ABSTRACT
The idea that human souls may carry memories of traumatic events they underwent during their lives on to their existence after death is commonly found in otherwise diverse cultural and moral traditions of Asia—although similar ideas are curiously absent from contemporary medical-cultural discourses in the region and beyond. Vietnam is no exception. The Vietnamese popular-religious and oral-literary traditions abound with accounts of wounded spirits of the dead, and their everyday ritual life is grounded, to a significant extent, in the concept of chết oan (grievous death or grievance in death). Focusing on the vital ruins of the long Vietnam War (1945–1975) that persist in today’s Vietnamese communities, this chapter describes how the locals interact with their ‘invisible neighbours’ and the wounds these otherworldly beings are carrying.
