Newspaper readers around the world have been amazed by the story of a 55 year-old farmer who has been sleeping with his wife’s remains for five years.
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| Le Van and the statue containing his wife’s bones. |
This man is Le Van. He lives in a small house with his three younger children and the remains of his wife in Thang Binh district, Quang Nam province. Next to his house are the houses of his two eldest children and their families.
On the afternoon of November 24, this strange man agreed to meet a VietNamNet reporter to tell his story, and opened his bedroom so the reporter could take photos of the statue containing his wife’s bones.
Pointing, Van said: “That’s my wife, Sang. I have held her in my arms every night for the last five years”.
He carried the statue to the living room carefully and asked the reporter if he wanted to see his wife’s remains.
The man then brought the statue back to his bed. Sitting next to it, he said: “She has been with me for several years. Only her body died, her soul is still alive.”
Van’s youngest son, Le Quoc Hoang Tuan, 12, also shares the bed with the statue contining his mother’s bones. The VietNamNet reporter asked him if he was scared or not. “Not at all,” Tuan said: “My father and I hold my mother while we sleep every night. My mother didn’t die. She was reincarnated!”
“Our house was full of kids,” Van related, “so life was hard, but our marriage was good. We were both from this village. To feed our seven children, I often had to work far away. When my wife died in February 2003, I was working in the Central Highlands. I came back immediately to organize her funeral.
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| Le Van and his youngest son. |
“After burying my wife, I slept on the top of her tomb every night. Nearly twenty months after she passed away, I decided to dig a tunnel to share the tomb with her. However, my children discovered me and they insisted that I stop sleeping with her at the tomb,” Van explained. “I still snuck out there to sleep at the tomb, but it was too hard, so one night I dug up the coffin to bring my wife’s remains home. That was in November 2004.”
“Weren’t you afraid,” the reporter asked. “She was my wife,” Van replied. “Why should I be scared?”
Van’s older children didn’t agree with him and they alerted the local authorities. Officials and police officers forbade Van to keep the remains at home so he had to rebury the coffin.
Four months later, however, Van made a statue of his wife of gypsum and clay and put her bones inside it. When it had dried, he dressed the statue and put it on his bed.
“I spent over one month to make this statue. It is as tall as my wife was when she was alive,” Van said. “Since that time, I hug my wife every night and sleep well.”
Van said his neighbours who knew what he had done were very fearful and they didn’t visit him for over two years after he brought his wife’s bones home.
The man related that he earns his living by breaking up rocks. Van is living with his three youngest children. Two of them have quit school. The youngest son, Tuan, is a sixth grader.
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The VietNamNet reporter also met with Tran Trong Sanh, Chairman of the Ha Lam Town Peoples Committee, to ask about the case. Sanh was very surprised when he heard the reporter’s story. He recalled that in 2004, after discovering Mr. Van had dug up his wife’s coffin, local officials consoled him but warned him not to dig into the tomb. They explained that he should not pollute the environment. Van said he understood.
“That’s the last I heard about Mr. Van until now,” Sanh said. “We didn’t know that he brought the remains home.
Some neighbours told the reporter that just seeing Van scares them.
Before they said goodbye, Van gripped the reporter’s hand tightly and said: “I’m a person who does things others don’t do. I’m different from others.” His pride to be a faithful husband was evident.
Since VietNamNet reported Van’s story, local police have investigated this case. Lieutenant Colonel Duong Van Dien, chief of police at Ha Lam Town, said that officers met with Van and heard his explanation. According to the police officer’s report, Van admitted to a breach of the environmental regulations. Yes, he was wrong to bring his wife’s remains home, Van said, but he couldn’t explain the depth of his love for his wife.
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| Le Van’s house. |
Dien said that police are still seeking to confirm if the statue contains bones or not.
On November 28, while many reporters looked on, Van “operated” on the gypsum statue. After cutting and removing the gypsum, cloth and paper layers from one of its arms, two brown bars were exposed. Van said they were his wife’s bones.
As of 30 November, the local authorities still haven’t reached an official judgment whether the statue contains the remains of Van’s wife or not.
Meanwhile, Ha Lam Town, where the strange man lives, has been stirred by this case. A neighbor, Vo Van Phuoc, said that many curious people have come to Van’s house to see the statue. Some people have embellished extraordinary stories about Van.
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Phuoc called Van’s decision to put his wife’s remains into the statue and live with it “ghastly.” Like other local people, he wanted the local government to quickly resolve this case to stabilize the situation in Ha Lam.
Local government officials have visited Van’s house and invited him to come to the People’s Committee for a meeting, but Van has refused. He is determined to stay at home to protect the statue.
Local police and officials said that Van’s act is contrary to Vietnamese customs and habits as well as illegal. However, Van has stated that he would “live or die” with the statue so the local government hesitates to use force, afraid that Van may have an extreme reaction.
Local officials say it is very difficult for them to solve this case – that is, to verify if Van’s wife’s bones are still inside the statue and then act accordingly — because there is no precedent in Vietnam and it is also rare in the world.
Some scientists speculate that Van suffers from a syndrome called “pseudonecrophilia,” and he needs to be cured.
Vu Trung
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