Reikan: The most haunted locations in Japan: Volume One

by Tara A. Devlin

The spiritual energy trapped inside the hospital is so strong, and so violent, that even ordinary folk who’ve never seen a ghost in their lives can be afflicted by it.

The Hakkoda Mountains are a volcanic mountain range consisting of a northern group and southern group of mountains. The highest peak, Mount Odake, reaches 1,585 metres. Much of the range sits in an alpine climate; it’s so cold that not even trees are able to grow there.

At 10 a.m. on January 27, the rescue party finally found Corporal Goto standing in the snow. He was the first of only 11 survivors to be found. Rescue workers, soldiers, and villagers worked around the clock for months. The final survivor was found on February 2, while the last body was recovered on May 28.

To this day, you can still hear them around the statue and tea shop that opened nearby; a place for weary travellers to take a moment of much-needed rest that the Hakkoda soldiers never could.

There are rumours that if the spirits follow you, they will follow you all the way home and start to have a destructive effect on your everyday life, however, so best be careful when travelling through the mountains alone at night.

Takakura took his role very seriously, and reportedly said during filming that, “I absolutely will not sit down.”

There’s nothing in the local newspapers about any suicides at the bridge, so where did it get its reputation? Looking out over the valley from the bridge certainly brings with it a sense of melancholy, and in the past, many people did struggle to traverse the mountains before the bridge was constructed. Perhaps that feeling still lingers, or perhaps it was all made up by people looking to cash in on the ghost spot craze.

It was not a place that living beings should be in.

The deceased deserved to be mourned as people, not ‘things.’

One of the rules for visiting the Young Lady’s Prayer, if you can find the tree, is to leave cigarettes as an offering.

it’s said that if you injure yourself by falling from the cavern she once lived in, the wounds will refuse to heal.

At the end of that road is another world.

Or perhaps the science museum will instead take on the negative energy that is said to lurk there.

The inside is, for the most part, empty, although for some reason a large Japanese drum alone remains. There have long been rumours of people hearing the sound of a drum coming from the shrine despite the fact no-one is around at the time. Perhaps the spirits are also unable to resist a good beat every now and then.

Inagawa Junji has claimed that Chichibu Lake has the power to lure people to their doom, and there have been reports of further suicides at the bridge.

But the young man who tried to help his friend suddenly sensed something from behind. It wasn’t a gaze; he didn’t feel like someone was looking at them as they retreated. Instead, it was like looking over the edge of a tall building, and something approaching from behind. That was the best way he could put it.

While the building is somewhat out of the way, there is nothing restricting people from exploring the inside (except perhaps the ghosts that are said to haunt it). Nature has started to reclaim the outside of the building, but inside you can still find relics of the former hotel and restaurant.