Vietnam Ghost Story: Đà Lạt Lovers

A student at the military school  1956
and a literary teacher at the nearby high school
fall in love       Cute:

each day after school the military student left
a love letter on her door   Thao (an orphan)
wrote back and left a love letter reply on the door
 of her small house on the hill

Their love grew like a stack of letters

 They were in love and waited
for Thahn to graduate from military school
  before living as a couple    officially

Unlike Thao  Thahn is from wealth
  and his rich parents insist that
upon graduation  he return home
to the Delta   and marry a local girl of their choosing

   Unable to defy them   he does

Thao  devastated  jumps into a lake
drowns  leaves a letter
with instructions to bury her body
near her house and the memories
of her love for Thahn
   on the love letter hill

Thahn finds out about her death
   goes to war is   killed
and then buried in Đà Lạt
next to his beloved Thao
 on the hill   per his written wishes

But
the widow  spurned in death
won't leave it at this

 She instructs that his body be removed
and taken back home to the Delta

 What a terrible
   idea

and now his ghost wanders

   Actually
both sites are haunted by their ghosts


and Đà Lạt made the site on the hill
into an attraction you can visit
because why not

Copyright Credit: Hoa Nguyen, "Vietnam Ghost Story: Đà Lạt Lovers" from A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure.  Copyright © 2021 by Hoa Nguyen.  Reprinted by permission of the author and Wave Books.
Source: A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure (Wave Books, 2021)