不思議好き怖い話好きさん集まれ!!

When I was little, I used to visit my grandma's house often during summer vacation. Grandma's house, when you're a kid, is big and unfamiliar, so it's scary at night. You think things like, 'I feel like there's something in the shelf' (well, it was probably just a misunderstanding). Anyway, one night like that, I was sleeping in a room on the second floor of my grandma's house. I was sleeping soundly, but suddenly I felt like I couldn't breathe and woke up to find a pale blue hand on the ceiling. I couldn't move my body. Then, that hand slowly reached out, and more hands started appearing. It slid into my mouth. It came slithering in... I was so scared, and I don't remember if I passed out or what happened after that, but I still had a strange feeling in my throat even after I woke up in the morning.

It's like a sixth sense. This is a story about my grandmother and mother, and I'm not directly involved, but it's a strange tale. My mother used to work late shifts at a restaurant part-time. She often took baths during the day. Everyone else in the family was out at school or work. My grandmother had a dream one day and called the house repeatedly. As a result, my mother's life was saved. The dream my grandmother had was that she saw my mother sinking into water with her car. She felt a bad omen and called. My mother was apparently taking a bath at the time, and she was half asleep from the consecutive late-night shifts. If she hadn't been woken up by the phone, she might have drowned.

There was a place called Gotenyama behind the elementary school. It became the morning marathon course for the school, so students and teachers often went there. There was a tree stump on the gentle slope of the mountain visible from the classroom window. Because of its location – the middle of Gotenyama, on the edge of the mountain, visible from the classroom – there were various rumors. 'There's treasure at the base of the stump,' or 'A body is buried there,' things that sound like they belong in the 'Seven Mysteries of the Elementary School.' At some point, for some reason, an area of about 1.5M x 1M in front of the stump became bare soil. Even though weeds were growing reasonably well around it, it was just a rectangle of exposed earth. And it stayed that way for nearly a year. There were even things like discarded cups left there, perhaps as a prank. Someone must have been maintaining it, but... What was the intention behind keeping just that one spot clean?

This is about bugs, so please be a little careful. When Obon comes around, I always encounter a dragonfly. In the summers of the past, we used to keep the windows wide open, so a dragonfly would zip in, fly around the room once, and then fly back out the window. My cousins and I used to say, "The ancestors are coming to check on the house." Nowadays, we have air conditioning, so we don't keep the windows wide open. But if I go outside around Obon, a dragonfly will come. When I greet it in my heart, saying "I'm doing well, I hope you are too." It just flies away. I think, "They're still looking out for me."

My great-grandmother, who was 92 at the time, had a bit of dementia. She would sometimes use the garden as a toilet and wouldn't remember her great-grandchildren. So, when my sister and I, who were elementary school students, desperately tried to stop her from wandering off, she'd get angry and yell, "Whose child are you! Go away!" I remember it was quite a hassle. Even so, before she got dementia, she was very affectionate, and if she wasn't in a bad mood, she was a kind person. My grandmother always ate kelp candy and arare (puffed rice crackers) in hot water. When she remembered us, she'd give us that unappetizing kelp candy and arare in hot water. One day, my sister found a beautiful blue glass marble behind the community hall and showed it to my grandmother. My grandmother, who was eating her usual kelp candy and arare in hot water, got furious and said, "If you touch my grandchild, I'll take you with me," and ate the marble. We panicked and called our parents, and they took her to the hospital. However, the marble wasn't found in her stomach or intestines. They decided to just keep an eye on her, assuming it would eventually pass with her stool. "Why did you eat it? It's not candy!" my mother yelled, upset. "I was just protecting my grandchild. What's wrong with that?" my grandmother replied. Even when we pressed her for an explanation, she wouldn't tell us the details.

This is a true story, but it's not a supernatural horror. When I was young, I played hide-and-seek with my friends. I was the one hiding, so I thought I'd hide in the bushes? low shrubs? in the corner of the park. As I was about to go in without thinking, I was surprised to see a huge spider, about the size of my fist, mostly black but with colorful, mottled patterns. Afterwards, I went home and searched on my smartphone and looked through the spider section of encyclopedias, but I couldn't find any spiders that looked exactly the same. A few days later, out of curiosity, I went to the same spot, but even the spider's web was gone. ...What was that?

A Shingon Buddhist temple I visit regularly. Because I receive a charm for Fudo Myoo (Immovable Wisdom King) every year, I visit when I have time (on the 28th of every month). This temple has a hall, or perhaps a shrine, dedicated to a fox deity, complete with a donation box where you can draw a fortune slip. In the past, I used to put offerings in the donation box there, pray, and draw a fortune slip. However, I'm too scared to do it now. When I drew them, they didn't seem significant, but when the time came, I understood... the fortunes were accurate. Various events subtly came true. When I realized it, I got scared and stopped drawing them.

I've been having a lot of dreams lately. From scary ones to just plain weird ones. This time, I'll share a weird one. It featured me and my friend, and we were talking happily. Then, a guy showed up and started pulling her away. I tried to pull her back, but he was too strong and I lost my grip. Suddenly, I heard a scream, and when I looked at my friend, her arm had been ripped off. But she was still conscious. I couldn't do anything. That was the end of the slightly strange story. No real punchline 🥲

The common points in the stories were: - Patients in the hospital rooms seeing an unfamiliar woman (about 150cm tall). - The woman wears a kimono (often said to be red). - She is seen before someone passes away. ...That was it. It's been quite some time since the woman in the kimono was seen before my mother passed away, so it might have been someone else who died. However, she was apparently seen near my mother's bed. But what surprised me the most from this experience was that I had no idea the hospital director where I worked part-time wore a wig, and only found out later from my co-workers. I was frustrated that I didn't notice, even though my family runs a hair salon! The end.

I got scared and asked the patients if it might have been a dream, but inwardly I thought, 'It's strange that everyone is telling the same story.' Just then, the head nurse (as they called her back then) came over, and when I told her what had happened, she said, 'I knew it...' She told me that on days when someone passes away, strange things sometimes happen. The patients were all people who wouldn't lie, and even now, when I remember it, I still get chills thinking that they really saw it. Strangely, none of the staff saw anything. Time passed, and about six years later, my mother passed away. I was living away from home, but my mother was also hospitalized long-term (at a different hospital than the one in the previous story). She had colon cancer. I drove over two hours to visit her, and a patient in a nearby bed asked me, 'There was a girl about your height here earlier wearing a red kimono. Are you a relative?' That's when I knew my mother wasn't going to make it. A few weeks later, she passed away. (To be continued)