The End Of A Love Affair

This happened when my aunt was living in a flat in Tokyo. My aunt was then studying to be a seamstress and when she came home it would always be well past midnight. Her apartment building was an old type, built with wood and iron stairs set outside which made clanging noise whenever my aunt used them to go up to her room on the first floor.

There was a room on the ground floor just beside the iron staircase, and through its window my aunt would often see, on the way to her own room, a silhuetto of a young woman with a braided hair. The young woman always appeared busy cooking and doing some houseworks in spite of the very late hours.

A year and a half had passed and my aunt's lifestyle had remained unchanged. She would come home late every night and saw the young woman's silhouette through the window, and heard noises coming from there, although she never got to see the young woman face to face.

One time my aunt was late paying her rent, and her landlord came to her room for collection.
They had a little chat, and while at it my aunt casually mentioned to her landlord about "the young woman on the ground floor."As soon as her words were out she noticed her landlord's face had gone pale; he left her then and there, as if he was running away, completely forgetting what he had come for.

It was sometime later that my aunt got a chance to hear a proper explanation from her landlord; he said that the young woman whom my aunt saw was probably a ghost of a woman who committed suicide, after she had an affair with a married man which ended very badly. That room on the ground floor, he said, had been empty for years. The young woman's lover often visited her after midnight so she would often prepare meals for him around that time.

People should never have affairs. Don't you think?

---------------------------------------------------------

The photograph is just an image and is nothing to do with the story.

You Are Not The One!

You Are Not The One!

Late one night after working overtime in an office, a man called F
picked up a taxi. The taxi driver was a friendly man, and for a while
they merrily chatted away.

Sometime later the taxi began to
climb up a dark hill. Now woods surrounded them on both sides and there
was no other car around.
Then the taxi driver suddenly said to F in
a serious tone of voice, "Listen. In this place you mustn't look
outside the windows. Got it?"

F was perplexed at the driver's abrupt change of mood and "Yes.."was all he could reply.
The
taxi drove on through the woods. F began to feel uneasy and asked the
driver, "Why shouldn't I see outside?" But the driver didn't respond. F
was getting spooked.
It was just then he heard a strange groan
coming from outside the window beside him. F was startled and looked at
the window in spite of himself.
Then he saw, spread out on the window, a large, angry face. When it saw F, it cried, "You are not the one!"

F
lost consciousness immediately and could not remember what happened
afterwards. Apparently on that road on the hill there was a hit-and-run
accident not long ago which had left one man dead, and the killer was
still at large. Since then the dead man had been appearing on the road
every night, looking for his killer.

A FACELESS WOMAN UPDATE

A FACELESS WOMAN UPDATE

    

The faceless Woman made her first appearance in Hawai`i on May 19, 1959
when Bob Krauss reported in The Honolulu Advertiser that she had
allowedly visited the ladies' restroom at the Waialae Drive-In Theater in Kahala.

   

In one version of the story, a girl left her car and went into the restroom
around midnight to put on fresh lipstick. In the mirror she saw a figure behind her
with long hair and no face. She saw that the figure had no legs, only half a body.
When the girl turned around, there was nobody behind her. The door slammed
shut and locked as the poor girl screamed and fainted.
    In another version reported by Krauss, the woman went to the restroom. As
she entered, she noticed the place was occupied by another woman who was
standing in front of the mirror combing her long, beautiful hair. The first woman
came closer and spoke. The second woman turned slightly. She had no face. The
first woman was so frightened she ended up in the hospital with a breakdown.

   

The suggested cause for the haunting of the faceless woman was the fact
that the Waialae Drive-In Theater was located next to a cemetery. Although
manager Albert Silva strongly denied in 1959 the stories that the restrooms of his
drive-in theater were haunted, he did note that the stories helped business.

"Every
night a couple dozen people asked me if I've seen the ghost," he said. "I haven't

but
I've sure heard enough about it. Business has been booming since
Thursday."    When I first discovered the faceless woman in the
newspaper archives, I
was curious whether anyone had ever actually been an eyewitness to the unusual
entity. The story by Bob Krauss indicated that the sightings were "rumors." No
single firsthand account given of the woman's appearance. This was a perfect
example of what Jan van Brunvand called "urban legend," stories from the friend of
a friend, who had heard the tale from his cousin.

    During the course of a radio interview in 1981 concerning Hawai`i's ghosts,
an anonymous caller asked if I had heard of the faceless woman in the Waialae
Drive-In. I assured her that the ghost was famous in 1959 and that I had indeed
read about this urban legend. The caller then proceeded to share with us her
personal, firsthand account of seeing this faceless creature. The spirit had red hair,
the caller said, and was combing her hair down in front of her face in the mirror.
When she looked in the mirror, the red-haired woman combed her hair back,
revealing that she had no eyes, no nose and no mouth---only a blank, featureless
face.

