Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Japanese Legends

Nure-Onna

Do you enjoy a nice, cool swim on a hot day? Perhaps you are particularly averse to receiving a cooling dose of urine at the local swimming pool? Maybe you just like the sand beneath your toes as you walk the beaches, choosing a nice, quiet, isolated spot from the rest of the city plebs.

You put down your towel, throw off the constricting second skin that is your clothing, and head toward the waves.

But hark! You spot a woman in the water; long black hair flowing around her alabaster skin as she flails weakly. With speed and grace to rival the very best studs of the Baywatch era, you fling yourself into the oddly calm waters and swim her way.

You swim toward the endangered beauty, your eyes meeting as you work desperately to save your drowning Ophelia.

...except that now you seem to be paralyzed. Also, Ariel now appears to be using her long, prehensile snake-body to gracefully close the romantic distance between you. Perhaps, you consider, she simply wishes to save you from this terminal case of leg cramps? Perhaps the piercing of your tender man-flesh by her snake-like tongue is some odd form of mermaid CPR? No, you are now being slowly digested by the Snake Woman, or, "Nure-Onna".

The moral of the story should be fairly obvious: Don't try to save a drowning woman. She could be a snake-monster in disguise!

Hanako-San

Because Japan just loves to punish you for basic bodily functions, this urban legend takes place in a washroom: specifically the third stall from the end of any elementary school washroom (in some variations, it's on the third floor). Unlike the previous urban legends, where the creatures will come at you unprovoked, Hanako needs to be summoned. Though the idea of luring a ghostly little girl into an empty bathroom falls further from "scary urban legend" and closer to "that paedophile on the news last week" than we'd like.

In order to call Hanako, you need to do the polite thing and knock three times on her stall door. This is usually accompanied by calling out, "Are you there, Hanako-san?"

If you are greeted with a reply, "Yes, I'm here!", apart from pissing your pants in terror, you can push open the stall door to reveal Hanako. Said to be a little girl with bobbed black hair and a red skirt, the outcome of your courage (or dumbfounding retardation) differs: Hanako-san will vanish or, for the more shit out of luck (in every sense of the word), you will be pulled into the toilet and killed.

If you knock on her stall and receive a reply (and assuming you don't immediately break the laws of physics during your escape), you still have the opportunity to walk away if you do not open the door. If, however, you insist on cornering little girls in toilet stalls, you may have just enough time after seeing Hanako to make a break for the exit and escape.

Gashadokuro

If you are visiting Japan and find yourself staying out a bit too late into the night, you might re-consider taking that short route through the quiet streets in favour of booking a nearby motel. Not for fear of anything practical like street crime or the aforementioned perverts...

...but rather for the 90 foot cannibal skeleton tailing you home. You're likely to hear this over sized Halloween decoration before you spot it, as it announces itself by the sound it makes with its gnashing teeth and an odd ringing sensation in your ears (caused by what we presume to be your sonic-like shriek at the sight of a skeleton the size of a building hovering over you).

Moving with the quiet grace of a towering ballerina, the Gashadokuro will catch you unawares and deftly pluck you from where you stand. Cleanly removing your head like a Ken doll, it will sate its otherworldly thirst and anger by swigging your lifeblood like a delicious smoothy.