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:
