Back home, there is a famous area among the mountains called Turnbull Canyon. There are quite a few houses among the main roads, but there are also several houses and areas down winding dirt roads that are usually hidden from view from the trees. I know, I’ve been there. First some background information should be established. The area is well known for its racing drifting accidents as well as its housing of a Satanic cult, complete with ritualistic human sacrifices. These events weren’t just rumors as they often made the pages of the newspaper, so I decided to ask a friend who lived on Turnbull Canyon Road about the different incidents that’s happened there and whether anything weird has happened to him over the years.

“… Ever since I can remember, there’s been tons of accidental deaths in the area. Car crashes, animal attacks, fire victims, and even a plane crash once. Once in awhile, the police find an unidentified body, a John Doe. Everyone knows that famous story of some cultists murdering a teenage girl. She was tied to the back of a car and they just sped off. It was said she was dragged for miles before they finally left the body on Turnbull Canyon Road. I had nightmares about it for years. I know you’re asking for ghost stories, but all these events, they’re connected to each other. Back in the hills there’s many different places that have been explored. Among the findings, its reported that there are Hell’s gates back somewhere in the mountains. In the middle of nowhere, there are old rusted gates that have worn down stone pillars on either side. Beyond it is just some dirt road that leads somewhere out of sight, but there’s always an eerie feeling and silence about the place that makes people want to get out of there. It’s said that the place beyond the gates could be a source of the deaths in the area. As you might’ve guessed, ghost stories circulate because of it too. Turnbull is just a scary place. There’s supposed to be a rundown insane asylum back here too where after one patient hung himself, the other patients started following suit, even if they had been getting better. The staff simply had to get rid of all the sheets and everything so that they wouldn’t have access to anything which they could use to harm themselves. Well, after this rundown asylum closed, there’s been a lot of sightings of people hung by their necks, dangling from the branches of the trees. I wouldn’t say it’s true, but I think I saw it myself. I was driving down Turnbull at night with a few of my friends, and to get to my house, I just drove down a super winding road. On one side was basically a slope where you could see a few houses at the top, and on the other side are trees that block your view. I was just driving along, blasting music, when I spotted something in the window of the houses. The light was on in the window, but the curtains or whatever was closed. A shadow of a person STOOD at the window, looking out. You couldn’t see the person, so it was just a shadow. I quickly pointed it out to my friends. Only one of them said they saw the same thing I did, and the rest of them were telling me that it was nothing. It really creeped me out so I turned the music up even more as I continued to drive along Turnbull. I continuously scanned my surroundings looking out for anything else. I started looking at the trees. Huge mistake. I swear I see a body hanging from a tree. Arms limp, face contorted, feet dangling in the air like twenty feet off the ground. I couldn’t believe it, I almost swerved off the road! I looked again, desperately trying to confirm that I was just imagining things. Nope, no body. However, by this time, my friends were quiet too. They looked scared and I asked them if they saw it too, without expressly saying the body from the tree. A few of them nodded. After hesitating a little, I continued driving down the road as fast as I could until I reached my house.”

After hearing the tales and the hype of Turnbull Canyon, I cannot say that I was not scared. I do believe this friend’s story as I had actually been there. I was one of the friends who saw the body. Although I still do not know whether I really believe what I saw, I do still avoid that road today. Whenever I go over to this particular friend’s house, I take a different route from the one that we had taken that night.

With the advent of the internet, spirits and ghosts have found their way onto the computer screen, haunting those who perhaps typed in the wrong internet URL. Although perhaps not that surprising, seeing as supernatural ghost activity, according to legend, may affect electricity, televisions, and other modern innovations, a difference with ghosts on the internet is that they are linked to specific sites, not a specific location or area. With this in mind, my friend sent me a link which I did not click, especially after he told me a ghost story of the internet.

Being into Japanese culture and taking interest in horror (“It’s just so interesting!”), he told me the legend of the ‘Red Room’.

“…After classes had ended for that day, two young boys, around their early teens, decided to just hang out and talk. After chatting about school, their classes, their grades, the girls they like, and the latest computer games, the topic finally landed on what they did on the internet. To this question, one boy pipes up and asks if the other had ever heard of the internet pop-up ad that annoyed the user with the question “Do you like – ?” The other boy answered with a shake of his head. The first boy then continues with the story, promptly saying that supposedly, if people closed the pop-up ad, a ghost would cause the person to die. A little spooked out, the other boy changes the topic and the chatting continues until one boy gets called by his mother and is asked to go home for dinner. Later online, the two friends talk online through a messaging program and the boy who had told the story typed in “Dude, I’m going to try searching about the pop-up ad.” The other friend asked if he had found anything but the boy didn’t answer. Assuming he was busy reading up about the story, this friend decided to do some searching of his own. However, despite all his search efforts using every phrase and reading several forums, he could not find anything about pop-up ad. He decided to believe that his friend just made the whole thing up and just wanted to scare him. As he was giving up his search, an extra window pops up with one of those annoying voices. Only this one played a sort of garbled childlike voice asking “Do you like -?” Thinking that it was just his friend messing with him, the boy clicked the ‘x’ which closed the ad. After a few seconds or so, the pop up reappears, asking the same question, “Do you like – ?” Again closing the ad did no good. It kept popping up to his dismay. The childish voice kept changing bit by bit each time until finally the question lengthened by one word. “Do you like red?” The boy continued to close the pop-up until the final message is spit out by a normal childlike girl’s voice, “Do you like the red room?” After this final message appeared, another pop-up window displays a website with a list of names. Not knowing what this was for, the boy scanned the list and found the name of his friend at the bottom. He then feels another presence in the room behind him and turns around, but it is too late.

The next morning at school, there’s a rumor that the pair of friends had suicide, both of them covering the walls and floors in their rooms with their own dark red blood. Upon examination, all they found was a website with a list of names where both their names are displayed at the end of a long list.”

The ghost story ended here, but the friend had told me that this story was also connected to a real life murder of a twelve year old Japanese girl, dubbed the Sasebo slashing. Apparently someone had made an animation of this story and the eleven year old classmate, who had slashed this girl’s throat and arms with a knife, was obsessed with this animation. I was scared to say the least and when he sent me the link to the animation later that night, I did not dare click on it or close the window. I simply turned off my computer.