BY HMONGTALES STAFF
HmongTales: Blood Oath: You can run but you can’t hide is based on a true story from California.
When I was still a child, probably around 6-7 years old, an aunty who lived far away came to stay with us randomly. I had overheard from my parents that an incident had happened to her, and she was running away from it.
At first, I was very shy and often hid when she tried to talk to me, but after a few days, I grew more comfortable with her and started to hang around her more.
As I became more comfortable, she began sharing stories of her life and her family with me. I discovered she was a widow in her 50s and had three kids, one of whom was deceased.
Being young and naive, I asked her why she didn’t remarry. She told me it was because she had promised her late husband that she wouldn’t remarry if anything ever happened to him. I remember thinking, “She must have really loved him to make a promise like that.”
One day, after returning from the store with my parents, I saw my aunty snoring and fast asleep on the sofa. Seeing that she was sleeping, I did my best not to make any sound to wake her up and silently walked down the hallway to my room.
As I got to my room, I opened the door and noticed my aunty sleeping on my bed. I remember being confused and wondering, “How did she get here so fast?” I quickly walked to the closet, put my new clothes away, and then walked to the bathroom.
After using the bathroom, I walked into the living room and saw my aunty sitting on the sofa. She saw me and gestured for me to come to her.
She must have known something was wrong because when I sat beside her, she asked me to tell her what I saw.
I remember looking at her and asking, “Aunty, how were you sleeping on the sofa and on my bed at the same time?” She replied, “That wasn’t me sleeping in your bed. That was something pretending to be me. Did you notice that it wasn’t even breathing?” After hearing that, I recalled that the thing on my bed was sleeping motionless as if it wasn’t alive.
My aunt assured me she had never stepped foot in my bedroom and informed me that I should find her immediately if I saw her sleeping in my bed again.
A few days later, she packed all her belongings and left without speaking to me.
A few days after she left, I overheard my parents discussing her and why she came here.
I overheard that she was being haunted by a “dab” monster that wouldn’t leave her alone. It was following her around and tended to find her within a week or so; that was why she was jumping from place to place. Also, supposedly she and her ex-husband had made a blood oath when they were younger, and it was believed that the husband was this dab who was haunting her since he couldn’t be reincarnated without her. I also discovered that she wasn’t even closely related to us and only knew us through one of our relatives.
After she left, I never saw or heard from her again. It wasn’t until a few years back that she came across my mind, and I decided to ask my parents if they had any updates on her. I was told she was now deceased, but before that, she jumped from place to place and ended up somewhere in Minnesota. There was a rumor that she eventually got too old and gave up on running, and that was how her ex-husband finally caught up to her.
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