I arrived at Đá Cóc on a numbingly cold December afternoon. The sky pressed down on the old hills like a thick, musty blanket, dense with mist and the smell of decayed wood. The village lay silent, much like the memories they have tried to bury for 20 years - the memory of the "bone extract pot".
The villagers don't speak of it. They don't use words, but their eyes, when I asked about the past - eyes lingering longer on the crack of a teacup, or silently gazing towards Đồng Cốc hill - spoke volumes.
But I needed to know. I didn't come here just to listen to stories. I came to unearth something buried along with those black, foul-smelling bone extract blocks, the testimonies that had dried, and a death that was never fully illuminated.
I had read enough about this on the internet, but I still recount it here along with my strange experiences.
By inquiring among the villagers, I met Mr. Ngạch, who was over seventy and lived isolated in a small house at the end of Đá Cóc. He maintained his habit of drinking liquor infused with forest roots. When I mentioned "the chimpanzee", he fell silent, then whispered as if talking to himself:
It all began on a winter afternoon in 1998, when Mr. Đinh Văn Ngạch - then 52, a hunter and forest keeper - was hired by a forest owner named Nguyễn Văn Ước to watch over the timber forest on Đồng Cốc hill.
On the afternoon of December 5, 1998, he discovered a charred object on Đồng Cốc hill. A hunchback, long legs, skin charred black and twisted like a piece of rotten wood. "It looked just like a rare chimpanzee," he said, having seen similar figures slip through the trees or hide in the underbrush during his time in the forest, a creature he had tried to trap but never caught. He found a durable, flexible vine, tied it to the corpse, hoisted it over his shoulder, and dragged it over the hill back to the village. He insisted it was a rare chimpanzee possibly struck by lightning, and excitedly told the village about his intention to cook the chimpanzee into animal bone extract.
"I swear… At that time, I didn't know… My God, it was charred black, bones sticking out… I really thought… it was a chimpanzee…" he recounted with a voice full of pitiful defense. I requested to stay at his house to learn more about the story, and he directed me to meet a few others who had witnessed the horrific event that year.
Following his guidance, I found Mr. Hoàng Văn Dũng, the former village head who had retired. He welcomed me into his gloomy house with cold stone walls and clouded eyes, as if he had absorbed part of the story's darkness into his soul.
According to him, when news spread that Mr. Ngạch had hunted a "rare animal" never before seen in the area, villagers, young and old, flocked to his yard to marvel and praise.
According to the village head's description, the body was deformed, scorched, blackened, with a hunchback and large, long calves. Notably, they observed the two hands curled up, with relatively long nails and swollen forelimbs.
"It looked exactly like the chimpanzee everyone saw in pictures and on TV. It was so convincing that even I believed it was a rare animal at that time," the village head confessed. Seeing the "animal" was large and long, villagers even carried it to the yard to measure its length and weight.
"When I arrived, the body was already in the yard. Hunchbacked, charred skin, limbs twisted as if struggling. But looking at the hands… long nails, deformed… it was like human hands. I shuddered at that moment, but my mouth still said it was a chimpanzee. Maybe… out of fear…" Mr. Dũng recounted in a trembling voice of horror.
The following morning, Mr. Ngạch, along with his family and some close neighbors, prepared knives, cutting boards, and buckets to fetch water from the village pond. They carried the "chimpanzee" to wash and dissect it; about 10 people directly participated in the butchering, with dozens of other curious villagers watching, not counting the curious children.
Soon after, the "dissection" ceremony began. The morning was misty, knives already sharpened. The body was brought out and placed on a bamboo bench. When the first knife slid through the charred flesh, a strong smell rose - the smell of burnt meat, burnt hair, the smell of a human corpse, but they believed it was "precious meat". They said it was "the smell of wild animals".
That morning, news of the villagers catching a "rare animal" reached the authorities. A local forest ranger was sent but by that time the people had already finished butchering. After sorting the bones and meat, they started cooking the bone extract. The village head even begged to buy a portion of the bones to cook extract but was not agreed to by the hunters. "Fortunately, I didn't get to buy it. Looking back now, I still get goosebumps," the village head recalled.
Some suggested using part of the meat for food, but Mr. Ngạch stopped them as the meat showed signs of decay and was inedible.
Mr. Nguyễn Văn Đông, a direct witness, recounted when I met him at a village tea shop:
"I drank two cups of liquor infused with bone extract that day. My God, it hit my nose, went straight to my brain. I felt dizzy, my heart raced. I thought it was because it was too nourishing, but who would have thought…"
After three days and nights of cooking the bone extract pot, taking turns adding firewood, stirring, adding water to prevent burning the bottom - a thick, sticky, dark red bone extract was completed. Villagers were curious, partly because they had never seen such bone extract, partly because they believed they had cooked precious bone extract, or special bone extract because the ingredients were rare wild animals. They ladled and shared the bone extract according to their contribution, scraping every last bit until the pot was empty.
They brought the extract home, some soaked it in liquor, others saved it for healing. That night, the whole village was like a festival, reveling in wild excitement, yet many confessed that when drinking liquor mixed with this bone extract, they often felt dizzy, the smell of the extract was extremely "strong" even when used in a small amount mixed into a ten-liter can of strong liquor, many young men with low tolerance threw up immediately after the first sip, leaving amidst the laughter of those with higher tolerance. But truthfully, they themselves felt very uncomfortable when drinking this liquor.
