不思議好き怖い話好きさん集まれ!!

I remembered something after reading Ms. Aoyagi Airishu's story, so I wanted to share it. This happened when I was in high school. It was the morning after our school trip, and the air was unusually clear and crisp, feeling wonderfully refreshing. The sky was bright, and even the school building, which usually felt cold and inorganic, seemed gentle and warm... Feeling a slight sense of wonder, I arrived at school early that morning and went straight to the restroom. Except for the sports clubs, I was usually the first one in class, and my routine was to read a book while waiting for everyone else to arrive. Perhaps because it was after the school trip, there was no one else in the other classrooms either. It was truly just me. While I was in the restroom, I heard the sound of water flushing in the boys' restroom next door. 'Huh? Was someone here?' I thought, but I still felt uneasy. It was because there was absolutely no sign of anyone else. In fact, when I came out of the restroom, I didn't run into anyone, and I just went back to my routine of reading in the classroom. Homeroom began, and the teacher started speaking. 'A classmate passed away after the school trip.' The classmate was a boy, someone I knew from the student council. I had even exchanged greetings with him during the morning greeting campaign. It wasn't an accident. He... took his own life... After hearing the teacher's words, I suddenly understood the reason behind the crisp morning air and the sound of the flushing toilet. It was him.

Has anyone else experienced this? 'Waking up around the time a relative passes away' This happens to me often. The first time was when a relative of my parent, whom I barely knew, passed away. Then it was when my great-grandmother passed away. And then when my grandmother passed away. When my grandfather's sibling passed away, I would always wake up in the middle of the night for some reason. I'd go back to sleep, but then hear the news of the relative's passing when I woke up in the morning... If I had heard beforehand that they were ill and it was getting close, maybe my brain was just predicting it. But I would wake up in the middle of the night even when I hadn't heard anything about my parent's siblings or my grandfather's siblings. And I usually feel uneasy at those times. Perhaps I had similar experiences as a child, but I don't clearly remember. It might be unusual to have so many relatives, but I remembered that I had woken up in the middle of the night before when my great-grandmother was about to pass away, so I decided to write about it. Is this a bit different from a scary story?

A story my mother often told me from when she was alive. My mother apparently didn't believe it at all back then, but later she would often repeat, 'It came true... it came true...' and tell me the story. When my mother was young and just started working, she was walking home from work when someone called out, 'Miss, Miss…'. When she looked, it was a fortune teller often found on the streets. My mother said, 'I don't have any money…' But the fortune teller replied, 'I don't need money. I have free time, so I'll read your palm.' So, she reluctantly agreed. The fortune teller looked at my mother's palm, pointed to a certain spot, and said, 'Your palm is like this here, so you'll get a serious illness in this year.' My mother naturally thought, 'What are you talking about?' and didn't believe it. But later she said, 'That fortune teller… she was right… I was hospitalized and had surgery that year.' Ah, I see, that's when the female spirit blocked my nose, I thought. My mother didn't pay much attention to the fortune teller back then, and apparently never saw her again. However, I believe that fortune teller was genuine. Perhaps she sensed something about my mother and called out to her.

My maternal family has a peculiar family rule passed down only to the eldest daughter. It's to silently chant 'Please let me pass. I beg you' three times in your heart when passing through a torii gate. I was strictly disciplined by my mother since childhood, and she told me, 'If you're the firstborn daughter, you must do this.' Apparently, this rule doesn't apply if there's an elder brother, even if you're the eldest daughter. When I asked my mother about the reason or origin, she didn't know either, and said it already existed during my great-grandmother's time. We don't follow any particular religion, and there are no restrictions on visiting shrines, so it doesn't seem to be a religious precept. There's no punchline, but as an adult, when I casually mentioned it to friends, none of them knew about it, so I decided to post it here.

