Ghost Stories of Vietnam

A man develops a bit of pain in his back that over time becomes heavier and heavier. Gradually, their back starts to hunch a bit as the weight becomes overwhelming. He tries everything to get rid of the pain, but nothing seems to help. In East Asia, these are classic haunting symptoms.

That was the scene for this Korean ghost story with Joshua Jackson, Shutter. His ghost loved him a bit too much. Her love constantly weighing on his back, leaving him in a mentally comatose state.

This one is just a fun little topic to talk about. Whether you believe in ghosts are not, many people still love hearing ghost stories, me definitely included.

Many people in East Asia, including Vietnamese are highly superstitious. If you have never seen a Korean ghost story movie, you may want to cautiously take a look. These are not Western ghosts. Western ghosts are typically created when a traumatized person cannot move to the other side. Typically these ghosts are in a state of torment and need a little guidance from a priest or exorcist to help them move on.

East Asia ghosts are different. They may be good. They may be bad. They may have been driven mad by neglect or feel righteous anger by some bad actions they have witnessed. Everyone who didn’t quite have a holy death is eligible; improper burial, painful death, no children to mourn them, disrespectful children, cruel parents, there are so many reasons for a spirit to linger.

Ghosts are everywhere, like rats or cockroaches, it is a constant battle to keep them out of the home. …and like these pests, there are preventative measures. A home altar may bring peace to the ghosts and good thoughts, or moral living may keep the ghosts from turning hostile. Occasional ceremonies can be performed to rid any minor ghosts which may have crept in when you didn’t realize it. There are constant purification rituals which go along with various holidays, not only to increase luck, but to remove any bad luck (or bad spirits) which may have attached to you since the last ritual.

Occasionally, ghosts can be attracted to geographic areas. Buildings are sometimes neglected, or occasionally are built with bad Feng Shui, being a type of beacon for these spirits. These buildings need to be remodeled, or maybe even destroyed. This is the case of the famous haunted towers of District 5.

The famous haunted towers of District 5

I am sure many of you have heard the story of the rich woman who owned a bank here in Vietnam who has been found guilty of using it for her own personal piggy bank, buying up property around Vietnam and refinancing it at substantially higher prices and pocketing the difference. In the end, she received approximately 11% of Vietnamese GDP before she was taken down. What you may not have heard is that she owned one of the most infamous buildings in District 5 of Hồ Chí Minh. It is the famous ghost tower. …although it seems like there are more and more of these ghost towers in recent years with the real estate crash. This one is called Thuận Kiều Plaza.

This was the very first large apartment / commercial building built in Hồ Chí Minh. There were such high hopes for this building. It was built by Hong Kong property developers in the early 1990’s for what was projected to be the massive wave of immigration out of Hong Kong due to the Chinese handover in 1997. …it seems kind of silly in hindsight, moving to a Communist country to escape Communism. It was built in the Hong Kong style, with smaller ceilings and efficient floor plans. The trouble was the price was way over what local Vietnamese could pay and Vietnamese did not like the floor plan or low ceilings. As the building remained empty, stories started to emerge. …ghost stories.

It started off simple enough, moaning and crying in the elevators late at night, along with strange people wandering the building site. There were reports of several fatal accidents, caused by developer shortcuts, which led to the construction workers placing a curse upon the building. During construction, there was a mysterious fire along with several additional fires after construction in 2004 and 2009.

There was a man who became so despondent, that he shot his girlfriend in one of the restaurants and later turned the gun upon himself. Both of their spirits are now known to wander the building, groaning as they aimlessly walk up and down the hallways. There is a report of a Chinese woman wearing the Hong Kong version of an áo dài wandering the buildings, without her feet touching the floor.

Apartment owners complain about constant dreams of fires and ghosts coming to them as they walk the spiritual dream realm. It is so bad, some report severe stress and sickness associated with these encounters that last for days. It is said that these building are a type of beacon for ghosts in the area to reside in the many empty units.

This building took on another eerie phase during Covid, when it became a Covid hospital for the city. Many people were trapped here for weeks at a time. It is unreported how many people died here. Was is respiratory? …or was it from fright? No one knows. We remember the red barbed wire barricades surrounding the building with bright yellow caution tape all around. I went there for dinner one time, and my dinner companion was very agitated because “…things just didn’t feel right”. We quickly left on foot, as no taxis were in the area and proceeded to walk the streets (empty of pedestrians) until we found some renewed signed of life a few blocks later and booked a Grab. …finally, we got out of there quickly, with less of an appetite for dinner that night.

Here are a couple websites which go into detail about the haunting of this building. Ghost Towers. Curses and Sunken Ships at Thuan Kieu Plaza.

Making peace with the Ghosts

This area in District 5 of Hồ Chí Minh is known for ghost sightings. During the Tây Sơn wars, 10,000-11,000 restless spirits were murdered when Chợ Lớn was razed in 1782 in the Tây Sơn massacre of the Minh Hương people of Chợ Lớn. These people found themselves on the wrong side of the war by supporting the Nguyễn dynasty.

I heard that it took a full day to find and bury (or burn) all of the bodies. For years afterward, this area was known by the locals between Sài Gòn and Chợ Lớn to be haunted. As the city grew and Sài Gòn began to merge with Chợ Lớn, the uninhabited swamp between the two towns began to fill and become urbanized.

The town needed to do a major cleansing of the area to settle the souls of the ghosts of that infamous battle. I heard a story that there was a public campaign to build a network of pagoda’s, temple’s and đình in the area for service to these wandering spirits. Through offerings for the dead, along with chants from a group of dedicated monks, the ghosts were brought to peace, and maybe have finally moved from of the mortal realm. The city has build up around them, but the area still contains the many holy buildings all over, built to bring peace to those many spirits so long ago.

Ghosts in the Countryside

It is not unusual to find haunted places far out in the countryside. I have heard some very interesting stories, and even explored the occasional haunted house. Typically, in the countryside, you don’t tear down a building. It is too expensive. You leave it there to let nature take its course. As soon as humans move out, ghosts move in. It may take a few weeks or even a year or two, but with no humans around, that building will be haunted at some point.

Spirits in East Asia are kind of like squatters, they wander around from place to place, humbly eating some offerings that may be offered in a friendly home altar, but eventually, they become weary and look for a place to hang out for a while. When they see an empty house, they are drawn to it. Maybe it reminds them of their past life, or maybe they are just so exhausted from wandering the earth and they move in. These haunted buildings can sometimes form the nexus of hauntings of that area.

I am told many stories of a ball of fire wandering up and down a certain road I know. It has a type of human look about it, with a vague outline of feet which never touch the ground. It seems to originate in a very dark and overgrown part of the road, which is surrounded on either side by massive palm plants. This area is far too swampy to be of any use for agriculture and remains empty, except for the occasional wandering ghost, repeating their nightly journey.

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Every family has a story of ghosts, some as trivial as a family member just saw something they couldn’t explain, to some stories of severe trauma which took a long time to get over, if the person could ever recover. Some stories are linked to illness, some are linked to severe misfortune. But they are all interesting, and if you have any, I would love to hear them.