Myanmar: Ghosts and Revelations

Ghost stories are usually told in the dim hours of night, when they have more power, when the darkness and shadows and things-under-the-bed come alive. But alas, my story must be told through words not spoken but typed... in a place not dark, but bright. My story is not meant to chill but to enlighten... because I have, for the first and only time in my life, seen a ghost and in its wake, I dreamt of spirit possession and learned the secrets of the afterlife.

Some of you might think I'm loony, or that I was tricked by an unusual play of shadows and an active imagination. But I am not one who easily falls for tales of magic and superstition. I am more of a skeptic than a believer in faith. And I am not an author of fiction... So with that disclaimer having been said, I shall tell my ghost story.

December 15th ~ a Tuaung-yo village in Myanmar

The space was dimly lit by a low wattage bulb hanging from the family's Buddha altar. It cast a yellow light on the six figures lying below on the floor: a couple from Belgium, a couple from Singapore (Jason and Samantha) and us: Benjamin and myself. We were overnighting in the home of a village family, tucked away behind a smattering of trees upon a hill. We were each bundled up in a heap of blankets -- the night time temperatures dipped when the sun went down and it was promising to be a very cold night. Earlier in the evening, our hosts laid out our beds -- reed mats on the floor -- all in a line against the wall. And now, having stumbled into bed after a long day of walking, our hosts came around with more blankets before retiring to the kitchen to chat with our guides. As the bustle of movement moved into the other room, I closed my eyes and waited for sleep as voices and laughter drifted in from the kitchen, reminding me of light chatter of my parents and their friends at the end of a dinner party as I went to bed in childhood. It was, somehow, a comforting sound... but not conducive to sleep.

Soon the chit-chat died down, a few rustles of blankets as the 'adults' went to bed, and all was quiet... I laid under the weight of my many blankets for what seemed like hours, unable to sleep, but peacefully so. It was not the hard wood floor that kept me awake -- or the snoring coming from the other side of the room -- or the light coming from Buddha's altar. I was simply restless. It happens to me at home -- insomnia -- the brain won't turn off, the sand man forgets my address, dreams play hard to get. To my left, Benjamin had caught his dreams; to my right, Samantha slumbered on.

After a while, I heard a whisper of movement in the room. Had our hosts come back, in the middle of the night, with more blankets? Has one of the other guests decided to take a midnight stroll? Out of insomniac boredom, with nothing better to do, I opened my eyes to find out.

There, behind Samantha -- who was restful and asleep on her side, facing me -- lay a young woman, also on her side, facing me, with head propped up on her hand, elbow propped up on the floor. At first I thought it was one of the family's two daughters. But why would one of the girls leave the warmth of her bed in the middle of a frigid night to lay down between strange foreigners? Why would she come out here and take a place on the floor without blankets, with bare feet? It didn't make sense and besides, the young lady was too womanly to be the either of the two daughters. I lay there for a few minutes (or were they seconds?) in a confused state, trying to work out who this 7th person was, this newcomer, this trespasser of our collective bedroom.

I didn't notice her clothes, aside from the fact that they seemed to have no color but a faint beige, the color of an antique photograph, faded sepia. On her head she wore a turban of the same non-color (most of the hilltribe women do) and on her face, the same color again (but a tinge more yellow): many people in Myanmar wear a yellowish paste on their faces made with the ground bark of the Thanakha tree. It's used as sunblock, to whiten skin, for decoration.

She was rubbing her thumb against her fingertips, her right hand. Other than that, she was completely motionless, probably 12 inches behind Samantha, face visible beyond Samantha's shoulder... and as I ran my eyes again from her toes to her head, trying to make out who she was, my gaze, finally, settled on her face and she was watching me with her black eyes. Yellow paste on her cheeks and forehead and nose... yellow light from the dim lightbulb overhead... she watched me as if she were studying me. It's a creepy feeling, when someone stares at you without expression. Especially creepy in the middle of the night. Even more creepy when the person is a strange and unexplained intruder. And really creepy when the person is a... is a... ghost!

