War and Shadows

The Haunting of Vietnam

Mai Lan Gustafsson

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780801457456
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

War and Shadows is a fascinating book packed with vibrant stories and lucid exploration of their significance. Mai Lan Gustafsson's account of spirit possession in Vietnam is both nuanced and sympathetic. ? Ann Marie Leshkowich, College of the Holy Cross

Vietnamese culture and religious traditions place the utmost importance on dying well: in old age, body unblemished, with surviving children, and properly buried and mourned. More than five million people were killed in the Vietnam War, many of them young, many of them dying far from home. Another 300, 000 are still missing. Having died badly, they are thought to have become angry ghosts, doomed to spend eternity in a kind of spirit hell. Decades after the war ended, many survivors believe that the spirits of those dead and missing have returned to haunt their loved ones. In  War and Shadows, the anthropologist Mai Lan Gustafsson tells the story of the anger of these spirits and the torments of their kin.

Gustafsson's rich ethnographic research allows her to bring readers into the world of spirit possession, focusing on the source of the pain, the physical and mental anguish the spirits bring, and various attempts to ameliorate their anger through ritual offerings and the intervention of mediums. Through a series of personal life histories, she chronicles the variety of ailments brought about by the spirits' wrath, from headaches and aching limbs (often the same limb lost by a loved one in battle) to self-mutilation. In Gustafsson's view, the Communist suppression of spirit-based religion after the fall of Saigon has intensified anxieties about the well-being of the spirit world. While shrines and mourning are still allowed, spirit mediums were outlawed and driven underground, along with many of the other practices that might have provided some comfort. Despite these restrictions, she finds, victims of these hauntings do as much as possible to try to lay their ghosts to rest.

1.

The Problem

It was the blood that gave Vi away. Had it not been there, she would have remained my friend but she would not have become an informant. But it was there, and it was startling to see it on her immaculate figure. I met Ly Thi Vi in 1996. She was a regular fixture in the foreigners’ guesthouse where I lived in Hanoi. Two or three times a week, I would see her sitting in the garden bar with a soft drink or having a meal in the canteen. Always, she was surrounded by foreigners, and the staff of the guesthouse rushed about making sure they were well-stocked with beverages, snacks, and cigarettes. Always, she was chic in her dark sunglasses and perfect makeup. Shoko, a Japanese resident of the guesthouse, referred to Vi as “Rock Star.” It was true: Vi was charming, beautiful, and intelligent, and all of us who lived there flocked to her.1

Although the guesthouse was nine miles from the center of Hanoi, in a district sparse with foreigners, Vi’s presence there was good for business. The guesthouse’s director had picked Ms. Vi to formally open the garden bar four months earlier, knowing her to be foreigner-friendly and a sure draw for Western men. After the opening, Vi dropped by on a regular basis. She’d round up whatever guests she could and treat them to drinks and sometimes dinner, joking and talking for hours. Her efforts bore fruit: almost everyone who chatted with her in the garden bar ultimately scheduled a tour or a night on the town, or even made an outright move to a more upscale neighborhood.2 Afterward, Vi would pay the director 30 percent of her fee for each excursion and thus ensure her continued welcome presence at the guesthouse.

For many who met her, Ms. Vi seemed to be the face of postwar renovated Vietnam.3 She was young and wealthy, an entrepreneur par excellence. Ever glamorous, she zipped along the streets of Hanoi on her new Honda motorbike wearing a face mask and silk scarf, setting up appointments on her mobile phone and popping into expensive cafés and hotels to meet clients. After graduating from college with a degree in business, Vi worked as a secretary for an import business specializing in Chinese goods. When the embargo was lifted in 1994 and a flood of foreigners arrived in Vietnam to set up business or tour the country, Vi quickly put her English skills and forceful charisma to work. She bribed her way into a job at Hanoi’s most luxurious hotel and from there launched her empire.

She started by setting up informal tours for the foreigners she met: day trips to Ha Long Bay, tours of the countryside, nights of pub-crawling and karaoke. Within a year, she had moved on to arranging housing, transportation, electronics, and various sorts of adult entertainment for a largely male and foreign clientele. By 1996 Vi had established herself as one of Hanoi’s top service providers to Western visitors and business people. She had a large office in downtown Hanoi and a staff of three, as well as a beautiful apartment near Hoan Kiem Lake in the city center. Her parents had moved from a tiny house in the provinces to a marble three-story mansion Vi paid for, and her younger siblings were assured of going to college. She epitomized the spirit of capitalism, while also maintaining her worth as a Vietnamese in the dutiful upkeep and upgrading of her family. In short, she was all that a “modern” Vietnamese in peacetime was supposed to be.

