Japanese Kaidan & Urban Legends

A voice in the toilet stall asks, 'Red cloak or blue cloak?' Red brings death drenched in blood, blue death drained of it. The earliest documented outbreak was the Aka Manto panic among Tokyo schoolchildren in February 1939.

Night after night the ronin Shinzaburo meets his lover Otsuyu, who arrives with a peony lantern, geta clacking. A neighbor peers in and sees a skeleton in his arms. The most romantic of Edo's great ghost tales.

Knock three times on the third stall of the third-floor school toilet and ask, 'Hanako-san, are you there?' A small voice answers, 'I'm here.' The best-known figure of Japanese school ghost lore, a nationwide craze by the 1980s.

A woman some eight shaku tall, often in a wide-brimmed hat, voicing an odd 'po po po'; young people she takes a liking to are carried off within days. Posted to 2channel's Sharekowa thread series in August 2008.

Beyond the old tunnel at Inunaki Pass in Fukuoka, legend places a village on no map, its entrance signed 'The constitution of Japan does not apply beyond this point.' The story spread online from the late 1990s.

A stray dog by the garbage turns its head to show a tired middle-aged man's face and says, 'Leave me alone.' A sighting craze that swept Japan via magazines and late-night radio in 1989-1990.

Kasane, a farm wife of Hanyu village, is drowned by her husband in the Kinugawa river; her ghost possesses a later daughter until the priest Yuten uncovers an identical murder a generation earlier.

Late on 8 January 2004, a 2channel user posting as Hasumi live-reported that her train from Shin-Hamamatsu had passed every stop and left her at a deserted station called Kisaragi. Her posts ended after she accepted a stranger's ride.

Fingers on a ten-yen coin over a paper of kana and a torii gate, children chant 'Kokkuri-san, please come,' and the coin moves to spell answers. Western table-turning arrived in 1884; the school craze peaked in the 1970s.

A masked woman stops schoolchildren to ask 'Am I pretty?', then pulls the mask down on a mouth slit to the ears and asks again. The rumor rose in Gifu in winter 1978 and swept Japan by summer 1979.

Far off across summer paddies or open water, a slender white figure writhes where there is no wind. Seen from afar it is harmless; whoever makes out what it is goes mad. Spread via 2channel's occult board in summer 2003.

The doll you threw away telephones: 'This is Mary. I'm at the dump now.' Each call she is closer, and the last one says: 'I'm right behind you.' Told among Japanese children since the 1970s-80s.

Hoichi, a blind biwa player at Amidaji temple in Shimonoseki, is led nightly by Heike ghosts to sing their fall. The priest inks sutras over his whole body but misses his ears, and the ghost tears them off.

The maidservant Okiku, blamed for losing one of ten heirloom plates, is killed and thrown down a well. At night her voice counts from the well: one plate, two plates... breaking into wails at nine.

Call your own mobile from a pay phone and recite the summons: Satoru-kun phones back ever closer, finally standing behind you to answer any one question. Never turn around, never fail to ask. Spread online in the 2000s.

In the mountains of Aomori, the story goes, a villager went mad in the early Showa years and slaughtered Sugisawa entire; the village was struck from maps and records. A TV feature in 2000 made it famous nationwide.

A woman cut in half by a train survives as a torso that sprints on its elbows with a 'teke-teke' clatter and slices those it catches in two. A staple of 1980s Japanese school ghost lore.

The ronin Iemon poisons his wife Oiwa; her face hideously disfigured, she dies cursing him and returns as a vengeful ghost. Tsuruya Nanboku's 1825 kabuki play made her the archetype of the Japanese onryo.