Works Referenced

This work uses many preexisting true ghost stories and pieces of net lore as its motifs. 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 16: Hotel Pontianak

The depiction of the thing that Akari and Natsumi encounter, which Sorawo suggests might have been a Pontianak, is based on the story “Pontianak.” This was posted to the 2channel message board’s Occult/Paranormal Phenomena Board in “Honnori to Kowai Hanashi Sure Sono 94” [Slightly Scary Stories Thread #94], posts 922-951 (6/22/2013). The storyteller, a person from Singapore, is at a training camp after being drafted into the military. While on a two-man patrol at night, they encounter a “female monster,” which causes the teller’s partner to go crazy and commit suicide. It is especially detailed for a military ghost story, and the fact that it was written by a foreign teller in Japanese is unusual.

The Pontianak is a supernatural phenomenon spoken widely across southeast Asia, but primarily in Indonesia and Malaysia. It can be the ghost of a woman who died while pregnant, or a severed head with dangling organs. The way the Pontianak acts and looks varies regionally, and in this work it’s all forgotten in a drunken haze without us ever learning what exactly it was.

■File 17: Looking at the Past in the Diagonal Mirror

The depiction of Sorawo using the mirrors of the interstitial space to tune her vision comes from “Shashi” [Strabismus] which was posted to the 2channel message board’s Occult/Paranormal Phenomena Board in “Honnori to Kowai Hanashi Sure Sono 76” [Slightly Scary Stories Thread #76], posts 685-690 (24/8/2011). It is an account where the storyteller, a person who is experiencing strabismus due to an accident in their youth, looks at a mirror with their lazy eye and notices their mirror image acting differently from them.

The woman with long, mantis-like hands appeared in “4F no Joshi Toire” [The Ladies’ Toilet on the Fourth Floor] which was posted to the 2channel message board’s Married Women Board in the “[Kyoufu] Tsuyu ga Kite mo Kowai Hanashi [Shinrei] 11” [[Terror] Scary Stories Even in the Rainy Season [Ghost] 11] thread, posts 932 and 934 (7/8/2006). She appears in the mirror of the fourth floor women’s restroom of an amusement complex near a train station. When the staff approach her because of the bizarre foot-dragging way she walks, she tries to hug them.

Incidentally, while I was in the middle of writing File 17, I reread one of Takeshobo Horror Bunko’s true ghost stories collections and ran into a story about a woman who appeared in the mirror at a shopping mall, or a department store, or some sort of commercial establishment. I hadn’t paid attention when reading it before, but this time I saw several points it shared in common with “4F no Joshi Toire.” I meant to include it in this Works Referenced list, but had completely forgotten which volume it was in a few days later. If anyone knows and can tell me, it would be appreciated. I don’t think it was a recent book, but I’m not sure. It may have all been a dream.

■File 18: Alone Together in a Mayoiga

As touched on in the main text, “Mayoiga” (or “Mayohiga”) is a widely known story from Kunio Yanagita’s Tono Monogatari (Legends of Tono). It is a folktale that was passed down from the Tohoku Region to the Kanto Region and can easily be found in books about folklore. Variations of it are rare online, but one example would be “Mayohiga” [Lost House] which was posted to the 2channel message board’s Occult/Paranormal Phenomena Board in the “^^ Yama ni Matsuwaru Kowai Fushigi na Hanashi Part 44^^” [Scary/Strange Stories Involving the Mountains Part 44], post 72 (11/6/2009). The building which the reporter’s female friend’s grandmother encountered was a “little castle that looked like you might find it in Germany or Lichtenstein,” and what drifted down the river was not a bowl, but a beautiful comb. The depiction in this work doesn’t take any specific story as its motif, but I incorporated the general feeling of it by using a building that was a compromise between Western and Japanese designs.

■File 19: Hasshaku-sama Revival

In regards to Hasshaku-sama, I would like to refer you to the reference section for File 2 in the first volume.

The story that Sorawo touches on in this file—where, when they step out of the elevator, the sky is bright red—is “Ikai e no Tobira” [The Door to Another World] which was already mentioned in the explanation for File 1. However, another similar story, “Erebeta no Soto” [Outside the Elevator] was posted to the 2channel message board’s Occult/Paranormal Phenomena Board in “Fukakai na Taiken, Nazo no Hanashi ~enigma~ Part 59” [Incomprehensible Experiences, Mysterious Stories ~enigma~ Part 59], posts 553 and 554 (13/1/2010). This is another experiential report of someone stepping out of an elevator to find that the sky is bright red even though it should still be afternoon. That the town below is dark and silent is another point the stories share in common.

“Ojii-san to Basu” [The Old Man and the Bus], which was posted in “Fukakai na Taiken, Nazo no Hanashi ~enigma~ Part 48” [Incomprehensible Experiences, Mysterious Stories ~enigma~ Part 59], posts 467-467 (24/11/2008), is an account of meeting an old man on the bus to Kichijoji, and being sent to an empty town lit with bright red light. We could also say this is a variation of ”Jikkuu no Ossan” [The Time-space Man].

There are a number of such accounts of wandering into impossible towns lit by the setting sun from time to time, but the specific motif for this work is “Mayooikonda Machi no Koto” [About the Town I Wandered Into] contained in Ayakashi Tsuushin Kyuuya de Okuru Kowai Hanashi [Ayakashi News — Scary Stories on the Ninth Night] (Osako Junichi, Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha, 1991). The bizarre scene the author claims to have encountered as a child of “five-story wooden houses connected by skywalks” left a strong impression on me from the first time I read it. It is one of the original sources of Otherside Picnic.

Ayakashi Tsuushin, which was published in 1991, shares a number of stories with Shinmimibukuro Anata no Kowai Hanashi [Shinmimibukuro — Your Scary Stories] (Hirokatsu Kihara/Ichirou Nakayama, Fusosha Publishing, 1990) which was composed of interviews with people who experienced supernatural events and gave rise to a boom in “true ghost stories.” It is an important entry in the history of the genre. The first edition is difficult to obtain now, but it was republished in 2002 by Haruki Horror Bunko under the title Akayashi Stuushin “Kai” [Ayakashi News “Strange”]. This edition is likewise out of print, but may be somewhat easier to locate.

Incidentally, the other long-running series from Keibunsha ”Chou” Kowai Hanashi [“Super” Scary Stories] also began publication in 1991. (If we look for a hit before this, some might suggest the writings of Junji Inagawa from the ’80s, but if you ask me, those are better interpreted as examples of ghost stories as literature.) If we look back at the way the trend of true ghost stories has continued uninterrupted for decades since then, it’s actually quite surprising. It means that there are an incredible number of people in our world (how many tens of thousands?) who have had frightening or mysterious experiences. And those are only the ones who committed them to text. There are already hundreds (maybe a thousand?) of such books piled up, and the number keeps growing. Is that not a somewhat unsettling fact?

I know I always say this, but I would like to give my thanks to the people who reported the many other true ghost stories and net lore from which I have taken direct or indirect influence.

Thank you for your continued enjoyment and for being frightened. I hope this book can repay my gratitude in some small way.