Vietnamese use psychics to find graves of missing relatives (TWILIGHT ZONE ALERT)

The Daily Telegraph ^ | December 18, 2002 | Kay Johnson

[MadIvan]

Thirty years after the Vietnam war the bereaved still hope their loved ones can take a place on ancestral altars, reports Kay Johnson in Hanoi

They were childhood sweethearts who fell in love at 18, married at 21 and were swept apart by war. Now, all Nguyen Thi Gai has to remember her husband by are her wedding photographs and a carefully folded death certificate.

But nearly 30 years after her husband was killed in battle with American soldiers, Gai has found new hope for burying him in his native village.

Like thousands of other Vietnamese, Gai has turned to a psychic grave-finding service to find relatives missing in action from the country's decades-long war.

"I've never been superstitious, before, but I'm willing to try anything," said Gai, 55, fingering a hand-drawn map showing roads, rivers and rice fields. "With this map, I really hope I can find Tien's grave."

Some 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers are still missing in action from what Vietnamese call the American War. Unlike the hundreds of millions of dollars Washington has sunk into finding remains of fewer than 2,000 American servicemen, the Vietnamese get little official help.

Hoping to find some sort of remains to put on the ancestral altars that grace nearly every Vietnamese home, more and more families are turning to decidedly unofficial assistance.

Since the Office for Grave Searches opened in Hanoi five years ago more than 5,000 Vietnamese families have consulted its three resident psychics, who churn out as many as 20 maps a day.

State media have warned of desperate relatives being duped by freshly buried bones - some not human - at the appointed site, but that does not stop those who refuse to give up hope.

The grave-finding service is a mixture of mysticism and modern technology, spiritualism and politics, housed in a wooden building with incense burning in the courtyard and an altar with a gold bust of Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary leader.

Hopeful relatives wait on straw mats outside until they are called up to a desk to the centre's head psychic, Nguyen Van Lien, who goes into a trance and begins speaking in verse, while his hands sketch out a colour-coded map on a torn-off length of poster paper.

"I see your brother who died very young. He was so handsome," Lien told an old man and his son as he drew green whorls on the map. "You should go to Quang Nam province and ask for village number three in Dien Tho commune. There you will find someone to help you reunite."

Fees for MIA psychics start at about £2. Lien insists that he is not in the business for the money, and anything that grateful families want to donate is up to them. But families can still spend a large amount in travel and expenses, and not everyone is a believer.

[MadIvan]

Looks like you lot did bomb them back to the Stone Age. Stone age superstitions anyway.

And they think they won?

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Bump!

[sniper223heavya3]

they should have stuck to bombing them! GOD BLESS THE AIR CAV....

[LibKill]

My father did two tours in Vietnam. He told me that the Vietnamese believed that if they were not buried in their village, their ghosts would be doomed to wander the earth, eternally wretched and miserable.

Even their college educated officers believed this and would weep when they had to leave their dead behind.

I feel sorry for the South Vietnamese, 25+ years under the commie boot.

[MadIvan]

He told me that the Vietnamese believed that if they were not buried in their village, their ghosts would be doomed to wander the earth, eternally wretched and miserable

I believe that living in a Vietnamese village is pretty wretched and miserable all on its own.

Regards, Ivan