Do you believe in spirits? Have you ever felt the presence of a spirit or have come in contact with one? I have and I do believe in spirits. A spirit is a force. Spirits can be good, dangerous, and powerful.
In the Hmong culture, many believe in Shamanism. A shaman is a person who has the abilities to see spirits on the other side and can come in contact with them. A shaman has the power to heal other people’s soul from coming in contact with a bad spirit. Shamanism has a belief that our world is a spirit world too. Shamanists believe that there are three worlds: the lower world, the middle world, and the upper world.
Seven years ago, I had been in contact with a spirit. One late night, my two cousins, two brothers, and I were up late watching movies and playing games downstairs. As we all were getting tired, we decided to go upstairs to sleep.
About half an hour later, my cousins tried waking me up telling me they could hear the sound of a baby crying. At first, I ignored them. But soon enough, one of my cousins started to cry. The thought of my cousin crying was out of the ordinary and by then I was fully alarmed. Suddenly, I could hear the cry of a baby.
For that second, I thought to myself that there weren’t any young children at my house. I then suddenly felt fear. The cries of the baby gradually grew louder and closer. It felt as if the baby was crawling up each step of the stairs. I then decided to get up to open the door and turn on the lights. As I opened the door, nothing appeared to be there.
My cousins and I then decided to huddle and stay up. While staying up, I could not bear to keep my eyes open throughout the night. Within a few minutes I knew I was sound asleep.
Through my sleep, I felt paralyzed and felt I was trapped in a dark, cloudy place. I could feel the energy around me, and by then I knew a spirit was lying on top of me. I struggled moving because I could not make a movement and I tried screaming with all my might, but that was no help because no one could hear me. All of a sudden, I woke up from the dream gasping and terrified. I told my cousins about “maj chua” or in other words, “getting squashed by a spirit.”
After the contact with this spirit, it was an awful experience. Not did this just happen to me, but it also happened to my cousin that cried that night; he experienced getting “maj chua” the next night. With that experience, I believe there are spirits out wandering the world. Some are good, some are dangerous, and some are powerful.