Project Kowai

Kategoria: Imikowa

  • Waiting at the Traffic Light

    458: True scary stories anon [sage] : 2009/03/02(月) 21:07:50 ID:7VHGCcKUO

    This scared me a little.

    I was in the car, waiting at a traffic light, when suddenly I heard a banging sound from the back seat. I thought, who could it be? The police? But when I looked, there was no-one there.

    Except there was something like a child’s handprint on the back seat window. Uhh creepy much? I was kinda shocked so I hurriedly just reached back and wiped it off right away.

    Buuut when I calmed down and thought about it, I realized that before I even started driving the neighborhood kids were running all over the place getting into all kinds of trouble. It probably wouldn’t be unusual if they left some marks on my car.

    I’ve been reading a lot of scary threads lately so maybe I’ve become kind of a scaredy cat lol

    458：本当にあった怖い名無し[sage] : 2009/03/02(月) 21:07:50 ID:7VHGCcKUO

    ちょっと怖かった話。

    車運転してて信号待ちしてた時なんですけど、

    いきなりﾄﾝﾄﾝﾄﾝって車の後ろの方から音聞こえて。誰？警察？と思って後ろ見たら誰もいない。

    あれ？って思ったら後部座席の窓に子供の手の跡ついてんの！怖くないですか？ビビってソッコー手伸ばしてゴシゴシーって手形消しちゃいましたよ！

    でも落ち着いて考えたら、車乗る前近所の子供達が元気に遊んでたし、まぁよくある事ですよね。

    最近よくじわ怖スレ見てるからビビりになってるｗ

    Source

    The twist here relies on common sense. While the narrator is able to explain the scary experience away, the reader should be aware of the flaw in the logic presented: the children, though a likely culprit for handprints on cars, could not possibly have left any marks inside the car. Since the narrator was able to wipe the mark off, it was clearly on the inside of the window. Rather than being too scared, it seems the narrator isn’t scared enough…

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  • I Am in the Room Ahead

    111: The following is an anonymous message posted on behalf of a VIP : 2011/06/26(日) 21:14:33.08 ID:ztykbwQs0

    This is a story from when I was in elementary school.

    The town I lived in had a ruined building.

    It was a 2-story apartment building with concrete walls. The windows were smashed and the whole structure was falling apart so local people didn’t really go near it much.

    One day, my friend and I wanted to do a test of courage so we decided to go to this ruined building. It was still early afternoon so we climbed to the second floor to explore. There was a door with something written on it. We went closer to check it out and saw that someone had written on the door: “I am in the room ahead.”

    My friend and I opened the door and decided to keep going. After a bit of walking, we had to go either left or right. On the wall, someone had written “I am to the left from here.” We were a little scared but went left and kept going.

    We got to a spot where there was a room on the left and a room on the right. On the wall, someone had written “head to the left, body to the right.” 

    As soon as we saw it, my friend lost his mind and ran out of there.

    But I stayed back and summoned all my courage to look in the room on the right. On the back wall, someone had written: “my body is below this.”

    When I looked down… “My head is coming from the left room. You’d better not look back!”

    I immediately escaped through the window.

    I haven’t gone back there since then.

    111 ：以下、名無しにかわりましてVIPがお送りします：2011/06/26(日) 21:14:33.08 ID:ztykbwQs0

    俺が小学生の頃の話。

    俺が住んでいた町に廃墟があった。

    ２階建てのアパートみたいな建物で、壁がコンクリートでできていた。

    ガラスがほとんど割れていて、壁も汚れてボロボロだったから、

    地元の人間でも、あまりこの場所に近づくことはなかったらしい。

    ある日、俺は友人と肝試しをすることになって、この廃墟に行くことにした。

    まだ昼ぐらいだったから、建物の２階まで上がって建物を探索した。

    そしたら並んでいる扉のひとつに、文字が書いてあるものがあった。

    友人と近づいて確認してみると、扉の前に「わたしは このさきの へやに いるよ」と書いてあった。

    俺と友人は扉を開けて中に入り、先に進むことにした。

    歩いて行くと分かれ道に突き当たって 、壁に「わたしは ひだり に いるよ」と書いてあった。

    少し怖くなったけれど、俺と友人はそのまま左に進むことにした。

    すると両側に部屋があるところに突き当たって、壁に「あたまは ひだり からだは みぎ」と書いてあった。

    友人はこれを見た瞬間に、半狂乱になって逃げだした。

    でも俺はその場所にとどまって、勇気を出して右の部屋に行くことにした。

    部屋に入り進んでいくと、突き当たりの壁に「わたしの からだは このしたにいるよ」と書いてあった。

    下を見ると、「ひだりの へやから わたしの あたまが きてるよ うしろ みないでね」。

    俺は急いで、その部屋の窓から飛び降りて逃げた。

    それからはもう、その場所には近づいていない。

    Source

    This story relies on establishing a pattern and then breaking it as the twist. As the narrator explores the building, he (gendered by the first-person pronoun 俺, ore) encounters several messages ”someone had written.” These messages present an unnerving trail of clues to find their mysterious author. These clues get more sinister as the story progresses, as some type of dismemberment seems to be at play. Still, the real twist in the break of the ”someone had written” -pattern. The final message about the approaching head is missing this descriptor, implying that this clue is delivered either audibly or through some kind of telepathy. Either way, it is scary enough that the narrator finally loses his courage and flees the building.