I flipped over to put my back to her fierce gaze. I pretended not to have seen her -- like when you see a person you dislike on the street and look away quickly to avoid conversation, hoping they didn't notice your recognition of them, even if they saw you look. My heart was beating. My brain was whirling. In her eyes, my confusion vanished -- her eyes answered my questions about her odd presence: she was a ghost. Ghosts, I learned, are similar to the kind of things people refer to, obliquely, when they say, "you'll know it when you see it."

I must have lain there for hours like that, with my back to the ghost gazing at me from behind Samantha's shoulder. I wondered if, perhaps, a strange play of shadows from the folds of Jason's blankets (who was on the other side of Samantha) tricked me. I wondered if she was still there. Finally, I worked up the courage to take a glimpse. I sucked in my breath and clenched my fists and tensed by legs and turned my head. She was gone. There was nothing there but empty space between Samantha and Jason... and... and... there were no tricky shadows capable of forming themselves into the image of a woman, a solid woman (apparently not all ghosts are transparent), and there were no patterns or designs on blankets capable of turning themselves into eyes black as coal, recognizable as things that 'you know when you see'.

"Holy shit, I saw a ghost," I thought to myself as I finally answered the Sandman's call to sleep. I drifted off, barely able to contain the news. I wanted to wake Benjamin when I first saw her, but I couldn't: I was pretending she didn't exist and I was frozen in fear. And then I wanted to wake him once she'd gone, but why disrupt his dreams when the news could wait until morning.

{the following is an account of my dreams the rest of the night}

There's a spirit in the room, I know it. I had a Polaroid camera to prove it. Snapping photos in the pitch black room, one resulted in an image. As the image developed in my hand, to my horror, the face of a demon emerged: a skull with burning eyes that must have been only inches from my lens -- meaning, it had been only inches from me. Aaaaaggghh! I screamed and ran from the place.

I ran into the arms of someone there to comfort me. I don't know him. Never seen him before in my life. But he is there, waiting for me, to tell me about the spirits. He tells me not to worry about the demon. While it may be true that the demon wanted into my head, all I have to do is block him with my mind. He tells me that at times -- and there is no rhyme or reason for the coming of these times, when people are more 'open'... more receptive to spirit's calls... He told me that we can let them in if we choose, and we can deny them if we wish. He suggested it's best to deny the ones with scary skull faces. I agreed.

And then this man, who I have come to think of as my dreamscape guardian angel, went on to explain the afterlife. This, in answer to my question, "Who are you, anyway?" He explained that he's a spirit, not unlike the skull faced demon (except he was a good spirit of course), and was sent to explain things to me, to calm me from my fright of possession. He and the other spirits (skull face included) have one main job in the afterlife. They usher the dead to the other side. Each of us living persons, we have a spirit 'assigned' to us for this journey (he, by the way was not mine). The 'guardian angel' told me that the ease with which you transition from life to death is all based on who your guide is. If you have a 'nice' guide, the voyage could be over in a snap. It could be blissful. Perhaps this is heaven. But if you've got a 'nasty' guide (like skull face), your voyage may be tormented and hideous and gruesome and painful. Perhaps this is hell.

It's all up to the guide, you see -- the ease or hardship with which you go to the other side, the time it takes to get there, even, when death happens itself (you know people who have 5 heart attacks and keep on ticking? Their guides are lazy. You know people who die from choking on a teaspoon of water? Their guides are restless). Once we, the living, are on the other side, we become guides. All of us, our destiny... to guide spirits to the afterlife and in the event we have time on our hands? I guess we haunt people and reveal the secrets of the afterlife to others in dreams...

-----

When I told Benjamin about all of this the next day, he asked if I'd read about Nats in the guidbook. I hadn't. I found the perfect opportunity on a bus ride. What I learned, to my astonishment: Nats (or what we call ghosts) 'come home' on nights with a full moon (and the night I saw the ghost, it was a full moon). Almost all traditional Burmese songs are designed to attract Nats (and one of the family's daughters performed a traditional dance for us after dinner that night). Nats are known to take possession of people for periods of time (and I dreamt of spirit possession and learned the secrets thereof).

With my revelation of the afterlife, Benjamin has more advice: it's time I start my own religion, he says.