According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Dung - Secretary of the Thanh Van Forest Protection Station Party Cell, since 2001, after announcing "doing holy work", Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh called people to her house and sold all her buffaloes and cows.
“ A total of 15 pigs earned more than 13 million VND, which was quite a large amount of money at that time ,” said Ms. Dung.
Ms. Thanh then went around the commune to buy tens of thousands of bowls, thousands of plowshares, hundreds of tons of steel, and chains. “ In the area, Ms. Thanh bought all the bowls and plowshares. It took several car trips ,” Ms. Dung said.
Ms. Dung said that Ms. Thanh buried all the bowls in the garden, and buried part of the plow blade, while Ms. Thanh tied the other part to a tree trunk and stood it upright like a flagpole in front of the house. The house was also surrounded by steel wires and chains. Ms. Thanh also built 8 tiny huts and used steel wires to connect the huts together in a very confusing way...
Seeing this strange act, Mrs. Dung tried every way to dissuade her but to no avail. Mrs. Thanh bought so much that the steel dealer in town ran out, so she had to go elsewhere to buy more. After buying, Mrs. Thanh, her husband, and their children strung up the iron and steel in the garden.
Steel systems are spread throughout Ms. Thanh's family garden, along with plow blades planted in rows along tree trunks. (Photo taken in 2017).
As someone who had access to the inside of Mrs. Thanh’s house, Mrs. Mai Thi Tinh (Mr. Mai Hong Thai’s younger sister) described: “ Inside the house, there was no incense burning and no one was worshiped. At first, the house was made of solid wood. Later, Ms. Thanh ordered her husband and children to demolish that solid house and then built several small huts to live in. Each hut had piles of dishes buried underneath .”
Not only burying the bowl, Mrs. Tinh said, Mrs. Thanh also asked her husband and children to buy fruit and scatter them all around the garden. Pots, pans, and pans were thrown into the well.
“ Then she also bought glass panels, smashed them, wrapped them into small bundles and hung them on tents. My husband and children had to work hard from morning till night. She only let them rest at exactly 12 o’clock ,” Ms. Thanh shared.
Mrs. Tinh also said that when she first got sick, her sister-in-law forced her children to stop going to school. When Mr. Thai returned to Nga Son to get his salary, Mrs. Thanh sold the cows without anyone knowing. After selling the cows, the three children had their hair cut bald like monks, and crawled around the house burying their mother's bowls until their knees were bruised.
“ The plowshares, porcelain bowls, and steel are considered treasures by her family. No one has the right to touch them or move them elsewhere, ” said Ms. Tinh.
Journey to approach a family living in "delusion" in Thanh Hoa. (Video recorded in 2017).
Pointing to the four corners of the garden, Mr. Le Van Dung - Vice Chairman of Van Du Town People's Committee - said that this place used to be a gathering place for dozens of tons of steel, corrugated iron, porcelain bowls...
He said that a short time after Mrs. Thanh passed away, he received news from the neighborhood chief informing him that Mr. Thai and his two children wanted to return to Nga Son district to live, and asked the government to help transport all their belongings back.
“ If I remember correctly, it was January 10 last year (February 10, 2022), just after Tet. At that time, Mr. Thai and his son were very happy, always saying that they were asking everyone to help my family return to their hometown. The leaders of Van Du town mobilized about 15 people to help Mr. Thai dismantle the house, trees, and excavate steel ,” said Mr. Dung.
More than a dozen workers and an excavator worked hard for two days to clear the area. Sharp plow blades hanging from treetops to the ground were removed, hundreds of porcelain bowls were dug up from the ground, many nearly brand new steel coils were piled up, requiring two trucks to transport them all.
“ It must be 15-20 tons, Toan? Are they sold now or stored somewhere? Did they bring them up here? ”, Mr. Dung asked.
