Here's another story. This one happened in my own home town in the USA. It happened about 10 years ago, when my friend's sister had gone missing, and the police had found her curled up underneath the local university stairway, cold and crying.

This one autumn afternoon, my friend's little sister just finished up with her day of elementary school. She only lived about three blocks from school, so she would just walk home everyday. After school ended, she decided to stick around a bit on the playground and have some fun. Eventually though, if you live in Wisconsin or northern Minnesota, you'll know that it gets really dark fast around 5PM - soon it began to get very dark, but the little girl didn't notice and just kept on playing.

Suddenly though, this old Hmong guy walked up to the playground, and was like, "Hey.. I'm your uncle.. your parents told me to come and pick you up." The little girl looked at her uncle and realized she had seen him before in pictures at home, so she knew it was safe. The uncle started leading the way home, and the little girl followed after him.

However, after about walking two blocks in the wrong direction, she soon realized that she wasn't heading home at all. Her uncle though still kept walking forward, never looking back at her - and she didn't want to speak up and say anything about it, because she was afraid she might get in trouble.

The uncle began walking faster and faster, slowly leaving the little girl behind. The girl didn't want to get left behind and get lost, so she started running after her uncle. But no matter how fast she ran, the uncle only walked, and yet he was still moving faster than she was. It was almost like he was gliding through the air.

Eventually the little girl got tired of running, and she stopped and rested, and she thought to herself, "I'm too tired.. I'm going to turn back and go home". As she turned around and took a few steps, out of nowhere, this wall of leaves and vines just rose up through the ground and prevented the little girl from going farther. This scared the little girl like no other, and when she turned around again, she saw her uncle motion with his fingers and said, "Hurry up.. we have to get home"

The girl was in tears now, very frightened, and she didn't really know what to do, so she kept following her uncle. She was running as fast as she could, but she still couldn't keep up with him. Soon she got tired again, and crying, she began running all the way to the right. She didn't get far, because another wall of leaves and vines rose up from the ground, blocking her path.

She just sat down and began crying, too scared to to move, but then her uncle turned around and shouted, "I'm getting mad now.. hurry up.. I have to take you home" So the little girl got up again and began following her uncle.

But just like before, he was simply moving too fast, so the little girl stopped, and this time she tried going to the left, when the same thing happened - a wall of leaves and vines broke through the ground and wouldn't let the girl go anywhere else - she had to follow her uncle.

The girl was just too scared at this point though, so she found a stairway that led up to the local university, and just hid underneath of it, curled up and crying for hours.

When the police found her, it turns out she had ended up on the other side of town- after they sent her back home, she told her parents the story, and they were completely freaked out. As the parents took out their photo album and asked, "Which uncle was it?" the little girl pointed to a picture, and the parents got very scared, and said, "This uncle died back in Laos a very long time ago."

It seems the uncle wanted to get revenge on the family by taking their daughter into the afterlife with him.

One very important thing you have to keep in mind while playing the qeej at funeral is to not look at the corpse within the coffin 'cause there's a chance you might getta glimpse of something you do not wanna see. Why I bring this up 'cause here's story that happened to my dad.

A years back, there was an old Hmong lady who passed away in Missoula, Montana. My dad was asked to be one of the txiv qeejs and so he went and did his duty. He came back home with a live chicken and I thought to myself that, he's never brought home a live chicken back from a funeral before only normally big chunks of beef ribs. I didn't bother to ask and the next day we were eating the chicken.

I later found out when my mom was telling me 'bout playing qeejs at funerals of what not to do and scary stories that has happened to some. Then she brought up what had happened to my dad. He was playing the qeej and when he got to the point of "nciv qab nruag", when the qeej guy goes under the drum counter clockwise towards the coffin. My dad thought it wouldn't hurt to have a quick glimpse of the coffin even though he knew txiv qeejs were not allowed to while playing. So when he did look at the coffin he saw some women mourning and sobbing but in front of their bowed heads sat straight up the old Hmong lady and she kind of gave my dad an old lady's grin (the kind of grin where it's like, hehehe you shouldn't have looked now you're gonna piss your pants young man) and he totally freaked out! He quickly looked back down and said nothing the rest of the night. The next day he finally told one of the shamans there 'bout it and they gave him a chicken to bring home to hu plig. My dad never talked 'bout it 'cause it scared the sh*t outta him pretty bad and that to me is pretty scary crap since my dad seems to not fear supernatural things as much. I guess it's true for txiv qeejs to not look at the corpse while playing huh. Makes me feel like when I go and play at the funerals I might try it myself.