Mysterious ghost caves in Moc Chau

Take a motorbike more than 50km along Highway 43 to Ben Trai. Down the Da River to Suoi Bang Commune - Moc Chau District - Son La, add 4km of forest road to pass through the roots of trees, interlacing vines are the mysterious world of Khoang To Cave - in the system of ghost caves discovered in Suoi Bang.

The mystery of the coffins hanging on the cliff in Moc Chau

The top of Cu Tay Tay is nearly 1,000m high, the road is very steep where there is almost a place to face the cliff and lean on each meter.

The cave is about 700m high, which is believed to be the most preserved tomb. Locals call this ma Khoang Tiem II cave . The cave is a frog-shaped dome of stone dome, which is wide and deep, only about 3 to 4m long, about 16m long, forming a dome with many steps, the highest peak is about 20-25m, and the place of coffin with high roof is only about a few meters, the rain of the forest could not reach the place where the tomb was located.

These boat-shaped coffins were mostly built up on rocky outcrops against the ceiling, and there were strong pillars, cradles, or coffins for each coffin below. But maybe due to the time, earthquake, rock quake, the worst is that the "bandits " came to this place to hunt for treasures and they were tossing these coffins to the cave floor. Many boat graves have been broken into many pieces, inside the grave of the boat has many snail shells, dry forest leaves . Because at the top of the mountain, many coffins are almost intact.

All the coffins are made of rotten wood . This type of precious wood has high durability. The coffin is decorated with very elaborate motifs and the two ends are swallowed in the tail shape. In the heart of the coffin, the head of the dead is shaped like a bowl.

The reason these coffins are called graves because they are all made from a tree trunk. Workers cut down the trunk of a tree with a diameter of more than 1m and used to drill deep into each side about 0.30mm. Each half of this can become a stand of dugout.

In Khoang To II cave, 18 wooden coffins were staggered, piled up all over the cave. In the sprawling pile of rubble, two boat graves contain human bones . A container inside a skull with both jaw and teeth is an adult, aged about 36 - 42, with several pieces of femur, shinbone, and pelvic debris. A smaller grave contains half an intact skull, probably a young child's skull (about 10 years old).

According to an incomplete statistic, only Suoi Bang commune of Moc Chau district has had dozens of ghost caves as above. Each little cave, there are several boat graves, many up to several dozen. In addition, there are also Muong Sang, To Mua and Tan Lap communes.

There are many legends about ghost caves. They mentioned that the burial tombs on the other caves were graves containing bones of a man-eating tribe. So the skeletons in the cave are bones of those who have been eaten.

There is also another legend that says: hundreds of years ago, the Xa people (the Kho Mu people today) and the Thai people lived in Moc Chau. The Xa people shot very well and challenged the Thai people to shoot names on the cliff to determine the land sovereignty. If the arrow of any party shot into the cliff, the god of the mountain, the god of land agreed to stay, and the loser had to leave this land.

The Xa used a name with a copper seal at the tip of the arrow to shoot at the cliff, and Thai people took the wax to stick to the arrowhead, so when shooting at the cliff, the arrow was stuck. Since then, the Thai people have stayed on this land, while the Xa people have to leave. Staying true to the fight is not to live or hunt and cultivate here anymore. When dying, the Xa did not dare to bury the dead on the land of the Thai people and put them in the big wooden stems, removing the intestines to bring the dead into and hide on the cliffs.

Mr. Pham Viet Hung, Moc Chau District Office of Culture and Information said that graves in tombs are dated to at least 600 years, the coffin is made of rotten wood. It is likely that people choose this type of wood because the unpleasant smell of wood will make the wild animal not close.

The first thing that anyone who comes into contact with the boat grave in Suoi Bang is the question, "why can one get 400 - 500 kg blocks of wood to a thousand meter altitude for burial? DEADMAN?" .

The first hypothesis is that those who are buried in this form are often mandarins or people with dignitaries in the ancient tribe of the Xa. When they die, they will be carried and picked up on the rocks. And the villagers will also use saws and axes to bring down nearby trees to bury them. But one problem is that almost all the graves here are rotten wood. But when we conducted the survey, there was hardly any sign showing that there was a rotten nail root as well as traces of this plant that were present here.

The second hypothesis is that the Xa people used boats carrying rotten wood from other areas, gathered at Van Yen ferry area (now in Tan Phong commune, Phu Yen, Son La) and then transferred to Loi boat wharf. From there will be transferred to the ghost cave.

But the question here is how heavy blocks of wood with 400-500kg, how can indigenous people bring them so high? If this hypothesis is correct, it can be said that the ancient Xa people had the ability to transport wood from . super-high players!

Another mystery is that during a recent survey, an ancient grave cave was excavated by another person, the Moc Chau Information and Culture Department picked up a piece of his wrist bones and pieces of ancient bowls. The strange thing is that the bone is much longer than the tall bones of the tall people now. It has been hypothesized that no one has found a satisfactory answer: Ancient people have a bigger body than people now?

These mysteries will probably take a lot of time and effort by scientists, ethnologists and archaeologists. However, up to now, most of the grave sites in Suoi Bang commune have been unearthed.