My roommate told me of the legend of a ghost named Hanako San. There are a lot of different versions of her, but the one he remembers is of a girl who killed herself in a school bathroom because of bullying, who haunts every school bathroom in Tokyo. Many elementary school children will go into a school bathroom on the third floor, turn off the lights, and knock on the third stall door three times. This is supposed to summon Hanako San. If you hear her respond to the knock, it’s in your best interest to leave. He likened this to the tradition of Bloody Mary in the states. He learned this from other classmates. This ghost could’ve been based on a real girl, or it could have been used to try to prevent kids from bullying others. It’s also a bit of a game, similar to bloody mary. This practice adds some entertainment to a normally dull day in grade school.
Tag Archives: ghost
A Long Lost Friend
Nationality: American
Age: 81
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Mill Valley, CA
Performance Date: December 1st, 2024
Primary Language: English
Language: English
MAIN DESCRIPTION:
“All right, a few years ago, normal morning I just woke up. I was gonna get up and go to to the bathroom. when I felt like I couldn’t get out of the bed. I felt like something was like sitting on me right I mean, I could still breathe and all, but I just felt like I couldn’t get up and I was thinking, is this a heart attack or something? And then finally I did get up and I went to the bathroom. I came back, got in bed and there, I felt it again. It was just like somebody sitting on me and and when I started with maybe I picked up my phone and looked at the date and it was July 2 and I suddenly remembered that that was the birthday of my best friend Leonore, who had died of breast cancer years before, and I think it was the first time I ever forgot her birthday and I think she was pissed that I forgot it. So after that, I mean after that everything went away and it was just that weird experience of having this presence there who didn’t hurt me, but was making herself known.”
INFORMANT’S OPINION:
JS: What do you think this appearance means spiritually?
MB: “I felt it related to our friendship, which started in sixth grade and we were she was my closest friend through high school and then once I started going with my husband uh and she she she developed an interest in Spanish culture. And she ended up um taking a job in Mexico and marrying a Mexican person there, had children with him and then later divorced him and she got tired of him and Mexico. And she came back and met a really wonderful guy who she married and they lived right in the East Bay until she developed breast cancer. She was she died at 49. It was terrible, so anyway, I felt it was just her maybe disappointment and a little annoyance that I had that remembered her birthday. But I didn’t feel it was evil. I mean, she wasn’t trying to kill me. Yeah like, “hey, it’s my birthday.””
PERSONAL INTERPRETATION:
Who can say for sure what our human connections to the afterlife or spiritual realm might be? There have been so many examples of people having near death experiences and describing similar sensations of light and hovering. It’s not hard to believe that Lenore paid a visit to MB, if not to just say hello, maybe to nudge MB to not forget her existence or her presence, even if only in spiritual form when she “sat on” her chest on her birthday.
The Basement Ghost of the Chicago Fire
Nationality: American
Age: 54, 60
Occupation: Producer, Producer/Writer
Residence: Silverlake, CA, Sherman Oaks, CA
Performance Date: November 28, 2024
Primary Language: English
CONTEXT:
This story was told by two sisters who were born and raised in a nice metropolitan neighborhood in Chicago in the 1970s.
STORY:
L: Alright so we lived in a building that was built over a graveyard. After the Chicago fire, that whole area was a graveyard, and they dug up all the graves and put the buildings over that area. Why they had the graves in what was potentially some of the best area, I have no idea.
So our house was built over a graveyard; this was not known to me.
We lived in, we had the basement, and we had a bedroom down in the basement–a couple bedrooms and a bathroom. And this was after Roberta had lived down there. I lived down there. And I went to the bathroom, and it was late at night, and as I was–I think I was peeing, I don’t know–the shower, uh, handle– so you have a handle where you turn the water on and off–the shower handle, the backing for it flew off the wall on its own. And so I opened up the thing cause I thought maybe something had fallen, I wasn’t quite sure, and when I opened up the thing, water came out of the shower head. And I freaked out.
And now, you have to understand, I believed in ghosts anyway, because when you live in Chicago you have ghosty experiences.
I freaked out and I ran upstairs to my mother’s room and I said “there are ghosts in that bathroom!”
And she said “what are you talking about? Go away. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was asleep.
And I went back downstairs and I said okay cool. I’m never gonna shower in that bathroom again, that’s fine. And I went about my business.
