Okay, so I promised one of my Japanese ghost stories today. It's probably dark for a lot of you now, so this is a fun one.
My brother and I had some time off at the same time, so we decided to check out Nagano and then head to Mt. Fuji later. We packed up and several train transfers later, we eventually got to an area Northwest of Mt. Fuji. We got a hotel where you could see the forests surrounding the mountain clearly.
The way my brother and I like to travel is that we split up, do our own things, and meet up for dinner. So that's what we did. While he checked out the city, I bought a compass and a flashlight and decided to walk around the forests. I'm usually not that kind of guy who goes exploring but it seemed crazy to have this huge forest at the base of this giant mountain and not go exploring it a little.
At this point, it's kind of important to explain that I don't read Japanese very well. I know basic year-one stuff and can read signs in grocery stores and things like that, but my brother is the Japanese reader among us. That's one of the reasons he went in to the city and I didn't, because I didn't know how to get around and couldn't tell cab drivers where to go.
So you'll understand when I see a sign that says "PLEASE RECONSIDER" in Japanese, I didn't comprehend it.
I knew enough to not get lost. I marked on my map where I was going, I had the compass on me, I had my phone, and made mental notes of the landmarks I was passing. The weirdly placed tiny police station (could probably fit three people), the pocket knife half-hanging out of a tree, the strange rock formation, etc.
An hour and a half or so passes. I start getting tired and decide to head back. I open the compass, because I want to head back north. I take it out of my pocket, click the button on the front, and look at the face. It was spinning every which direction. The compass had no idea where magnetic north was. I felt my stomach drop at this realization.
"No big deal," I tried to convince myself. "I know which way I came." It wasn't doing much good. I knew I was lost. I opened my phone to try and send an e-mail. No signal. "Fan-fucking-tastic," I said to no one in particular.
I slumped against a tree and slowly slid down. I didn't know what I was going to do. I hit the back of my head against the bark and looked up at the sun. There were leaves both in the trees and in the wind obstructing my direct view of it and then a curious circular object just sort of waving back and forth. I squinted a little and figured out what was hanging from the treebranch: a noose.
Let me go ahead and explain what I did not know at that time.
Where I had wandered in to, apparently, was a place called Aokigahara. It is the number two most popular suicide location in the world. In 2010, which was the year after I was there, 250 people tried to kill themselves there. The sign I read that said "Please Reconsider"? It was telling people not to go in to the forest to kill themselves. Not all bodies are found. I had wandered in to one of the biggest mass graveyards in the world and not realized it.
Once I saw the noose, I took off running, my heavy messenger bag banging against my leg with each thrust forward of my feet. Now, I don't know whether you've been lost in the woods before, but taking off running in a random direction rarely helps the situation.
By the time I got anything close to remembering my bearings, it had already gotten dark. If I had any signal on my phone, I would have been getting calls from my brother asking where I was, but I had no such luck. I walked and walked and kept checking my phone and the compass, hoping something would work.
It got darker and darker, my feet were staying closer to the ground each time I lifted them up to take smaller steps, and little noises started to make more and more of an impact on me. I was going to die there, I knew it. I took the flashlight out of my messenger bag and attempted to load a battery in. Got the first one in. I fumble with the second in the dark and it falls and rolls down a small incline. I could still see the brief glint its shiny casing was giving, perfectly angled off the moonlight to let me slowly sidle up to it.
I tracked it next to a tree, banging my head against the wood before confirming it was there. I put the other battery in and pressed the rubber button on the back of the flashlight. The very first thing the light made contact with was the red pocketknife sticking out of the tree.
"Motherfucker," I mouthed. I had found something! I didn't quite know what it meant for my ability to get out of there, but it was something! I tried retracing my steps. My memory was the only thing that could help me there, and goddamnit, if years of mentally making maps in Zelda meant anything, it better have meant it could save my life!
I end up not actually doing too bad a job. There was the weird stone formation I saw earlier! But then...where was the little police station? This wasn't good. Had my memory been off? If my memory was off, then there was no hope for me to find my own way out. I wandered forward a bit more and saw it, the vestibule-sized police station. In the darkness, it looked different than I remembered it looking on the way there, but lights were on, so I thought "Whatever!" and just went in.
The single lightbulb hanging from ceiling, flickering angrily since I entered the room, was all I saw. There was a phone inside that had been connected to nothing. There was a room in the back, containing a lightbulb that did not work, no windows, and a bed with clear bloodstains on it. The wind picked up and slammed the door behind me shut and I screamed possibly louder than I ever had in my life.
Maybe it was because I was tired and lost and thought I was going to die, but I swear all I could hear were what must have been the sounds of hell. Ungodly screaming, wailing, things that sounded like they were scratching through my ear to my brain.
I've had all the skin ripped off my hand before. I've nearly died on an operating table. I've been confronted with knives and guns by people willing to kill me. I have never felt actual, unadulterated fear like that moment.
When the police officer that usually works there came in, I was leaning over a desk, throwing up out the window. He had come because he had heard me making noise. His usual patrol is to go out looking for bodies, but was maybe a few hundred yards out when I walked in. I was able to call my brother, we went to a hospital, and I spent the next day getting fluids through an IV.
When I told the doctor, through my brother, what I had heard, he said it was likely I was tired and dehydrated.
I wonder, though. I wonder if I was meant to find that noose or that pocket knife. And I wonder if maybe something didn't want me to.
And then I make myself stop wondering.
I'll add you to ours, too.
Nice to see that the majority of the posters on that thread had some perspective and maturity. Some of them got my head shaking, though.
