Yup HmongLee, I am a light sleeper. I wake up to every small sound and can never fall asleep to people snoring.
This is a story my Hubby told me a while back.
In Green Bay, there's a funeral home that Hmong people always used to rent from white people. There was a white guy who was a reporter. He thought that he wanted to capture some footage of a Hmong funeral, because no one on the outside knows how the Hmong funeral ceremonies are done. He thought that it would make a great story.
It was a Thursday night and he had permission from the family and from the owner of the funeral to set his cameras where he wanted them to be able to shoot the next morning. After he was done with the set up, he called it a night.
Well, when the reporter got home, he had forgotten something important that he didn't do. It was not that late, and he assumed that the Hmong family would still be there preparing the deceased for the next day. As he was driving there, he called the funeral home, hoping to catch someone. The phone rang and rang. No answer. He was getting upset at himself for forgetting that one thing. He was not going to wait until tomorrow. He dialed the number again. And got the same thing. The phone just kept ringing over and over again.
It was going to be a trip wasted, because when he got there, there were no cars in the parking lot; all except for one. He assumed it belonged to the owner. He called from his cell phone again, walking about the premises of the funeral home. He could clearly hear the phone ringing from the office. Still, there was no answer. One last try, finally the phone was picked up, except now no one was talking. All he could hear was a clear, soft static as though the phone was disconnected. "Hello? Hello?!" He screamed into his cell phone. "I know you can hear me, please I just need someone to turn off my camera. Please, unlock the front door for me. HELLO?!?!?!" He hangs up the phone and walks away, thinking to himself why no one spoke to him from the other line. He decided that he could just come in early tomorrow and recharge the battery before the rituals began.
The next morning, he got up early and went back to the funeral home. The same car was there from the night before as well as some other cars. He went inside and when he got to the camera, it was already turned off. The battery was halfway. So now he was thinking to himself why he was going paranoid when he knew all along that he shut off his camera before he left the building last night. He grabbed the charger and started to recharge the battery. He looked through the camera and it looked like it was filming a good couple of hours. He rewound it a little bit and played it. He could clearly hear the phone ringing. He was laughing at himself. No one was in the building at all. He fast-forwarded it. He played it again and he could hear the phone ringing again. But this time, to his disbelief, the camera recorded what he could not explain to anyone. With the camera angled directly towards the coffin. The door of the coffin opened up, arms reached out, opening the bottom door. The deceased person from the coffin got up and out of its coffin, walked right past the camera, opened the door to the office and picked up the phone. He heard himself screaming from the other line as he had done before. And then he hung up the phone. The dead person walked back towards the seating room, straight to the camera and turned it off. The reporter was so taken back by this that he dropped his camera. It echoed across the room and the people that were there all stared at him. He was so shaky, he almost could not keep himself together as one of the family members asked him what was wrong. The reporter showed the family the footage of what he had captured. The family had the same expressions on their faces. The Hmong man said to the reporter, "This is why we do not like other people recording our funerals. It is disrespectful to them."
The reporter took all his cameras and packed all his bags. He shook hands with the family and took off. They said that he was so scared he refused to film the ceremony. Because what he filmed was already enough.
