The Faceless Ghost

Horror Stories - The Faceless Ghost

Eleven years ago, accountant Matthew Chen (not his real name) went on a tour with his girlfriend, now wife, to Vietnam. They had booked a room in a budget hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. Nothing creepy happened when they checked in. They stayed the night before travelling to Hanoi for a few days.

"On the return trip, we had the misfortune of staying in a haunted room,” said Chen, 44.

"The room looked ordinary. There were two beds. Next to the door, there was a small round coffee table with two chairs. Facing the main door was the toilet and the windows where you could see the neon signs outside."

Usually, Chen would leave the toilet light on at night. But this time, he did not, as the room was bright enough with the neon lights outside. That night, he slept on the bed further away from the main door and closer to the windows, while his girlfriend occupied the other bed.

"I placed my spectacles on the bedside table and went to sleep.

"Later that night, I felt something pulling at me. I struggled hard to wake up but I could not open my eyes or move,” he recounted.

“I felt a ghost pressing down on me. I began to scold, curse, swear, and invoke the names of God and Buddha. Finally, I manage to wake up,” he said.

“I felt cold, and my hairs were standing on ends. My sixth sense felt a presence in the room.”

Chen could just make out “something” seated on the chair closest to the main door.

“It was a woman in a light green Vietnamese traditional dress (ao dai). She had long black hair and sat facing my direction. Without my spectacles, I was unsure if she was looking at me or out the window. The woman had no face!”

Chen kept staring at her while using his right hand to search for his spectacles.

“When I couldn’t find it, I turned around to look for it. When I put my spectacles on and turned to look at the chair, the woman had vanished.”

Somewhat dazed, he wondered if it was just a dream.

He said: “I thought of waking my girlfriend up but she was asleep.”

Chen then got up and switched on the toilet light and the television.

“Then my girlfriend woke up and told me she had had a nightmare."

Fortunately, it was their last night in the city before the tour group flew out the next morning. At the airport, he told the tour guide his room was haunted. Another traveller in the group concurred as she had stayed in the same room on the first day the group was in Vietnam but had not dared to bring it up.

"I admonished her for not telling the tour guide so that none of us in the group would get that room on the return journey," he said.

Well, the creepy encounter did not just end there. The following day, Chen had a fever which lasted a few days. After he recovered, his uncle brought him to see a medium. He was advised to do a cleansing ritual.

He said: “The medium gave me some yellow papers to burn at home. I had to walk all around the smoke, then go to the nearest crossroads near my house to burn another pile of yellow papers and walk encircling the smoke. His uncle also bought him a Tibetan dzi bead for him for protection. He brings it along with him whenever he travels.