Japanese Ghost Story

So a group of Japanese boys decided to play hide and seek in their school at night.  One of the boys was trying to find a place to hide when he saw a woman with long dark hair in a white dress.  He got really scared so he ran into the bathroom and hid in the fifth stall.  All of a sudden, he heard the bathroom door open and looked under the stall door.  He saw the feet of the ghost woman.  The woman then opened the door to the first stall. Nobody there.  Closes it.  She opens the second stall. Nobody there. Closes it.  She opens the third stall. Nobody there. Closes it.  She opens the fourth stall. Nobody there. Closes it.  The boy was so scared and waited for the door of his stall to open.  When it did not happen, he decided to stay in the stall until somebody came to look for him.  Eventually, he fell asleep and when he woke up, realized that school had started.  He got off of the toilet and tried to open the stall door.  But the door would not budge.  Then he looked up.  The woman had been hanging over the door and staring at him the entire time.

My informant told me this story during a sleepover.  It had been pretty late at night and really dark.  I asked her where she had heard it from, and she replied that her mom had told her this story when she was young.  My informant told me that she interpreted this story has a lesson to not hang out late at night.

After hearing this story, I noticed that this story has a connection to Hanako of the Toilet.  Hanako of the Toilet, is a very popular Japanese urban legend about the ghost of a little girl named Hanako who haunts school bathrooms. With the story of Hanako and my informant’s ghost story, I believe that they are both conveying how the bathroom is a very vulnerable place to be in alone.  The restroom can be considered to be a vulnerable place because people usually go alone and are half-naked when there, making it a perfect place for something to take advantage and attack people.  Both of these stories enhance the fear of dangers that can occur while using the toilet.