Happy Halloween

Here are a few "true" (?) Japanese ghost stories just for fun.

Freaky Fish Shop
As told to me by Mr. Kameoka about his childhood friend

I once knew a boy who visited his friend’s house every day after school. The friend's family owned a fish shop that was attached to the front of their house. Everyone who entered the house always went in and out through the fish shop entrance, so no one ever walked down the dark lane that ran along the side of the building where the front entrance to the house was. The boy never thought much about it until one day when he went to visit his friend and the fish shop entrance was locked. He wandered down the dark lane to the side entrance and approached the front gate. As he paused for a minute in front of the gate, a very strange feeling came over him; he found that he couldn’t take another step forward. All of a sudden, he panicked and ran as fast as he could back down the lane to a nearby telephone booth to call his friend. He explained that he was trying to get into the house, but the fish shop entrance was locked. Once his friend had opened the door and he was safely inside the house, the boy forgot all about the feeling at the front gate.

A few weeks later the boy asked his friend why no one in the house ever set foot in the genkan (entry way) or walked down the lane where he had experienced the strange feeling a few weeks earlier. His friend explained that for years no one in his family felt like they could walk down the lane, because if they did, they would start to feel very sick. Soon after, the family decided to ask a yuta (a kind of Japanese witch doctor/fortune teller woman) to come to the house and get rid of the bad spirits. That day, the little old lady hobbled down the shady lane to the front entrance of the house. She walked right up to the gate, stuck her hand out as if to open it, retracted her hand, and turned around and walked right back down the lane and went home, saying that there was an extremely strong spirit force at the entrance to the house that was blocking her from entering. After the yuta left, the boy went inside the house and stood in front of the genkan. His friend’s grandparents were sitting in the room across from it, so he asked them why everyone avoided it. They said that many many years ago the family had discovered an older male relative after he had committed suicide there. He had hung himself from a beam directly over the genkan.


Kanashibari

The Japanese have a word, kanashibari, which refers to the condition of your body becoming so stiff that you can’t move. It almost feels like your body is sleeping but your mind is awake, and no matter how much your mind tells your body to move, it can't. According to the teachers I work with, only certain people get kanashibari, and it can happen for two reasons. Risa- sensei believes that it happens when your body senses a ghost or spirit around. Another one of my other teachers, who thinks that ghost stories are silly, believes that it happens when you’ve been exercising a lot and your muscles are tired and freeze up. Risa-sensei says that she gets it quite often because there are a lot of ghosts in her house. She told me several stories about it.

One time she dreamt that she was sitting in a room on a chair. Looking up, she saw a woman walking slowly towards her. She freaked out and tried to move or wake herself up, but she couldn't. All of a sudden, she snapped out of sleep, opened her eyes, and saw a woman’s face staring into hers. There was a ghost woman standing right in front of her. Her body froze up and she couldn’t move until the spirit disappeared. She also told me a story about her older brother. She had never met him because he died before she was born. One day, when she was standing in the genkan, her body froze up. In the mirror she could see a boy the same age that her brother would have been today. Her eyes locked with his, and she knew that even though she had never met her him when he was alive, the boy staring back at her was her brother's ghost. Finally she blinked, and he disappeared.

Freaky!

Kristy