This terrifying revelry continued - until an old farmer named Tám discovered the truth.
According to his account, which I collected, on the night of December 5, he saw fire burning towards Đồng Cốc forest. "The fire wasn't a forest fire. It was a solitary flame. Blazing red, but not flaring up. It burned in one spot, for a long time. There were moans, like a human… I heard it…"
His account wasn't in any record. He said he didn't dare speak then because "to speak was to invite disaster." Much later, when he heard about the bone extract cooking, he quietly went to see.
Amid a forest of doubts and conscience, he returned to the scene and ruthlessly, among the ashes, found a burnt hat strap and a pair of yellow plastic sandals, items that could not accompany a chimpanzee.
It was a human body!
A few days later, three police cars wailed sirens up the hill. More than 20 people, either directly involved in cooking the bone extract or witnessing it, were summoned for questioning. However, all these people uniformly stated that they did not know it was a human body at that time. Mr. Ngạch himself, the first to discover and bring the body back to the village to cook bon extract, also insisted that when he found the "chimpanzee" in the forest, it was already slightly decomposed, swarmed by flies. If he could mistake a human body, then how the victim died, he had no idea. Subsequently, everyone was acquitted.
DNA analysis confirmed that the body cooked into bone extract was indeed Mrs. Đinh Thị Minh (born 1949, residing in team 7, Yên Lương commune) - a woman living alone in Yên Lương commune. When she disappeared, she wore a white hat, carried a bag of clothes, and a water canister.
The police concluded she committed suicide. They said she had quarrelled with relatives, bought gasoline, and self-immolated on the hill. But Mr. Đinh Văn Xoan, her younger brother, didn't believe it. He told me with a choked sob:
"My sister wasn't the weak type. If she intended to die, why bring clothes and a water bag? And travel so far?
According to him, Mrs. Minh was the second child in a family of five siblings. She pursued a teaching course, but during the war, her school was dissolved, and she returned to live with her parents.
At that time, the other siblings in the family had all married and lived separately. Mrs. Minh stayed to farm, work, and care for her elderly parents and younger brother. In Mr. Xoan's memory, his sister was gentle, hardworking, and caring. The family life was tough but sufficient, and they loved each other.
After the incident, the police handed my family an urn containing a skull, a plastic bag with bone extract, some bones, and a few buttons and hairpins… My family was shocked, couldn't believe how their loved one ended up like this." - he continued, in tears.
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I took the case documents and followed Mr. Ngạch's directions to the old scene where the fire once blazed. Among the charred tree stumps, a chilling sensation shot down my spine, though the sun was up.
I bent down and saw a small object embedded in the earth - a charred, faded button, lying as if waiting for someone to pick it up. It could be just someone's random loss after twenty years, or... a lingering trace of destiny.
I tried to reconstruct Mrs. Minh's final journey: Leaving home in the morning, walking with belongings and water. Around 5 p.m., reaching Thắng Sơn area, intending to catch a ride to La Phù. No vehicle. She turned back, and disappeared.
And then – was she murdered? Her gold earrings stolen? The body burned to destroy evidence?
Or was it truly a suicide? But where are the earrings? Gold doesn't burn to ash. Why hasn't anyone found them? Did someone come to the scene after the fire was out? Was the "coincidentally discovered" body actually waiting, pre-arranged?
I asked the authorities, but the case was closed. The final conclusion remains self-immolation.
But I cannot help but doubt - because every person, every story around it, has gaps, reflecting hesitation in their words. A profound fear. Not just because of the "human bon extract pot", but because something has never been spoken.
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The last night at Đá Cóc, I sat by the charcoal fire at Mr. Ngạch's house. He didn't sleep. His eyes were red.
"Do you believe… I saw her?"
I didn't answer. For spirit and ghost stories have no place in investigative reporting.
Mr. Ngạch still sat there, staring into the distance towards the door, the winter chill seeping through, under the dim blue light of an old tube bulb, he recounted again.
"Whenever it rains, I hear crying... Not in my ears, but in my heart. Sometimes… I see a woman's figure passing through the yard… slowly… as if finding the way home."
I shivered. That night it poured rain. The wind blew cold like knives. The house groaned with each gust sweeping through the roof tiles, thunder cracking as if to drown out a lament I faintly thought I heard.
The sound of crying.
Leaving in the morning, I considered that maybe I had too much time and came here to investigate a case from 20 years ago, which in fact was already detailed online; this was just a fascinating trip with a bit of rest.
A group of children walked to school in the early morning mist, villagers heading to work, some carrying hoes to the fields. The children passed me, chatting carefree about their lessons.
Suddenly, a yellow plastic bag fell from them, like a hot morning sticky rice package, I hurriedly picked it up, the bag wasn't tied, inside clearly a lump of dark red bone extract, a scrap of paper with scrawled childish writing in purple ink.
"I did not die by my own hand"
No one knew who wrote it. No one knew where it came from.
Đá Cóc now has electricity, the internet, but fear doesn't need fiber optic cables to exist or wifi to spread. It lives in every sleep, in the wind through the forest, in the eyes of the elderly when mentioning the year 1998.
The story ends here - at least on paper.
But for me, that case has never closed. For I know there is a woman who never got a chance to explain. And there is a fire - still burning, smoldering in the darkness of Phú Thọ's mountains and forests.