不思議好き怖い話好きさん集まれ!!

I'm quite a fan of paranormal and horror stuff myself. After becoming a working adult, I decided to declutter my room for a certain reason. Back then, I was collecting tons of 'Honkowa' (really scary stories) and paranormal magazines and manga, piling them up in my closet. After I threw them all away at once, I felt like the air in the closet somehow improved (perhaps due to humidity). I've heard that negative things are attracted to certain energies, and maybe it was the closet packed with paranormal and horror content that was drawing them in.

This happened while I was listening to a certain stream. The streamer was a long-haul truck driver and was broadcasting during a delivery. They were good at imitating anime villain voices and would say lines from those characters in between, making for a fun stream. A little while after the streamer mentioned they were about to enter a section with many tunnels and the broadcast might get interrupted, I heard a zombie's groan, typical of a zombie game. I commented, thinking the streamer was doing a voice imitation to get a laugh, but no one else heard it; only I did. It turns out the tunnel location was a place famously known for paranormal activity, and I just thought, 'Wow, things like that really happen' (￣▽￣;)

Maybe it would have been better not to know... A story that made me realize. It's been over 10 years since I moved to my current address, and I can say I'm used to it. But there are things I'm not used to. There's a train track in front of my house's garden. Following the tracks north with my eyes, there's a railroad crossing, and beyond that, an apartment building. I can see the building from my garden, and ever since I moved in, something about it has bothered me whenever I see it. Am I being watched? A feeling. And then There's a part of the building that bothers me. I think it's a water tower, but it only has a low railing. It looks easy to jump off... For some reason, I thought that every time I saw it. It caught my eye every time I hung laundry in the garden, so it bothered me constantly, every day. One day, I ran into an acquaintance's wife at the station during my commute. Someone I often see at the station and greet. After chatting for a while, I found out she was a resident of that apartment building. She said she's lived there since it was built, but there were frequent 'jumps' from the beginning, which was troublesome. Apparently, people even came from far away to jump. She seemed to think I had a strange look on my face and said, 'They've made it so you can't easily get in there anymore,' but

A story from when I was young. When I was a child, my father had a PC in his room. I was the kind of kid who, whenever I had free time, would go to my father's room to use the PC instead of studying, spending hours watching videos or surfing the net. However, something would always happen when I stayed cooped up in my father's room for hours fiddling with the PC. Someone would call my name. The voice could be a woman's, a man's, or a child's. "Heeeey, ○○○~", someone would call me. At first, I thought it was my mom or dad calling me, so I'd go to the living room and ask them, "Did you call me?" but they'd say they didn't. Puzzled, I'd return to my father's room and play on the PC, only to be called again by someone. Of course, it didn't matter if it was day or night, or if the rest of my family was out; someone would call me. What was strange was that I was never called by name outside of my father's room. And, for some reason, I never once answered that voice. We were living in an apartment back then, so once we moved out of that apartment, the calls stopped. Thinking back now, I suppose it was a good thing I never answered. However, at my next place, I ended up having strange experiences again... I'll save that story for another time.

When I was little, I had a strange friend for a while. This friend would only visit at night, just as I was falling asleep. As I drifted off to sleep, I'd feel a furry sensation on the soles of my feet. That was my friend. I called them 'Kemushi-san'. The friend took me to a strange and beautiful place. It was a field of flowers that sparkled like cellophane, with butterflies fluttering and shining above them. Oddly enough, I felt like I was standing on the ground, but I couldn't see the ground no matter how far down I looked. After gazing for a bit, I'd get sleepy and return to bed with my friend. 'See you later,' we'd say, and then I'd fall asleep. Those were the days. When I told my mom, 'I went to a beautiful flower field with Kemushi-san,' she made me promise, 'If you see a river, don't go near it. Even if Kemushi-san tells you to, come back because Mom said no. Don't stay in the flower field forever. You have to come back to Mom.' We sealed it with a pinky swear. When I started going to kindergarten, I saw Kemushi-san less and less, and eventually, I forgot about them. I only remembered them again when I heard about 'womb memories'. To be continued↓

I'm not good at talking, so please bear with me. I don't know if it was a dream or reality... but I do have memories of playing there. When I was a kid, we were driving somewhere, and I think there was a bowling alley along a mountain road (a properly maintained, regular asphalt road). It had a regular parking lot (not gravel) that was also well-maintained, and I played there a few times... The building had bowling on the first floor, and maybe a game center in the basement? (Later... maybe there was also karaoke and a movie theater/cinema on the first floor? I'm not sure if one of them was there, or if both were absent). There were stairs and an elevator. By the way, I never bowled there. I remember playing rhythm games and medal games in the game center for a bit before going for a drive or heading home. However... I don't know where it was. I don't even know if it actually exists... It's a story I'm not sure about.

My father's hometown is a small island, and everyone would come back for grave visits in the summer, so I used to stay over and play with my cousins. It's an island with nothing but a single small store, so the only things to do were swim in the sea or catch bugs. But I always stayed overnight during my elementary school days. (My parents all went home.) One night, it was really hot (no air conditioning, just a fan, and the house still had a pit toilet), so my cousin and I snuck out to the sea at night. We weren't swimming, but just standing on the sandy beach was cool. As I gazed at the dark sea, I saw a large, black island. "I wonder which island that is? Maybe it's Island XX?" After chatting about things like that and cooling off, we went home and slept. The next day, when we went swimming in the sea, there was no island there. It was just the ocean stretching out. Was it something that came back for Obon? Or was it the legendary sea monk (Umibozu)? The truth is shrouded in mystery.

A story my late mother told me with a dismissive tone. My mother was a true local, born and raised right here. Plus, it's a rural area, so my mom often said she walked everywhere as a child. Because of that, my mother seemed to know a lot about past events in the next town over. She'd say things like, 'The first president of that company...' or 'In [Town Name], there used to be a ☓☓ here...' and I'd just listen with a 'Hmm, interesting' kind of vibe. Then, one day, after hearing some rumors from her old factory (maybe at her regular clinic or the senior center), she scoffed, 'Ridiculous!' She was talking about hearing stories from her factory days like, 'You can hear sobbing in the middle of the night,' or 'I heard that place used to be a cemetery...' She said it with an exasperated tone, 'What cemetery! Before the current factory bought it, it was a different factory!' According to my mother, when they lent the land to that factory, they ended up in a situation where they 'lent out the eaves and had the house taken,' losing their land. She said, 'I don't want to. I don't want to,' but in the end, it was taken through a lawsuit. So, it's not a cemetery there. Listening to my mother's words, I thought, maybe rumors about haunted spots are just like this.

I was about to take a bath and glanced in the mirror, only to find a bruise on my chest that wasn't there yesterday. What is it? Why? I haven't hit myself anywhere, and it's not even a place I could have hit. It's a mystery. Kinda scary. My daughter took a closer look and said: "Oh, it's shaped like a cat's paw print." Ah, that makes sense. Every morning, my 6kg+ cat steps on me demanding food. That must be when it happened. What the heck.

It was a long time ago, back in the flip phone era, when the movie "Chakushin Ari" (One Missed Call) was popular. I personally didn't find it scary, more like "They're just trying to scare people, huh?" and I'm the type who isn't interested in trends, so it didn't bother me... Then one night, I got a call late at night. Usually, you'd see a phone number or maybe "Unknown Number" displayed... But it showed "Chakushin Ari" and even I couldn't answer it and just let it go... The call was in my history, so I showed it to everyone, and the girls screamed "Kyaaa!!" while the guys were like "No way?!" The whole class was in an uproar (￣▽￣;)