Sighting In ICU (急诊室所见)

Buddhist believe that if a person is not a believer of Buddhism and that he/she does not engage in the correct dharma, then when this person dies; he/she shall not be able to be fetched by Buddha and bodhisattvas to the pure land. Instead, the person’s ancestors will come to fetch this person’s soul instead. Of course, life after death matters remain a research interest in the West as well. Again, there are many theories and real encounters by those who have managed to return to tell their side of the story. Below is just one from Aunt Helen:

About two years ago, my distant relative Aunt Helen was admitted to a private hospital in Ipoh due to heart attack. After spending some time in the operating theatre, her condition stabilized and she was put in the intensive care unit (ICU) for a week for round-the-clock observations. And luckily Aunt Helen was able to live to tell her experience while she was in the ICU.

After being escorted out from the operating theatre, Aunt Helen was placed in a ICU together with another 4 patients around her. Naturally, all of them were almost in very critical conditions. Aunt Helen’s sickbed was near the ICU entrance while another old lady was beside her and other two sickbeds were facing these two. Right after Aunt Helen’s condition has stabilized, I was allowed by the doctor in-charge to visit her.

When Aunt Helen saw me, she grabbed hold of my wrists and begged me to bring her home because she said that she started to see many ‘white people’ at night stood by her sickbed staring at her. As described by Aunt Helen, she couldn’t recognize who those people were because all of their face were blurred. Except that she could tell if the figure was a child, a man or a woman. All of them would assemble quietly starting midnight at the end of her sickbed. At first, a few white figures just stood by at the further end and gradually the number increased by many folds until Aunt was surrounded by those white folks. All of them just stood by quietly looking at Aunt Helen which made her very uncomfortable.

Then the night before I visited Aunt Helen, she saw those ‘white people’ started to gather around the sickbed beside her where the old lady was lying in. Strangely, there were no white figure by Aunt Helen’s sickbed. Then one of those white figures protruded its hands to grab the old lady’s hands. After some tries, a white mist raised from the old lady’s body and went into the crowd of mysterious white folks. A moment later, all of the white folks started to disperse and all of them were gone in a jiffy.

At this time, a nurse on duty came in to check on the old lady’s condition and she alerted the doc on duty as well. After a round of first aids, Aunt Helen saw the nurse pulled up the blanket to cover the old lady’s face. A moment later, some male nurses came and lifted the old lady into a stretcher and carried her away. When Aunt Helen asked the nurse on duty the next morning, the nurse just shook her head.

Perhaps Aunt Helen was afraid that the group of white figures would come to her again that night, she adamantly wanted to leave the ICU before the end of the day. Of course no one would allow her to do so in her dire health condition. So as to sooth Aunt Helen, I went to a Taoist temple downtown to beg for a ‘fu’ (talisman) and bring it to Aunt Helen and asked her to hide under her pillow.

Luckily, the group of white folks never returned to haunt Aunt Helen and she was discharged from ICU a week later. After spending another 3 weeks in normal sick wad, Aunt Helen was subsequently discharged from the hospital.

Although I am aware that a hospital can be quite a haunted place, but what were those white figures visiting the dying at night? They didn’t sound like those wandering spirits of the deceased as they seemed to have come with a motive: to get the soul of the dead. Maybe there are the ancestors of the dying; or the messengers from hell?