildewy, unkempt French colonial whose origin was lost to history. Not to mention,their patriarch was a ritualistic shaman before the whole family converted to Catholicism. 

Light glinted off the butcher’s knife in her hand as Lu inched closer, her smeared ruby-red lips puckered into a lifeless smile. 

“See honey? I told you. I caught them—We have to teach them a lesson!” Her blood red gown flowed ominously with the breeze. 

I opened my mouth to protest, to say something, to tell her that we weren't thieves, but her pupils seemed fixated to another realm, a different reality.

Next thing I knew, her husband ran from the darkness and grabbed her hand. The knife fell to the floor with a loud clang. She screamed. A scream both primal and finite that made goosebumps rise on my skin. 

“I’m so-sorry-about this! I’m so-” he struggles to get the words out as she flails her arms and legs. 

He dragged back into the darkness of the hallway, where I knew they had a bedroom. It was not uncommon for multiple families to live together in Vietnam. I heard the footsteps recede into the dark where secrets lay dormant. I held my breath—the click of the door was my only relief.

“Oh my god!” I panicked breath escaped me. Nausea crept into my stomach as I tried to catch my breath, “we are getting out of here!”

I reached for my purse by the coffee table. I could come back in the morning for my luggage. 

“Right behind you, honey,” My husband says as he slips on flip flops.  

We left that house and haven't seen the inside in over 17 years. I later learned that Lu was rumored to be possessed by the spirit of her husband’s deceased ex—the one who took her own life after discovering he had married Lu. The haunting supposedly worsened after they had their first child. At midnight, Lu would sometimes be found in full makeup, singing and whispering to her husband, asking why he left her.

Some say it was Lu’s way of punishing her husband for his infidelity; others blame sleep disorders. Ultimately, stories like these were commonplace in Vietnamese society when access to mental health care is limited.

Either way, they kept a bottle of holy water, blessed by a local priest, by her bed after that night. Lu eventually divorced him and remarried, and I’ve heard the episodes never happened after that. 

But even now, this story haunts my nightmares and makes me wonder, what if she didn’t drop the knife? What if I didn’t wake up?