    There are alternate versions of this story that emphasize a clean floor in the final room, further pushing the clue that the final message was not something ”someone had written” in a graffiti sense, but rather is either audible or appears supernaturally after the narrator has already entered the room.

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  • A TV Special on Horror Stories

    7 The following is an anonymous message posted on behalf of a VIP 2010/01/02(Sat) 17:47:41.08 ID:5e2tTJbD0

    After a bath I was going to dry my hair while watching tv so I take the hairdryer to my room and turn the TV on.

    Suddenly some scary woman is on the screen. I guess it’s some TV special on horror stories.

    Looks kinda weird but this is a cheap old second-hand TV so what can you do really.

    While I’m thinking about that I try to turn the hairdryer on and suddenly the power goes out and it gets completely dark

    I guess running the hairdryer and the AC at the same time was too much? So I use the light of the TV to go check the breaker and sure enough it’s tripped. Oops!

    7 以下、名無しにかわりましてVIPがお送りします 2010/01/02(土) 17:47:41.08 ID:5e2tTJbD0

    風呂上がりに、テレビでも見ながら髪を乾かそうかと思ってドライヤーを持って部屋へ行ってテレビをつける。

    いきなり怖い女の人の顔どアップ。怖い話の特集かな。

    なんか色がおかしいけど、まあリサイクルショップで安くで買った古いテレビだからしょうがないか。

    などと思いつつドライヤーをオンにしたらいきなり電気がバツン！と切れて真っ暗になった1。

    あっちゃ、クーラー入れたままドライヤーは無理があったかと思いつつ、テレビの光を頼りにブレーカーの所に行ったらやっぱりブレーカーが落ちてやがった

    Source

    1. Here, a more literal translation would read: ”while I’m thinking about that and turning on the hairdryer, suddenly the electricity goes BANG! and cuts out, making it pitch black.” However, since this kind of use of sound effects would be extremely rare in English online interaction, I translated the English to more accurately match the tone of the Japanese used here. ↩︎

    This is quite the classic twist in which the narrator themselves remains blissfully oblivious and it’s up to the reader to find the detail that changes the whole story. The narrator notes the spooky image on the TV screen quite passively, assuming it’s just a part of a TV show. However, once the breaker trips and the room loses power, the narrator is still able to use the light from the TV screen to navigate the dark room. This rules out the safe explanation (”it’s a TV special”) and shows that TV was haunted after all. Oops!

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  • Girl: I heard a super scary story

    333 名前：Trader＠Live![sage] Manuscript day：2007/04/05(Thu) 09:19:09.94 ID:QqLyVeXR

    Encounter with a group of high school girls on a train I don’t usually take. This is what I heard:

    Girl: “I heard a super scary story”

    Other girls: “Really?”

    Girl: “My grandma lives by herself and one time her phone rang. When she answered it she heard someone say ‘Mom? It’s me…’ So she goes, ‘Yoshikazu? Is that you?’ and he replies ‘yeah’…

    … But here’s the thing!

    Uncle Yoshikazu died last year in an accident!”

    Other girls: “Whaaat? Omg that’s so scary? What happened next?”

    Girl: “So he says, ‘I’ve caused an accident…’ and like my grandma just bursts into tears. She tells him, ‘don’t worry about the accident anymore. It’s ok, just pass on peacefully…’”

    333 名前：Trader＠Live![sage] 投稿日：2007/04/05(木) 09:19:09.94 ID:QqLyVeXR

    めったに乗らない電車で女子高生の一群と遭遇そこで聞いた話 

    女学生「めっちゃ怖い話し聞いた」

    その他「何？」

    女学生「一人暮らしのうちのおばあちゃんに 電話がかかてってきて出てみたら『お母さん？俺やけど････』って言っておばあちゃんが『ヨシカズか？』って聞いたら『うん』って･･･

    ・・・・でもな・・・・

    ヨシカズおじさんって去年、交通事故でﾀﾋんでるねん」

    その他「えぇ～！！怖いーーー！！！　それで？」

    女学生「『･･･俺、事故起こして････』って言うから、おばあちゃん泣いてしもて『もう、事故の事は気にせんでいいから、成仏して････』言ったんやて」

    Source

    In this story-within-a-story, the narrative twist relies on two completely different registers of ”scary.” Within the story, the girls are sharing what seems to be a fairly common ghost story of a passed relative contacting surviving family members. However, the phone call the grandmother received ultimately isn’t supernaturally tragic: the caller’s script is a clear example of the ore-ore phone scam commonly used to target the elderly. The scam is by no means unique to Japan, but the distinctive use of the informal first-person pronoun ”ore” makes the Japanese version of the scam especially suitable for this kind of reference. The scary twist here, then, is not the uncle’s ghost calling back from the beyond, but the all-too common scam that grandma might have fallen victim to had uncle Yoshikazu been alive.

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