I love a good ghost story, and would often ask Japanese if they had any to tell. Japan has it's own mix of believers and non-believers are far as ghosts go, but I found that with descriptions of truly strange phenomena, most people didn't seem intent on quickly explaining it away with what it could have been. For example, one of my adult students who's family owns a hotel (and was therefore well experienced in the general inside nature of hotel management) informed me once that sometimes rooms that have some sort of bad history, for example a suicide, later are reported to experience certain, shall we say, disturbances. To counteract this, a sort of charm consisting of holy Shinto writings (or Buddhist), can be placed somewhere obscure, commonly behind a picture frame. She told me that if I ever saw a picture frame sticking out a bit from the wall of my hotel room I should look behind it. I don't know if I'm a firm believer in ghosts, or even a believer at all, but I can safely say I'd either be getting a new room or not sleeping well that night.
There's no shortage of creepy stories passed around . There's the couple that couldn't find a parking spot for the event at their child's elementary school one winter evening, forcing them to find one further down the road near a children's cemetery. When they came back from the event there were small hand prints in the snow all over the car, even on the the roof.
More than one school has its teacher who stayed late at the school, and apparently heard children crying, or laughing, or singing, or the sound of doors slamming in the bathrooms or upper floors late at night, but when they went to check there was of course no one there.
There's that patch of coastline where, at a certain time of the year (I seem to recall it was during obon, the week of the dead) you should never visit or go in the water, but one time someone went anyway to take a picture and there were hundreds of hands reaching out of the sea in the photo.
At any rate, a lack of doubt, even if temporary, at the very least makes a good tale even more enjoyable, and chilling, to listen to. I had a few haunting experiences of my own in Japan which I can't explain. I can either chalk these up to extreme coincidence (and on one account peculiar animal behavior), but I'm satisfied with leaving them as they are: mysteries. Einstein once said that "the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious" and I have to say that in some situations I agree. Whether you believe in apparitions or not, here are a few of my favorites, paraphrased, all shared with me as first hand accounts:
*Part of my job involved interviewing potential teachers for our school. As a talking point, so that I could gauge her English ability, I asked an interviewee if she believed in ghosts, and if so, why.
I was very sick once for many days. It was hard to sleep and I would wake up a lot during the night. One night I woke up and the room felt very cold. There was a very large doll that used to sit beside my bed and I put my hand on its chest. I could feel the doll's heart beating and thought I must be dreaming, but I wasn’t. I could feel the heart beating and I knew that the ghost was in the doll.
The following is from a student who was 15 at the time. She told me this very straight forwardly.
When I got home from school I would usually do my homework at my desk. One afternoon when I was studying at the desk I heard a sound coming from somewhere nearby. At first I thought it must be my cell phone ringing. I checked but it wasn't. It was a sound a bit like a bell but I couldn't tell where it was coming from.
That evening my dad didn't come home until later than usual, and I didn't know why he was late. When he finally arrived home though he told me that my grandfather had died that afternoon. I thought I must have heard that sound at about the same time.
A couple weeks later I was sitting at my desk in my room when all of a sudden a small blue light flew past me. I said "hello grandpa." I just knew it was him.
After that the rest of my family began seeing the blue light too. Everyone has seen it. Sometimes it just appears in the house, and we know it's grandpa.
I pressed this student for more details about this blue light. What she describes sounds very much like what is known as an "orb" in reported ghostly phenomena--essentially the energy signature of a ghost appearing as ball of light. Anyone reading this may immediately be thinking, understandably, that this student was pulling my leg. However, I knew this girl very well (I taught her weekly in one on one lessons for two years, as well as maintained an exchange journal with her) and had never known her to tell any tall tale. I can attest that she was a very open, down to earth individual. Which leaves me not knowing what to think of this story. At any rate, she insisted she finds none of this scary at all, nor, reportedly, does her family.
This last one was told to me by a friend, in the appropriate (and chance) setting of a deserted dockyard in the rainy, dark, wee hours of the morning, and effectively chilled me to the bone. It involves a road, tunnel and overpass that I'm very familiar with just outside Shizuoka city. I should mention that I had to press her quite a bit to finally share this one with me. This is as faithful a reproduction as I can manage.
You know, in Japan we think that spirits sometimes gather in tunnels, especially if there's been an accident around there. Well, you know the road leading up to Nihondaira? You know the tunnel you go through there? That's where the thing happened. (I had been up that road a couple times).
We were driving up to Nihondaira. There was me and a friend in the first car and two more friends in the car behind us. Before the tunnel there's a little bridge over the road--an overpass. When we were approaching it I noticed somebody was on it and I glanced up. There was a woman standing on it, looking down at our car and scowling at us. I told my friend, who was driving and he said 'what woman?' We slowed down and looked back but there was nobody on the overpass.
I pressed this student for more details about this blue light. What she describes sounds very much like what is known as an "orb" in reported ghostly phenomena--essentially the energy signature of a ghost appearing as ball of light. Anyone reading this may immediately be thinking, understandably, that this student was pulling my leg. However, I knew this girl very well (I taught her weekly in one on one lessons for two years, as well as maintained an exchange journal with her) and had never known her to tell any tall tale. I can attest that she was a very open, down to earth individual. Which leaves me not knowing what to think of this story. At any rate, she insisted she finds none of this scary at all, nor, reportedly, does her family.
