Vietnam has produced several horror movies that are chilling to the bone, like The Housemaid and Chung Cu Ma. If you haven’t seen those yet, then you definitely should. Apart from movies, they also have many horror stories relevant to the war that almost lasted for 20 years. With 2,000,000 civilians, and 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters killed in the Vietnam war, it’s easy to understand why. I hope you have your lights on as you are about to read some of these scary Vietnam war ghost stories:

My old friend, Jerry

In The University of Notre Dame Class of 1969 Blog, William Constantini shared his reunion with an old friend. However, this is not a happy reunion. In the summer of 1967, William was on his way home from his construction job when he “observed a solitary figure walk out of the funeral home,” heading right in his direction. It was dark, but he was sure that the figure was Jerry Fox, whom he had known since high school. He hadn’t seen him in two years, and they had a lot of catching up to do. However, William was too tired for what he knew would be an hours-long conversation with him, so he put his head down and walked past Jerry without speaking to him.

When he went home, his mom was on the phone and told him she was speaking with John Cioffi, one of his classmates from the Notre Dame Class of 1969. His mom handed him the phone. John, on the other line, asked him to sit down. “I have bad news. Jerry Fox was killed in Vietnam. His body is in Gleason’s Funeral Home. His wake will be held there tomorrow.”

Saigon Apartment

Once called the President Building and housing hundreds of American service members, this Saigon building was erected at 727 Tran Hung Dao in Ho Chi Minh City. A series of deadly accidents involving construction workers occurred as worked to finish the 13th floor, so frightening the others that they refused to continue their work on the building. As we all know, 13 is considered an unlucky number. In many buildings, the 13th floor is omitted from elevator buttons. To soothe their fears, Nguyen Tan Doi, the commissioner of the building, hired a shaman to address the building’s spiritual problems. They secretly brought the dead bodies of four virgins(God knows where they got them) and buried them at the four corners of the building as they believed that would protect it and the workers from evil spirits. The building was successfully built. As time passed, Vietnamese families living in the building experienced strange things— odd whispers, screams, the sound of the military parade, even the apparition of an American soldier holding hands with his Vietnamese girlfriend walking down the hall. Maybe only three of the corpses were actual virgins?

Tunnel Rats And The Cave Temple of The Octopus Goddess

A Reddit OP (original poster) who was terminally ill shared his Vietnam war experience as a Tunnel Rat “climbing down into deep, dank, dangerous tunnels filled with people and animals who wanted to kill me.” He was assigned to operate in the west of Na Dang, along with one other companion. One day, they crawled down for what felt like forever into a tight tunnel. The smell of something rotting reeked as they went deeper, but they found none of the usual booby traps, which they had come to expect. The tunnel opened into a room, and they readied themselves for possible close-quarters combat with any enemy that might still be in the tunnel with them. They saw a small oil lamp dimly lit the room when they entered the chamber. There was a tarp across one part of the cave wall, which he moved aside with his pistol. It revealed a descending stone staircase didn’t appear to be a part of the original tunnel as the steps were cut out of stone and worn as if they had long been in use. They slowly went down the stairs that seemed to be almost as deep as the tunnel entrance they had to crawl through on their bellies earlier. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, they found another tarp across the exit. He again slowly moved the tarp aside with his pistol; What they next encountered both baffled and terrified them: Inside were three women and seven men, who appeared to be Viet Cong based on their black outfits. All were gently rocking back and forth with blank expressions, paying no attention to the armed American soldiers in their midst. Their eyes were all of one solid dark color. He wasn’t sure of the color as his red flashlight made it difficult to determine it exactly. Beside them were rusted but functional rifles which they made no attempt to reach for. They were all facing a small altar of a gold statue of a beautiful naked woman. Its bottom half was of a tiny octopus instead of legs. Totally unnerved by the weirdness of the entire scene, they quietly slipped back up the stairs deciding to simply rig the entrance with C4 and entomb everyone in this bizarre cave temple. As they were leaving, they could hear a woman’s voice faintly calling them back.

Do you know of any similar chilling stories during the Vietnam War? Please share them with us!