Listening to the conversation between me and the Vice Chairman of the Town People's Committee, Mr. Toan replied: " Everyone in the countryside doesn't really agree with us. Thach Thanh land is sacred land, we want to leave but we can't. People are not very happy either. Heaven and Earth are not happy. Bui Temple is not happy. If we sell it, we will feel guilty... ".
In Thanh and Toan's kitchen, there is still a roll of steel weighing hundreds of pounds.
Walking around the garden, he saw a large roll of iron in the kitchen, weighing about 100 kg. Mr. Dung asked: "Why is there iron here? Did you just buy it or did you bring it from Nga Son?". Toan laughed and said: "There must be iron, how can we live without it...".
The strange thing is that during the conversation, Mr. Dung and I mentioned many times that we wanted to enter the house which was built with corrugated iron and the only entrance was locked, but Thanh and Toan flatly refused: "There's nothing in there, just a few blankets. What do you want to steal from my house, Mr. Dung?"
Perhaps they are trying to hide something from us. Mr. Dung said that the corrugated iron sheets used to build this house were bought by Mr. Thai when he was still alive, riding his bicycle to Bim Son district (30 km from his house) and hired a car to transport them here.
Saying goodbye to Thanh and Toan, we went to Le Thi Dung's house, not far away. Listening to us recount our conversation with Thanh and Toan, Mrs. Dung exclaimed:
“ The sisters are very stubborn. After their parents passed away, the local government, neighbors, and relatives in Nga Son tried their best to advise them, but they still decided to stay on this land, living a life unlike anyone else. There have been changes, but no one knows when they will be able to fully integrate into the community .”
Mrs. Dung said that when Mr. Thai and his two children decided to return to their hometown in Nga Son, the neighbors were very happy. Everyone thought that Mrs. Thanh had some mysterious power that allowed her to control the whole family to do as she wished. When she died, her husband and children returned to normal and wanted to return to their hometown to be closer to their relatives.
“ We worked together to dismantle the house and clean up his belongings. Everyone encouraged him to return to his hometown to build a stable life. But unexpectedly, after a few months back, he and his father moved back together. After more than a week, Thai died, ” said Mrs. Dung.
After Mr. Thai died, Mrs. Dung encouraged the two sisters to try to integrate, she would buy new clothes and apply to work at the company, but Thanh and Toan absolutely disagreed.
“ Before, when my parents were still alive, their salary was only 6-7 million VND to maintain their life, now they don't know what to eat. But what worries me the most is that the two children are of the opposite sex and have poor awareness...” , said Ms. Dung.
Talking about the passing of Ms. Thanh and Mr. Thai, Ms. Dung could not hide her sympathy for the fate of the family of her close sister, who worked together for decades at Thach Thanh Forestry.
Mrs. Dung said that because of their eccentric life, when they died, people came mostly out of curiosity: " Perhaps their greatest consolation was to be buried next to each other in their homeland ."
“ Up to this point, I still don’t understand what happened to Ms. Thanh and Mr. Thai. Why did they live like that? Why did they buy dozens of tons of iron and store it in their house, and when they dug it up, I estimated that they could sell it for 150 million VND? Why did their two children still live like that after they died? ” Ms. Dung raised a series of questions that she, her neighbors, and the government have yet to find answers to.
To find out why Mr. Mai Van Thai and his three children decided to leave Thach Thanh for Nga Son but then returned to live here, we asked for the address to find the house of Mrs. Mai Thi Tinh - Mr. Thai's younger sister.
And it was thanks to meeting Mrs. Tinh in Nga Thach commune, Nga Son district, that we learned the reason why Thanh and Toan did not let us into the house that was closed with green corrugated iron sheets.
Two children of Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thanh share about their current life.
Read part 4: The mystery inside the green corrugated iron house of the 'ghost' family
The aunt talked about the reason why Toan and Thanh sisters refused to return to their hometown to live but returned to the "evil land", living in a mysterious, closed, blue corrugated iron house.
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