Who you gonna call? Mr. Knife.

Vietnamese are superstitious people, especially about the hereafter, and although I think superstition (like religion) derives from lack of awareness, I’ll admit I once believed in some of it. My mom used to tell me that if I left my hair down outside at night, ghosts would hide in it and follow me into my house. I don’t know if she was just trying scare me – like the story about scraping and eating food from sidewalk cracks in the afterlife if I threw any away now – but until middle school it pushed me so far as to hold up my hair by hand when I didn’t have a hair-tie.

I hadn’t thought about those stories much until recently, when I visited my grandmothers in Hue. One afternoon, while some men were preparing a cung, one of my grandmothers yelled across the yard that they better not stand too close to the trees. I’d forgotten that ghosts are plentiful in trees – the greener the tree, the more abundant the ghosts. To humor her, one of the men assured my grandmother that they were safe in the daytime.

Though amusing, the warning didn’t really surprise me. What did surprise me the next day was when my other grandmother invited me to spend the night with her. I wasn’t planning to take her up on the offer, but was even more deterred when I noticed the knife on her bed. She apparently slept with it as protection from ghosts.

I ain't afraid of no ghosts. Ma'am.

MacBeth and The Phantom of the Opera are about as "scary" as it gets when it comes to any stage productions I'd heard of, let alone seen, until last night. Nguoi Vo Ma (Ghost Wife) is a popular play here in the city, and although I can't get through a scary movie without covering my eyes, I figured this had to be interesting.

Less than $5 got me admission to a theater smaller than most American cinemas. I joined a boisterous audience that required more than a few warnings to hush down throughout the play, which just made it more entertaining. I think that's part of the nature of the performance – as professional as the actors were, this was no ballet or symphony (I'm saving that for next week). People come in their everyday clothes and prove it's not just the players who can break the fourth wall: when we first saw the sinister-but-still-living Wife, one audience member shouted, "You're too beautiful to be a ghost!"

The actors took it in good humor. During another scene, an overwhelmed audience member screamed in the middle of a dialogue, so the actor slipped it into the play: "What! Who just screamed?" he timidly asked his partner, earning a few laughs.

That about exemplifies the show. On the one hand, the performers were hilarious, playing on the cowardice triggered by belief in a ghost and making jokes that even someone with my level of Vietnamese could understand.

On the other hand, the play scared the hell out of me. I could see no difference between this title character and the long-haired star of The Ring, which also happens to be the scariest movie I've ever seen, if only because of the girl. But this ghost was worse because she was 50 feet away from me. Alternating between covering my eyes and clinging to my cousin, I could feel the same tension among the audience members because we could usually anticipate a scene with the ghost, thanks to the ominous music and erratic lighting. I'd never sat in a pitch black theater for so long before.

Luckily, I haven't had any nightmares yet, although when the play ended at 11 p.m., I walked four blocks home, the longest four blocks I've ever had to walk.