Hui Bon Hoa Mansion — the Chinese merchant's haunted palace, Ho Chi Minh City

The Hui Bon Hoa Mansion, now serving as the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts, is one of the most architecturally striking and mysterious buildings in southern Vietnam. Built in the early 20th century by Hui Bon Hoa, a wealthy Chinese merchant and philanthropist from the Teochew community, the mansion blends French colonial architecture with Chinese decorative elements. The building has been associated with supernatural phenomena since the Hui family's departure. Museum staff and visitors report hearing footsteps on the upper floors when the museum is empty, seeing figures in Chinese traditional dress in the corridors, and experiencing a watchful presence in the former family quarters. The mansion's most intriguing feature is a hidden chamber — a sealed room whose purpose remains debated. Some believe it was a secret prayer room, others a treasure vault, and still others suggest it was connected to the opium trade. Whatever its purpose, the sealed room is considered the spiritual epicentre of the building's haunting. The museum's collection of Vietnamese fine art, displayed in the merchant's former living spaces, creates a juxtaposition of beauty and mystery. The Hui family's Chinese spiritual traditions — ancestor worship, feng shui, and Taoist ceremony — may have left a permanent spiritual imprint on the building they so carefully constructed.