But back to the blood. After we became friends through our various dealings at the guesthouse, Vi and I would often meet downtown on Friday afternoons to go shopping and eat dinner. These were precious outings for me. Friday afternoons spent in bookshops and restaurants with Vi did much to restore my spirits, and I was able to return to my research with renewed vigor. I waited for her at a lakeside café in early May 1997. Our plan was to shop in the old quarter for a birdcage, as Vi wanted to install a singing bird in her office to keep her staff alert, and then dine wherever Vi could order fettuccine Alfredo. She arrived at the appointed time, roaring up on her gleaming motorbike. “Hi, Chi!”4 she called. I waved and put my field notes away. With her hair upswept under a silk scarf and her expensive all-white ensemble, Vi garnered appraising glances from the assembled restaurant patrons—Vietnamese and Westerners alike.

As she took the chair next to mine, I noticed three long lines of red on the front of her blouse. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the stains. Glancing down, she grimaced. “Blood,” she whispered, taking the scarf from her hair and attempting to conceal the red marks. Taking my hand, she whispered, “Brother is very upset. He knows I am sending Little Sister to France for study.”

Trouble with Spirits

The blood, and her chilling words, marked Vi as another member of an unenviable segment of Vietnam’s population: victims of angry ghosts.5 She was one of almost two hundred northern Vietnamese I met and interviewed who had various ailments, all of which they attributed to the predations of spirits. Ideally, spirits are to be revered as the oldest and wisest of the family’s elders. They are not always treated as such, however. When this occurs, ancestor spirits are quick to let their displeasure be known, in quite visceral ways.6 These ancestor spirits were not the ones afflicting my informants, however. The Vietnamese I knew were preyed on by a kind of ghost that is permanently enraged. Unfortunate souls who died horribly or who died without relatives to remember them or whose remains were lost and so the necessary funeral rites were not performed—these souls are angry ghosts. Such spirits have a penchant for violence or “aggressive mischief,” as one man tormented by his lost uncle, phrased it.

In Vietnam, supernatural causes for illness are likely to be blamed when the following situations apply: the sudden onset of strange behavior, frequent and/or recurring illness, and chronic illness that is unresponsive to treatment.7 This was the case with my informants, who had attempted to explain and treat their maladies in conventional ways prior to blaming ghosts. The wide range of problems they suffered present as classic symptoms of spirit possession,8 a psychophysiological event during which an individual’s body and consciousness are temporarily dominated by a noncorporeal entity.9

Anthropologists have found that spirit possession10—as a theory of illness used to explain sickness and other misfortune—occurs in a majority of cultures worldwide.11 Indeed, many of my informants explicitly referred to their problems as spirit possession,12 though others spoke not of being forced to share their minds and bodies with ghosts but rather of physical and emotional disorders caused by spirits. Wherever possession beliefs and practices are found, the symptoms or signs of it are the same.13 The symptoms, each followed by an example, are:14