This last one was told to me by a friend, in the appropriate (and chance) setting of a deserted dockyard in the rainy, dark, wee hours of the morning, and effectively chilled me to the bone. It involves a road, tunnel and overpass that I'm very familiar with just outside Shizuoka city. I should mention that I had to press her quite a bit to finally share this one with me. This is as faithful a reproduction as I can manage.
You know, in Japan we think that spirits sometimes gather in tunnels, especially if there's been an accident around there. Well, you know the road leading up to Nihondaira? You know the tunnel you go through there? That's where the thing happened. (I had been up that road a couple times).
We were driving up to Nihondaira. There was me and a friend in the first car and two more friends in the car behind us. Before the tunnel there's a little bridge over the road--an overpass. When we were approaching it I noticed somebody was on it and I glanced up. There was a woman standing on it, looking down at our car and scowling at us. I told my friend, who was driving and he said 'what woman?' We slowed down and looked back but there was nobody on the overpass.
I got a really bad feeling then. Up ahead on the road was the tunnel, and I just knew that we shouldn't drive in there. I told my friend I wanted to turn around and go back, but he didn't feel the same way. I just had that really bad feeling though. We drove into the tunnel and through it and nothing happened.
We didn't spend long at the top of the mountain, just circled around and came back down. We went through the tunnel again, but on the other side there was a police car waiting on the side of the road. They flagged us down and made us stop the cars. They came up to us and asked us which one of us had been up on top of one of the cars.
We were totally confused. That was such a strange question. We answered no one had and asked why. The police said that they'd gotten a call from some of the people in the houses near the road on the other side of the tunnel. They'd said they heard a loud yelling sound and when they looked out the windows one of the cars had been driving up the road with a man on top of it, screaming and banging on the roof.
Of course, we hadn't heard anything.
Of course, we hadn't heard anything.
I got a terrible feeling about it, but we all assured the officers that it hadn't been any of us. They let us go and we went home.
Later that night one of my friends called me, scared, and asked what he should do. He was sure the ghost must have followed him home...
This story had my very rapt attention. I've reproduced it here as accurately as I can from memory (no ghost went on to terrorize her friend). Perhaps my friend is a great actor, but she appeared to have the chills upon finishing telling it. Always willing to draw the scare out longer, I suggested we drive up there that night, right under the overpass and through the tunnel. She refused, and I insisted harder, citing what an adventure it would be. Finally she swayed. It was somewhere around two or three in the morning by this time--the Japanese witching hour, when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is believed to be thinnest. We headed out, but awhile later as we began to drive up the slope of the mountain, unease began to stir into my excitement at this little adventure. Was it possible--was it even slightly possible--that we would see something that we were very much better off not seeing?
The drive was haunting in another sense of the word. It was late in the sakura season, and cherry blossoms from the legion of trees that line the roadside there rained steadily down onto the road, caught silently in the headlights like large snowflakes on a winter night. They blanketed the road in a layer of white. When the headlights illuminated the overpass up ahead my eyes were drawn to it, and for a moment I was sure I'd see some haggard lady glaring maniacally down at us, but it was empty. Then we reached the tunnel and drove through it, by far the only vehicle on the road to Nihondaira that night. I don't think we talked until we'd reached the other side. We didn't come down the same way, instead making our descent down the other side of the mountain.
And that was that, no ghosts. That's not the point though; the point is that I felt the thrill--the thrill that comes with all good ghost stories and the reason we keep passing them on, around campfires that push the darkness back just enough to light our faces and hold them in a glow while the great unknown blackness of night spreads itself behind, in lonely dockyards after midnight, under a tent of bed covers with a flashlight, or even in a well lit classroom. Maybe the point isn't always to scare... sometimes it's just a way of reassuring ourselves, and others, that perhaps there's something else after this, and maybe it's not worth fearing. Perhaps telling the story can make it real, and make us feel that when the final darkness does settle over us, a bit of what we are, a bit of knowing, a bit of human, remains. Perhaps our stories help to turn us into that very campfire, pushing against the inevitable oncoming of night, and what we call a soul that warm, flickering flame that lights the dark oblivion a little bit--just enough to keep it ever at bay.
Perhaps...
One thing is for sure though: for those who like a good shivery tale, you could do worse than the haunted islands of Japan.
And that was that, no ghosts. That's not the point though; the point is that I felt the thrill--the thrill that comes with all good ghost stories and the reason we keep passing them on, around campfires that push the darkness back just enough to light our faces and hold them in a glow while the great unknown blackness of night spreads itself behind, in lonely dockyards after midnight, under a tent of bed covers with a flashlight, or even in a well lit classroom. Maybe the point isn't always to scare... sometimes it's just a way of reassuring ourselves, and others, that perhaps there's something else after this, and maybe it's not worth fearing. Perhaps telling the story can make it real, and make us feel that when the final darkness does settle over us, a bit of what we are, a bit of knowing, a bit of human, remains. Perhaps our stories help to turn us into that very campfire, pushing against the inevitable oncoming of night, and what we call a soul that warm, flickering flame that lights the dark oblivion a little bit--just enough to keep it ever at bay.
Perhaps...
One thing is for sure though: for those who like a good shivery tale, you could do worse than the haunted islands of Japan.
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