Days later, she said “I talked to your sister, Roberta,” who also lived down there “and she said that she agreed with you; there are ghosts down in the basement.”
Roberta, what did you experience?
R: The shower would just turn on. The shower, you’d walk in and the shower would just turn on.
L: Like it did for me.
R: You’d walk down the hall and suddenly the shower is on, or the sink has been turned on. And there’s no one there. And yeah it’s over a graveyard. It like, they are still finding bones and other body parts when they’re excavating those houses. So…
L: So I would go into the bathroom, and I would talk to the ghost. I never showered in there again, by the way. I think you did, I never did.
R: I showered in my shoes.
L: I would go in the bathroom, I would pee, I would wash my hands in the sink, and I would talk to the ghost sometimes. I would just chit chat. No one talked to me–I never saw a physical ghost–no one had words back for me or anything like that. But we came to an agreement that I would not use the shower and it would not, I don’t know, kill me.
ANALYSIS:
This story very evidently displays some unexplained instances that occurred in this house, and is a prime example of one element commonly found in ghost stories: improper burial. Because the house in this story is still standing to this day and has not been excavated, it is not known whether or not there were remains under this specific house. But it was made clear that the area was once a graveyard for the victims of the Chicago fire, and the neighboring houses–when excavated–had bones and other remains in their foundations and the soil beneath. So it could very well be possible that the souls of individuals who were given an improper burial still lurk within the basements and abandoned rooms of these homes.
The Nova Scotia Spirit
Nationality: American
Age: 60
Occupation: Writer
Residence: Sherman Oaks, CA
Performance Date: November 28, 2024
Primary Language: English
STORY: “I was in Nova Scotia staying at my parents’ house on a cove on the water, and my grandmother was very sick, and she was dying nearby at the hospital. And I’d been like two or three times, and it’s grueling. Everytime you leave it’s like you’re saying goodbye to someone for the last time; it’s hard. And she was very very sick. And so, I believe my mother was at the hospital, and I was standing on the dock, overlooking the cove, watching, like, dolphins and whales swim by, and I saw coming down from the sky, this…entity, like, almost like, with like…gossamer, flowing fabric behind it. Came tight down right in front of me, down into the water, up, around me, and then went away. And I was like ‘what the actual?’ And then my mother called and said that her mother just died. So I’m guessing maybe she was…saying goodbye.”
ANALYSIS: Seeing as this happened before the individual knew of her grandmother’s passing, it is less likely that the entity she witnessed was merely a manifestation of her grief, or a way to cope with her grandmother passing away. While it could’ve been subconscious, it is still unlikely. It is interesting, however, that the spirit described in this story with “gossamer, flowing fabric” that came from the sky, is eerily similar to a lot of modern Western visual interpretations of ghosts. It was not a corporal entity, nor one that resembled an animal, but a very traditional “ghost” of sorts. Nonetheless, it could be plausible that it was the ghost or the spirit or the soul of the individual’s grandmother saying goodbye one last time.
What’s Behind the Curtain?
Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Vet tech
Residence: San Rafael, CA
Performance Date: December 2nd, 2024
Primary Language: English
Language: English
Main Description:
“So I was staying in Fort Bragg at my dad’s house and I was getting ready to take a shower and I think my dad was in town or something like he was going shopping like grocery shopping. and so the fan in the bathroom doesn’t work. So there’s there’s a door that goes to the outside because there’s an outdoor shower also. So we keep the door cracked when we shower inside just to let the moisture out. So, you know, it makes the shower curtain billow a little bit, so I get in the shower and the shower curtain is billowing because of the air flow. And um at one point, I lean against the shower curtain, and it’s as hard as a rock, like I push against it and it does not move. Um and so I take a step back and I look around the shower curtain. There’s nothing there. And the shower curtain is still like billowing a little bit. So I was just kind of left like what the hell was that? But I think it was a shower or not a shower. It was a bathroom ghost. Fort Bragg bathroom ghost, just I don’t know what he was doing. He was leaning against a shower curtain. That’s all.”
Informants Opinion:
JS: What do you think that ghost was doing there?
OG: “I think he’s stuck in the bathroom so he just hangs around and listens to people sing in the shower.”
Personal Opinion:
It’s hard to say what this could mean but to my assumption it would have to do with the previous owner of the house not wanting others using their shower or even living in their house. Or maybe it’s a more kind approach and they’re simply visiting their former home to see who’s living there.