Works Referenced

Otherside Picnic — LNCrawler · All chapters

Works Referenced

This work uses many preexisting true ghost stories and pieces of net lore as its motif. In particular, this section will note those which have been used directly. This will touch on the content of the main book, so if you are concerned about spoilers, please tread carefully.

File 9: Yamanoke Presence

There was a report of the “Yamanoke” on the 2channel message board’s Occult/Paranormal Phenomena Board in “Shinu Hodo Share ni Naranai Kowai Hanashi wo Atsumete Minai?” [Do You Want to Gather Ridiculously Scary Stories?] thread 157 (there are two threads with this same number), posts 167-169 (2/5/2007). In the Q&A with the thread denizens (continues to ~189), the reporter indicated the encounter happened “on the prefectural border between Miyagi and Yamagata.”

After that, there were those who analyzed the Yamanoke from an anthropological angle, and some who appeared talked about local legends of a “Yamanoke” or “Yamanokai,” but none of them went beyond vague references.

File 10: Sannuki-san and Karateka-san

“Sannukikano” was reported in the thread “Fukakai na Taiken, Nazo no Hanashi ~enigma~ Part 49” [Incomprehensible Experiences, Mysterious Stories ~enigma~ Part 49], post 665 (1/16/2009). A monkey-like creature appears in the yard, and uses “something like telepathy” to say “Sannukikano (?) will be coming, so show her this. If you say you took it yourself, she will give you one, too. Bury it in the yard afterward.” The creature then left a tooth (likely human) with the poster.

Two days later, between 1/18 and 1/20, in posts 728-788 of the same thread, the story continued. The old woman named Sannukikano appears and gives the poster a new tooth, which they bury. They also upload pictures of the teeth.

Later, on 1/21, in post 812, they uploaded a picture of an amulet to protect oneself from Sannukikano. To the denizens of the thread, this suggests that the entire sequence of events was someone “trolling.”

However, because the host has vanished, the image can no longer be seen. Because of that, we can no longer confirm the declaration that they were “trolling.”

In net lore, where stories can unfold over months, it happens from time to time that the original poster is impersonated by an entirely different person. In those cases, unless the original returns to point out what has happened, it will go undiscovered. Even if they do, and the impostor says, “No, you’re the real impostor,” proving who is who is difficult. In the case of “Sannukikano,” the person who posted in post 665 and the person who posted two days later in post 728 could have been two different people (they had different poster IDs).

In this series, I have chosen not to use stories that have been clearly declared to be fictional as motifs. In looking at the thread history, it’s a pretty grey area as to whether I can categorize “Sannukikano” as a true ghost story, but I decided it couldn’t be completely written off as fiction.

Furthermore, one of the titles that I also referenced in volume 2, Toshiki Agatsuma’s FKB Kaiyuuroku Kikimimizoushi [FKB Record of Ghosts and Apparitions: Strange Tales] (Takeshobo, 2015) has a story titled “Zannuki.” This is another experience narrative where hearing the incomprehensible rumors of a person named Zannuki causes a calamity to occur. Because it felt creepy that not just the name was similar but the overall pattern of events as a whole, I referenced it as well.

File 11: The Whispered Voice Requires Self-Responsibility

On the 2channel occult board, the first “self-responsibility type” story, which infects the reader, was posted in “Shinu Hodo Share ni Naranai Kowai Hanashi wo Atsumete Minai?” [Do You Want to Gather Ridiculously Scary Stories?], post 379 (10/27/2000). This thread was unnumbered, but it was effectively part 2, after the original thread grew too long and needed to be split.

However, this story was brought to a standstill by interference from the denizens of the thread and the appearance of impostors. Thread denizens who already knew the story “spoiled” that it was a horror story that dragged in the audience, but that revelation was vague, and it was unclear where the story had been told before.

Two years later, in “Shinu Hodo Share ni Naranai Kowai Hanashi wo Atsumete Minai? Part 13” [Do You Want to Gather Ridiculously Scary Stories? Part 13], posts 504-572, there was a similar story from someone who claimed to have found a similar story from 1997 on the “Haiki Chokuzen Q8 BBS Log.” From that point onward, a series of stories with similar elements, which would come to be called “self-responsibility type” or “Yamanishi type” stories, would be posted on occasion.

Because there are many stories, I would like to direct you to “Jikosekinin Kousatsu Saito (Kari)” [Self-Responsibility Analysis Site (Temporary Name)] (http://www.geocities.jp/zikosekininkei/) but... there’s an issue. Look at that URL again. It’s GeoCities. Yahoo! announced that all GeoCities sites will be shut down on 3/31/2019. Unless it is moved to another domain, this site is fated to vanish only a few months after this book is published. In fact, the investigative thread on the Shitaraba BBS that is linked to on the analysis site is already long gone, and the discussions that would have happened there are lost.

“Chika no Maruana” (The Round Hole Underground) was posted to “Kowai Hanashi Toukou: Horaa Teraa” [Scary Story Submissions: Horror Teller] (10/20/2009). The otherworldly speech of the Thank You Woman that appears in my story has been pulled from here and shuffled around.

“Yama no Bokujou” (The Farm in the Mountains) references a report found in Gendai Hyaku Monogatari Shinmimibukuro Daishiya [Modern-day 100 Stories, Shinmimibukuro, The Fourth Night] (Hirokatsu Kihara/Ichirou Nakayama, Kadokawa Bunko, 2003). This is an unusually famous true ghost story that has been covered on the radio and in magazines on several occasions, so I believe many people will be familiar with it. Additionally, there is an exceptionally detailed after-story recorded in Ichirou Nakayama’s Kaidangari Magamagashii Ie [Ghost Story Hunter: The Ominous House] (Kadokawa Horror Bunko, 2017).

I know I always say this, but there are many other true ghost stories and net lore from which I have taken direct or indirect influence.

Furthermore, as I already somewhat touched on in the section on self-responsibility type stories, I would like to write about the administrators of sites on net lore and analysis, as well as the participants on those sites. These kinds of sites, which gather logs and the debates surrounding net lore—and would otherwise quickly become unsourceable—have taken on an important role in the culture of horror stories on the internet. It is a great loss to see many of these places being lost to service terminations. The administrators of the sites were the ones who cut the various net lore from their original threads and gave them titles, and the participants on these sites and the denizens of the original threads the ones who saw connections between the different pieces of net lore. It’s inevitable that these places will eventually go away someday, but we must not forget just how much influence they’ve had on the scene.

Thank you for always enjoying and being frightened. I hope this book is able to repay my gratitude in some small way.

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Otherside Picnic: Volume 3

by Iori Miyazawa

Illustrations by shirakaba

Translated by Sean McCann

Edited by Krys Loh

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

First published in Japan in 2018 by Hayakawa Publishing Corporation

The book is published by arrangement with Hayakawa Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Ebook edition 1.0: April 2020