    All these incidents were included in the first ghost story which I submitted in
1983 to the Hawaii Herald, a newspaper for the Islands' Japanese-American
community, an essay which was reprinted in 1994 in OBAKE: Ghost Stories in
Hawai`i. In that essay I suggested there were strong ties between the faceless
woman of the drive-in and a similar spirt called "mujina" which had been
described by Lafcadio Hearn in Kwaidan, his wonderful collection of obake
stories. Further research revealed that this faceless ghost is also seen in
contemporary Japan---often inside female bathrooms.

    Since the publication of the first essay on mujina in Hawai`i, the faceless
woman has evidently expanded her appearances to other venue throughout the
Islands. For example, rumors now circulate that she has been seen in two different
restaurants in Hilo, and that several shopping malls on the island of O`ahu have been
visited by the faceless phantom.

 

The Children Upstairs

The Children Upstairs

This is a story I heard from my friend at university. A man (we call
him "K") got whiplash in a car accident and decided to convalesce at
home for a week. K was married but his wife was also working, so he was
all alone during the day. For the first few days he enjoyed the
freedom, but when the third day came boredom began to set in. Still he
had to stay in because his injury kept him from going anywhere.

Then
one day past lunchtime he was watching TV absent-mindedly when he heard
heavy stamping noises and children's voices from upstiars. He didn't
pay much attention to it, although he wondered if they were on a school
holiday. The next day he again heard the same children's voices, around
the same time as the previous day. It sounded like they had two
children up there. The place where K lived was a large apartment block
but inspite of that it tended to be very quiet during the day; the
children's voices, therefore, echoed loudly in contrast to the
quietness of the surrounding. K however did not feel annoyed, but was
rather glad of the distraction and a break it gave him from the eerie
silence.

The next day K, feeling bored and not motivated enough
to cook lunch, ordered some pizza. The pizza, which arrived within 30
minutes, turned out to be too much for K that he left one whole pizza
untouched. Usually he would keep any left-overs for his wife but this
time he remebered about the children upstairs and, willing to do
something kind, he decided to take the pizza to them.

K had no
idea who the occupants of the room upstairs were but rang the bell on
the door anyway. He heard something stir inside, but there was no
answer. He rang the bell again. He felt someone was looking at him
through the peephole. "Who is it?" A faint voice called out from behind
the door.

K explained he was from the room below and that he had
some pizza left from his lunch and wondered if they wanted it. The door
opened a crack. It looked unusually dark inside the room. From the gap
about 5 cm wide a woman appeared, revealing only half of her face.
"Thank you very much. But we don't want it," the woman said coldly. It
was a little too dark to discern her facial expression. K suddenly felt
he was somehow out of place, like he shouldn't be there; however he
tried to explain to her that he wanted her to give the pizza to the
children.

A lukewarm air breezed out of the door. He smelt an
unpleasant odour. In an instant two children's faces lined up below the
woman's face. The door was open still just a crack. The dull eyes of
the children stared at him. The three faces were forming a line.
"I
see.... then... I will accept your kindness." The woman said. When K
put the pizza box through the gap a hand reached out right from the
side and snatched it away.

The three faces were still staring at
K. "Thank you....." He heard the faint voice again. K quickly left the
place. He felt spooked. In the corner of his mind he sensed something
was seriously wrong. The image of the children's faces had left a
burning impression in his mind. Faces..... He felt a chill down his spine. Faces...they were forming a line... His pace quickened. He wanted to get away as fast as he could. He waited for the lift but it would not arrive. Forming a line....vertically....on top of each other.....
He pressed the button again and again, but the lift still did not come.
He turned to the emergency stairs. His head throbbed with pain. He
began to feel nausea.

Just as he opened the heavy door leading
to the emergency stairs, he felt eyes on his back. Turning around, he
glimpsed, about ten metres from him, the same three faces looking at
him from the corner of the corridor. Like before, they were showing
only the half of their faces and staring at him with their dull eyes.
The cold day light shining through the windows illuminated their faces.

No
longer caring about his neck he frantically ran down the stairs.
Although the health-conscious K often used stairs instead of lift and
could even ran up four floors in one go, he felt as if no matter how
fast he ran he would never reach the ground floor. Faces lined up,
on top of each other....that's impossible...that means there are...no
bodies......and the strange things I saw behind the faces
were...hands.....holding up the heads......

He ran into the nearest convenience store and asked the people there to call the police.
The
police came, and searched the flat - and found the bodies of the mother
and children in the bath tub. These bodies were headless.

According to their findings, it had been three days since the heads had been chopped off the bodies.
And
the husband, who turned out to be the murderer, was found hiding in the
wardrobe - insane. He insisted his family was still alive. There was a
terror in his eyes; the polie did not know the source of his terror.

But K knew.

Piggyback

Piggyback

Once there was a family of four, the father, the mother, the son and
the daughter. The father and the mother had grown cold to each other in
recent years and were arguing all the time. In spite of that, the
family planned to go on a holiday. But the day before the holiday began
the couple had a fierce fallout again. The father this time got out of
control and murdered the mother. The next morning the father left home
for the holiday with the children as if nothing had happened. After
some sight-seeing the three of them sat down to rest. Then the son
looked quizzically at his father and asked; “Daddy, why have you been carrying Mommy piggyback all morning?”