1. An experience of unpredictable, uncontrollable, unwanted, and sudden takeover of the subject by a generally malevolent entity: “He comes,” said Nguyen Thi Bich My about her possessing spirit, “and makes me do things. I am still here, but I have no power over myself.” Pham Quang Khinh was aware of his actions while possessed but “cannot stop, cannot change, cannot help myself” until the invading spirit—his brother’s—leaves him of its own accord.
2. The observers and the subject believe that the entity is the devil, a demon, a spirit, or a person: All but three of my informants believed that they were possessed or made ill by the spirits of dead relatives, friends, comrades, and neighbors. The other three were victims of evil forces or ghouls who are thought to attack any and all unlucky enough to cross their paths.
3. The entity speaks and acts through the subject who may exhibit changed affects: Nguyen Lien Anh, a fifteen-year-old forced to abandon school because of the unruly behavior he exhibits while in possession, felt enormous shame that his invading spirit caused him to “shout at Mother with very bad language.”
4. The entity speaks of itself in the first person and of the subject in the third: Tran Van Dien, in response to his wife’s inquiry as to what was bothering him, replied: “Husband, hah? He is under my foot, old wife. Lift me from the dirt and I will lift my foot.”
5. The possession may be preceded by a brief period of perceptual changes in the subject such as a sensation of darkness or constriction: Many informants mentioned being able to tell when the possession was about to start, for they would experience physical sensations like shortness of breath, a ringing in their ears, paralysis, dim vision, heightened hearing, and/or feelings of fright. “I know it is coming when I can hear what the people on the street are saying—very clearly. Then I know it is about to come,” said Nguyen Cong Rong.
6. During the possession, one or more of the following behaviors are observed:
   1. a level of awareness ranging from conscious to unconscious: Do Thi Lieu said, “I am awake and asleep at the same time. I can see and hear, but I cannot speak and I cannot control what I do.” According to Doan Van Ty, “You know that when it happens it is as if you are dead but your mind is still alive. Very strange.”
   2. falling or losing voluntary motor control, or manifesting violent, assaultive behavior: Many informants reported falling during episodes of possession or spirit sickness, or having difficulty with balance. Nguyen Thi Mai, normally the loving mother of three toddlers, would beat the boys with the handle of a feather duster when “Uncle is angry that he is dead.”
   3. unusual speech: Sam, an American, let loose expletive-filled tirades in fluent Vietnamese during his possessions. Many other informants reported speaking in ways they normally did not, such as Ms. Dung’s lowbrow manner of speech during an attack, or the highly formal language with many Chinese words used by Mr. Lam while possessed. All the informants who experienced this “speaking in tongues” or glossolalia said or assumed it was the language and style of speech used by their afflicting spirits when they were alive.15
   4. inability to hold eyes open: Only Ms. Thuy reported being unable to keep her eyes open during an attack. Conversely, Mr. Trung claimed to have stopped blinking since his spirit sickness began—“My nephew wants to see everything.”
   5. physical movement perceived as automatic or not controlled by subject: Hien said, “I was walking, walking, walking. Where, I don’t know.” And Net related, “Whenever I pass the place where Father is buried, I crouch and dig with my hands.”
   6. hallucinations, auditory and/or visual: These were very common among my informants, ranging from hearing shrieking voices or sounds of bells and wind and water to visions of the dead and their moments of death.
   7. unusual physiological phenomena such as feats of balance, no pain or burning: Be, regarding his skin problems, said, “The arms here, they burn worse than if I held a cigarette to my skin.” Said Vi, “When he is with me,16 I often tear my skin here and here with my nails.17 There is blood, yes, but no pain. Never.”
   8. unpremeditated behavioral actions totally out of character for the person: Behaviors not in keeping with the typical character of my informants were varied but uniformly destructive. For example, Bui Van Xuong, a gentle man in his eighties, smashed the beehives and honeycombs kept by his great-grandchildren. Seventeen-year-old Nguyen Duc Thanh succumbed to the will of the angry spirits of his father and grandfather and took a pipe to his sister’s belongings.
7. Following the possession, partial or complete amnesia, changes disappear, and/or a sensation of calm or an absence of usual thoughts lasting a few hours to several days: Tam said that “my wife tells me after it is over—I remember nothing. I see at times that I’ve made the house untidy, but I do not recall it.” For Huong, “After I dream of Chat, the mood stays with me for a long time. I can only think of the dream.” While Trinh, mother of Phan Van Si, a possessed child, reported, “If he has had a bad night, he is very obedient and calm for a few days after that.”
8. No evidence or presumption of an organic factor initiating the possession: Most of my informants sought medical treatment for their health problems when they first began, but doctors found no treatable cause. In many cases, my informants suspected spirits from the start but opted to consult doctors. “It is a much easier matter,” said Mr. Hai, “if the spirits are not involved—easier to get better.” Some people suffered from physical maladies that they treated with various prescriptions and remedies and distinguished as very separate and different from those they attributed to spirits.
9. The possession is not regarded as a normal aspect of the culture or religion in the society: The anthropological literature on spirit possession breaks the phenomenon down into two types: the unsolicited/negative/undesired kind, and the kind that is solicited/positive/desired.18 Clearly, the people in my study suffered from the first type of spirit possession. They were victims, in contrast to specialists like mediums who willingly experience possession in order to help—among others—those who suffer spirit attacks. Victims of spirit possession in Vietnam experience an abnormal event that is physically painful and/or deeply disruptive.
10. The possession results in social or occupational disruption, and/or personal distress: For all informants, spirit sickness was a source of worry, unhappiness, as well as mental and/or physiological pain. At the very least, their health problems reduced their quality of life, such as by creating friction with family members, destroying their ability to concentrate, and making simple tasks more difficult. “Happiness goes when they come,” said Chung Thi Ba about the nephew and two nieces haunting her. At worst, people were forced to abandon their work or school and, in some extreme cases, their families. Nguyen Huu Ro’s violent behavior forced his wife to flee from their home with the children. Demure Ms. Hong, a widow on the verge of marrying an old school friend, felt compelled to break off the engagement when her husband’s spirit led her to verbally abuse the fiancé’s family.
11. The possession does not stem from a psychosis and is not due to a substance-induced disorder: None of my informants appeared to be psychotic or on drugs. They were young children and the elderly and every age in between; some had been plagued by spirits for years; they were men and women—in short, there was nothing connecting this diverse bunch of people aside from their assertion that angry ghosts were respons...

Table of contents

• Preface
• 1. The Problem
• 2. Foundations
• 3. Revelations
• 4. The Living and the Dead
• 5. Afterlives
• 6. Problem Solving
• 7. “Superstition” in a Secular State
• 8. Revivals
• 9. Conclusion
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1. Table of Suffering
• Appendix 2. Chronology of the War
• Notes
• References