A Ghost Story Is A Trauma Story

on my mother's 31 ghosts and other stories

The women in my maternal line have a propensity for hauntings.

A handful of years back, my mother, who lives in Taiwan, went to the funeral of an old friend. But swiftly after the funeral occurred, she found herself ill in a way she had never been before—headaches, stomach problems. The kinds of things that doctors have a tendency to write off as stress, especially given a recent death. But my mother, who also has a tendency toward hypochondria, was so perturbed by her symptoms that she went to the doctor to see if something more significant might be wrong.

For those who don’t know: the public health care system in Taiwan is exceptional. Citizens pay very little, if anything, to have their bodies and minds cared for. More traditional Chinese medicine exists, of course, and is still sought out by many; but I’ve been seen by doctors in Taiwan myself, and the technology and bedside manner of those who use more Western techniques is both efficient and careful. When my mother went to see the doctor, I don’t want you to imagine her going into a yurt, speaking to a medicine doctor shrouded in smoke—not because there’s anything wrong with that—but simply because that sort of imagery is, in this case, Orientalist and inaccurate. She saw a doctor who had treated many of our family members, who knew the fundamentals of medicine and would have, if it had been the case, told my mother that she had a mild case of the flu and sent her off with medication. He’d never before expressed a diagnosis that would be anything different than something you’d hear at the Mayo Clinic.

But this was not so on that occasion. Instead, he told her that she was being followed by thirty-one ghosts. They had sensed that she was a kind person and would help them cross into the afterlife.

My mother was surprised, but not altogether shocked. What should I do, she asked.

The doctor spoke into the air. If this woman says these specific Buddhist chants this many times per day, he said, will you leave her alone? And when he seemed to listen to the answer in the air, the answer was yes.

Therefore, my mother began her new goal: to help these unhappy spirits journey into the underworld.