So I'm going to start off with some basic common sense shit that ALL Hmong kids grew up with and were being told as kids with these superstitions.
When I was little, I was told that I wasn't supposed to be whistling or ringing bells at night time. If you do, then you're basically calling a spirit. This is actually true, not that I've actually done it before, but my family has experienced this. I actually have 3 stories to tell about this. Two of my family's experiences and one of which I've heard from another person.
1. Toddler With The Bell :
When I was little, my cousins told me a story of how their dad got dragged out of their apartment.
It was night time and their little half sister, who was two at the time, was playing with one of their bells. At the time, they lived on the first floor of the apartment. While they were sleeping, a spirit came in and started dragging my uncle outside. My other uncles who had just gotten there saw him and like RAN to go get him. When my cousins told me this I was SPOOKED AS SHIT. Seriously, for like whole week, I was scared to walk to his house. I say "walk" because during this time, me and my cousins lived in Brooklyn Center, so we lived in the same area. ( Just an FYI, I live in Minnesota, so the kind of "Brooklyn" that you're thinking of might be different. )
2. My Brother's Friend :
So I have two younger brothers named Sky and Kenyen ( the youngest ) and one older brother named Elijah. We were at my grandma's house for a while hanging out with our uncles, aunties, and cousins. As we were about to leave, my mom was checking to see if she had everybody that was going with her. I had noticed that my brother was gone and I said,
"Wait, where is Sky?"
Then everybody started to freak out and shit and so we started looking for him. We searched every room in the house. We searched the back yard, the front yard, the garage, the driveway, we even started asking our neighbors if they saw him. He was no where to be found. Seriously, he was GONE. I started getting dark out and so we came back inside and my mom was balling her eyes out talking about going out and looking for him. My uncles were saying that they were going to call the police if she didn't come back with him.
Fastforward, we were about to leave and my cousin Gavin found him. We asked where he was and apparently he said that he was in the back yard playing "by himself". We were leaving and my aunty decided to whistle as a joke to like "call out to his friend". He asked her,
"What are you doing?" And she said,
"I'm calling out to your friend." He responded with,
"Well, he's not here anymore." My aunty said,
"Don't worry, he'll be here soon."
A couple seconds after she said that, Sky pointed at something and said,
"Who's that?"
There was no one walking around during this time and everyone else was already in the car. He couldn't have been pointing at me because I was walking behind him. He was pointing somewhere else. My ass got scared and so I RAN into the car.
3. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star :
I'm in a youth program called YLG ( Youth Leadership Group ) that is under the organization called CHAT ( Center for the Hmong Arts and Talent ). This one year our YLG mentors had planned a camping trip for us.
It was nighttime and one of CHAT board members was telling us a story about how two brothers, one younger and one older, had died at the CAMP SITE we were at. So during the day when it was getting dark, the older brother wanted to play hide and seek because he was bored. The older brother said to the younger brother,
"You count, I'll hide." The younger brother was a bit scared because they went away from their people and they were playing in the forest. The younger brother said,
"I'm scared, what if I can't find you?" The older brother said,
"Don't worry, if you can't find me you know what to do." Whenever they tried to find each other, they'd whistle the first line of the Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars melody. One person would whistle the first half of the line and the person responding would whistle the second half of the line.
ex :
Person : * whistles * twinkle twinkle little star
Response : * whistles * how I wonder what you are
So being the younger brother, he trusted his older brother. He started counting and his older brother went to go hide. The younger brother finished counting and went to go look for his brother. He was looking for his brother for a while and it was getting darker and darker. Eventually it was nighttime. He got scared and so he went back to the campsite because he figured that his older brother would be there since it was so late. He couldn't find him. So in order to find his brother, he went back and started to whistle,
twinkle twinkle little stars
Then he heard a response.
* whistling noise * how I wonder what you are.
After hearing the response, he kept whistling thinking that it was his brother.
Here's the twist.
The older brother was STILL HIDING. After realizing that it was getting darker and that his younger brother might be lost, he started calling out to him by whistling,
twinkle twinkle little star
He heard a response.
how I wonder what you are
And after hearing the response, he kept whistling thinking that it was his brother.
The brothers never found each other and they were never found or to be seen again.