There was a large house, and an old man lived there alone. He passed away while taking a bath (Be careful of temperature changes when bathing in winter). The house was demolished and sold as individual lots, and someone is now living in one of them. The location is essentially the bathroom on the neighbor's property. I heard this when talking to the neighbor. 'When I take a bath, the scent of incense comes from somewhere...' Even though the bathroom should be filled with the scent of shampoo and other products, when I soak in the tub and take a breath, I smell incense. Of course, we haven't lit any incense, and there's no Buddhist altar in the first place. What's more, apparently only the husband can smell it. Other than that, there's nothing particularly unusual, and she doesn't dislike the smell of incense, so she's just living there. They even had a child and seem happy, so there doesn't seem to be anything to worry about, but it was a bit of a strange story.

The place where my parent used to work was in a small, about 3-story building. One day, my parent apparently saw something black near the stairs. There were other people from work there at the time, so they kept quiet, but eventually, they couldn't hold it in and told our family about it. Then, my grandmother, who was listening with us, said, "Come to think of it, wasn't there a suicide at the house next door?" I got a little scared too, but my parent, being very timid and sensitive to the supernatural, was quite terrified. My parent quit that job, but I wonder what that black thing was……

My husband said he could see things when he was a child, but not anymore. However, it seems like his younger brother, the youngest of his two brothers, can still see? Several years ago, my husband's mother passed away, and we held the wake and funeral at a nearby memorial service hall. They offered us a private room until the bathing and coffin dressing, saying it would be fine for someone to stay overnight to watch over the fire. That's when it happened. My brother-in-law offered to stay, so we entrusted him with the task and went home. The next day, during the coffin dressing, my mother-in-law's sisters also came. I suggested a chair by the window for one of the sisters who had trouble with her legs, but for some reason, she refused. So, I placed another chair next to the coffin for her to sit. That's when it happened. My brother-in-law said: "The old lady is sitting there." He always called his mother "old lady," so I immediately knew he was referring to his mother... Ah... I see... Then, last year, my father-in-law also passed away, and something strange happened then too. I'll tell you about that another time.

This is a story from when I was little, before we moved... I woke up in the middle of the night. My mother was sleeping in the bed next to me. The moment I got up to go to the bathroom... I heard the sound of plates breaking...!? I tried to approach my mother to wake her up, but she wouldn't stir at all. Figuring I had no choice but to go check alone, right after that I heard a child's laughter (estimated to be a little girl around three years old), and I got too scared to go to the bathroom, so I just went back to sleep. After waking up, I checked the plates and none of them were broken... I thought maybe it was the next apartment? (The house at the time was a pretty nice apartment, though) But when I asked my mother, "Did anyone live next door?"... no one lived next door. ...So what was that voice? What was the sound of the plates breaking? It's still a mystery to this day.

I saw a story suggesting that children might be more sensitive to spiritual things, so I'd like to share something I recall. It was when I was very young, probably around the age before I could form clear memories. The cat at my grandmother's house had passed away, and my family gathered around the box containing the cat and told me, "It's time to say your final goodbye." Apparently, without being taught, I waved goodbye not to the cat, but towards the ceiling. When I heard this story, I vaguely remember something like that happening, but I don't recall if the cat was actually up there. Even now, I sometimes sense an unseen presence, but I've never clearly seen anything ghostly... I don't have much more to share, but I hope this is okay?

This is a strange story from when I worked at a hotel after graduating. I was working in the hotel's restaurant. Since the restaurant was only open for breakfast and dinner, we had a rule to prepare for dinner around noon. At lunchtime, my colleagues and I would clean the large restaurant hall, and it was truly vast. We each split up and cleaned quietly. However, as we were nearing the end of our cleaning, one of the cleaning ladies called out to me, saying, "Hey." She was a part-timer in charge of guest rooms, hallways, and restrooms. Our departments were different, so I didn't know her name. She recognized us as new full-time employees, but we had never spoken to each other personally. "Didn't you just call out to me? Like, 'Hey there~'?" That's what the cleaning lady asked. "Huh? No, I didn't hear anything..." "Really? I was called, 'Hey there~'..." The lady seemed to have been cleaning the restroom. On that floor, there were only two restaurant halls and one restroom. And at that time, both were closed off, and there were no customers. We hadn't heard any such voice. The matter was brushed aside, but... What on earth was that?