“Ok so there is this husband and wife and a kid, but the wife died so the husband hired a nanny.  She took care of the kid because the dad had to work and didn’t want to take care of him.  You know, he was kind of a troublemaker, but was just being a normal kid, but the nanny hated him.  Actually, she just hated kids in general, so I’m not really sure why she was a nanny.  But anyway, one day the kid was being really rowdy or something and the nanny just couldn’t take it anymore, so she drowns the kid.  So then the dad comes home and the nanny just makes up some excuse where she just says that she’s innocent.  So the dad is sad and like wishes that he had spent more time with his kid and stuff and they have a nice funeral.  The nanny keeps working for the dad, but I guess she is more of a house cleaner now or something because she killed the only kid she had to take care of, and that’s what nannies do, right?  Well ok so anyway, one day she is working and she keeps feeling this like heaviness on her shoulders, like pulling her down.  And she really has no idea what is going on, but it keeps happening for a couple of days.  And then one day she stays really late, and the husband comes back and sees that the nanny is in pain.  So he asks what’s wrong and she says she knows something is wrong but she’s not sure what is going on.  So he tells her that she had better go home and get some rest.  So she goes home and she goes into the bathroom to take a bath and she looks into the mirror and she sees the kid she killed hanging onto her shoulders and that was the heaviness she had been feeling.”

Yun Hwa is from Korea and told me that she had heard this story from two people and she thinks she remembers reading it in a book when she was younger.  She explained that this story was told less as a “typical sleepover story where everyone screams” but more like “oh my god can you believe that this actually happened?”  Yun Hwa isn’t sure if she believes this story to be true, but she told me that she thinks it could be true because “that’s just so terrible to think about a nanny killing a kid, and if that really did happen, she would probably be haunted.”  She told the story with an even tone, and when she was finished she gave me a very grave look.

This was an interesting story because it seemed that Yun Hwa was not trying to get a reaction out of me, but was telling it to me in terms of morality.  It was clear through the words she said and the tone she used that there seemed to be a lesson in this, and that my reaction should be to think how terrible it was that a child was killed after his mother died and the father wouldn’t take the time to care for him.  When she revealed that the child was hanging around the nanny’s neck, she indicated that she felt the nanny got what she deserved, through her facial expression and tone.  This is a very clear instance of a “haunting” wherein someone who has committed a terrible crime is confronted with what they have done in the form of a ghost or spirit.  Although I was not able to find this story from any other source, I feel that it exemplifies the kind of ghost story that has moral underpinnings and speaks to larger issues, such as abandonment of children, wrongful deaths, and consequences for sins committed.

“There is this story where there is this girl in elementary school.  She is the favorite of all of the teachers and is a perfect student and basically just has this perfect life.  You know that kind of kid, that super bitchy girl that always sits in the front row and answers every question? *Laughs*  Yeah, so basically  then this new girl comes to the school and becomes everyone’s favorite kid.  So at first it’s like yeah ok whatever no big deal, but then that first bitchy girl starts to get really jealous.  Then one night the new kid is staying late to clean the classroom for her teacher or something and the first bitch comes in and says to the new kid, “oh I need to show you something, come to the roof” or something like that.  So the two girls go up to the roof and go stand at the ledge on the roof.  I mean so yeah, now you know something bad is gonna happen right? *Laughs*  And so then the new girl is like “wait why did you tell me to come up here, I don’t see anything” and then all of a sudden the first girl pushes the new kid off the roof.  So she hits the ground head-first and she dies, obviously, and her head like completely splatters all over the ground or whatever. So then everybody hears about this on the news, and like they are sad or whatever, but then they just forget about it and the first bitchy girl becomes everyone’s favorite again.     So she’s all happy and shit and she’s like no big deal I’m a murderer but everyone loves me. *Laughs*  So but then one night she is staying late at school to work on a project and she hears this continuous noise or whatever like this *knocks three times on table* and she hears the voice of the girl that she killed.  So she gets super scared and runs into the bathroom and goes into the last stall.  And so she’s all scared and shit, standing in the stall, but she doesn’t hear the noise anymore.  But then all of a sudden she hears a knocking like farther away, like on the first stall, and she hears the dead girl’s voice saying like “where are you?”  So she is super freaked out and then she hears the knocking coming closer, like coming towards the last stall that she is in.  And then the noise stops, but then all of a sudden there is a ton of knocking on the last stall that the girl is in *knocks five times on the table, loudly* and she hears the dead girl say “I found you!”  And then the stall door opens and the girl that got killed is right there, but she is walking on her head.  Because like she is on her head and it’s all bloody since she died like that, you know?  I don’t know, that shit freaked me out.”

Christie told me that she had heard this stories many times before, always with the same sequence of events and details, although she told me she might be forgetting something since she hasn’t heard it in awhile.  Christie is a very relaxed person in general, and this came through during her retelling of this story.  She maintained a lackadaisical attitude up until the very end, when the murdered girl in the story says, “I found you!”  At this point, Christie’s eyes got very wide, and she started speaking more quickly.  I think this was due to the fact that she found the story scary when it was told to her, and she wanted me to be similarly scared by the end.  When I asked Christie what she thought the story meant, she simply laughed and said “I mean come on, it’s just like us little Japanese kids scaring each other at sleepovers and shit like that.  It doesn’t mean anything.”  When I asked Christie why she thought multiple people had told her this story, meaning that it is at least a somewhat popular ghost story, she told me “well you know, it’s just scary or whatever.  This girl gets fucking killed because some other bitch wants to be the teacher’s pet.  I guess it’s just sort of something we could all relate to in school because all Asian kids know what it’s like to have people fighting to be the teacher’s favorites.  So I don’t know it’s just like fucking creepy to think about this girl walking on her bloody head or whatever in a dark bathroom, you know?  That’s super sick.”

Christie gave me an ideal ghost story.  As she described, this was relatable to her and her peers, which gave the story more relevance.  Additionally, this story is about a girl who dies a tragic, untimely death and has come back as a ghost to seek vengeance.  Because of the setting of the creepy bathroom, the knocking against the stalls, and the things the dead girl was saying, this story becomes far more scary.  To top it off, the image of a dead little girl walking on her bloody head is undeniably an unpleasant image.

I was only able to find this story on one blog, with just a simple retelling of the story.  There were some differences however, with the two girls actually being best friends who were quite competitive, with the less successful friend killing the other.  Additionally, the scene in the bathroom took place in the school hallway instead.

“Ghost Stories: Japanese School Girls.” Journey of Dawn. Blogstpot, 25 Feb. 2011. Web. 08 Nov. 2011. <http://m-mellow.blogspot.com/2011/02/ghost-stories-japanese-school-girl.html>.