The Haunting Spirit Of Tran Thi Yen And Other True Horror Stories

Part 3- Mysterious Death

( TRẦN THỊ YẾN tombstone  resting in Ben Tre, Vietnam. Her surname was changed to Le as her mother's maiden family name)
 

Over a year of my birth, Mother was pregnant again. When it was close to her due date, she suddenly felt ill. No one knows exactly the causes of her illness til these days. According to my aunties, mother was still working hard on the boat even when her belly was very big and strangely, for some reason her skin slowly turns yellow. Everyone advised her to see a doctor but she refused. Perhaps it was expensive and she did not want to waste her hard earn money? Her priority then was food for the family as life was extremely difficult and we weren't  far from starvation. There was Aunty 4 Hương who was the closest to mother and the most well off in the family. Even though Aunty 4 was not my mother's biological sister, (grandmother remarried) but they love each other like real siblings. Thanks to Auntie 4 Hương admonition and persuasion, my mother listened and agreed to follow Aunty 4 Hương  to the hospital. The series of unfortunate events continued from there. It was bad timing for my mother as most of the good doctors had escaped and left the country. They only had new inexperienced doctors and they could not diagnose what was wrong with my mother. Facilities and medicine were also limited. Mother was so unwell she became weaker day by day in the hospital. Her skin turned more and more yellow like turmeric. The iris of her eyes had also turned yellow.

There was a strange story as told by Aunty 7 Thủy. A few months before mother felt ill, whenever mother goes back to grandma's house, she would share a bed with Aunty 7 Thủy and would hold Aunty 7 Thủy by the hand tightly to go to sleep at night. It was as if she was very scared of something. She confided to Auntie 7 Thủy . She said that back at her house, every time she goes to the bathroom in the back of the house at night, she would later have a very strange dream. Back in those  days people use squatty toilets and they are often outside in the back of the house. My mother dreamt of a blacksmith woman appearing shouting angrily at her.

"How dare you, you must stop pissing on my head, do you understand!." Once, the woman even added," If you don't listen I'll take you with me! ". Mother had the same dream many times. 

As I have mentioned, the death toll after the war was countless, dead corpses were everywhere. Corpses with no families or unrecognizable were just buried where they were found by the locals. Local elders told me that during and after the war the Yin and Yang were completely out of balance as there were more people dead than people living. Could it be that the bathroom was built on someone's grave yard?. 

Perhaps Mother was scared of something sinister that only she knew. Nobody pay much attention to her dreams until when she told  the aunties that she had an accident and fell in the bathroom floor before she felt ill. People were superstitious, they didn't want to say anything in fear of bad things might happen to them if they speak of it.  Mother's illness was getting worse.

Mother stayed in the hospital and one day stopped talking. Her eyes were no longer focus and she would just stare blankly into space. My father, Aunty 2 Phượng and Aunty 4 Hương took turns staying at the hospital to take care of mother, she had to be spoon fed. After a few days in hospital, Mother gave birth to a premature baby boy. Mother was too weak to care for the newborn so the aunties took the baby home. Mother fell into a complete vegetative state.

Aunty 2 Phượng saw and heard something quite eerie. The day before Mother died. When night falls, she saw an owl on a tree outside the window of my Mother's room and it kept hooting several times. People were very superstitious then, as they believe owls represent death. Hearing owls hooting means there will be a death nearby or death coming. Seeing it eyes looking directly into Mother's room, Auntie 2 said she felt very uneasy.

On the day before mother died, she suddenly sprung up, her eyes were dazzling, more alert than usual and she started talking. She talked non stop, she told father all sorts of things, such as about the people she knows, who was good and who was bad that he should avoid, who owes her money and needs to be collected, how to take care of me, etc...Those were the last things she told my father.

On that very night of the 13th day of the sixth lunar month, in my father's arms, her limbs loosened after a final long exhaled, she was gone forever. It was 1983, mother was only 24 years old. I was only about two and a half years old. The funeral was very simple but urgent. At that same time my grandmother was also seriously ill. Everyone kept a secret of mother's death from grandmother so that she wouldn't be shocked and possibly died too if she knew. My father did not have any money so Aunty 4 Hương stood up to organise the funeral and bought the burial casket for my mother.

I was too young to understand anything, but the aunties said that before they put the lid on the casket, I just sat there and asked them why my Mother kept sleeping and not waking up. I  was sad as if I knew my destiny as an orphan begins from there. That, was my first unfortunate event. It was a heartbreaking scene for everyone there. The premature baby also died two weeks later.

Father set up Mother's altar with a single portrait that she had taken just a few months before her death. Something rather odd about that portrait of Mother too. Mother was known for extreme hard working. She worked very hard to save every penny she could to feed the family and even refuse to use it for herself when she was sick. My aunties thought it was strange that she would spent it on herself for a self-portrait. Back in those days, photos was rare and costly. To have a photo taken you need to travel far to the city where there are photographers with cameras to do so. It was the only one portrait in black and white of her. No one knew when or why she went to take the photo. I guess no one would know except her. Did she knew something or felt something beforehand that makes her do so? Did she knew she was going to die? And she just wanted to leave something  behind for everyone to remember her by?

I still wondered why no one knew what my mother died from? What about her dreams of the blacksmith woman? And the incident when mother fell in the bathroom exactly where the blacksmith woman appeared to warn her many times??? Is it just a coincidence or is it really the blacksmith woman that took my mother for real!? The story remains a mystery to this day.