[Journal Post]

[danse_etoile]

I have been going over school urban legends for Japan for the last few weeks out of curiosity and it's sure a mix of:

> School is haunted by ghosts, lots of them
> Location in the school sends you to the 4th Dimension or Hell or both.
> Sure a lot of dead students from hell who want to kill you in the toilet
> Cursed Musician Paintings/Busts and Evil Science Anatomical Specimens
> More ghosts
> MORE 4TH DIMENSION stuff.
> Ghost that's an evil version of the Fairy and the Axe story.

Good lord, kids.

> Kisaragi Station

Comments

[daschillyone]

Not a uniquely Japanese thing. I remember stories of my elementary school being haunted, and that the reasons the showers were blocked off was because some kid got bullied so bad she drowned herself in the shower.

Kids will just make up scary stories, then a gullible one will believe it's real, cite evidence that's them being paranoid, and then it gets immortalized after a while.

There's admittedly more literal magic and stuff here than there was back home, but I'd say most of these are still more story than ghost if you catch my meaning.

[danse_etoile]

I've had a bit too many cases in my life of the story becoming a ghost.

So I'm left wondering.

Because I found the cursed piano, the ghost of Beethoven and an anatomical specimen as one combined ghost story.

[daschillyone]

Don't suppose the anatomical model gave a name, did it? Baron something or another.

[danse_etoile]

Akeley.

Pretty sure as in Henry Wentworth Akeley.

May I ask how did you guess?

[daschillyone]

I've beat him up before. He was threatening my students.

[danse_etoile]

Hrm. Me and Mrs. Sakaki had to deal with him the other day, but because we're both normal women, we had to negotiate with the ghost.

If he is a ghost.

... Or a he. I kept hearing a young girl's voice along with an older male voice and a young man's voice.

[daschillyone]

I mean, he was in an anatomical model. I just hit him with a sledgehammer and his body couldn't sustain him anymore. Hairspray and a lighter would probably do the same.

I dont remember him having other voices with him, but it's not impossible that things have changed.

[danse_etoile]

Eldlich the Golden Lord.

[sakaki_family_values]

That reminds me. I forgot to mention it, but back when I was getting that tablet for Akeley, I ran into a small girl in the school hallways.

She claimed to be haunting the place.

I feel like it was a student pulling my leg, but it was rather odd.

[danse_etoile]

...

What did she look like?

[sakaki_family_values]

Very tiny thing. Had grey hair.

I asked for her name and she said it was 'Aradia' but everyone at the school 'called her Hanako'.

Looked like she'd been collecting mushrooms.

[danse_etoile]

Hanako of the Third Toilet Stall of the Third Floor...?

What the...

[sakaki_family_values]

... I take it that's a school urban legend as well?

[danse_etoile]

Yeah.

Hanako of the Third Toilet Stall is a common Japanese Urban Legend.

Basically, the key concept is it's a girl who dwells in the third bathroom stall of the third floor. There's a combination of origins, abused child, dead from an airraid, bullied to suicide. Basically sort of a Japanese Bloody Mary, you call upon her, and well, you probably should not have.

[sakaki_family_values]

Well, either that child was aware of this legend and used it as an excuse as to why she was in the school hallways after hours...
... or our school has somehow become home to every school urban legend that exists.

[danse_etoile]

I'm betting the latter.

Or people think she's Hanako.

[sakaki_family_values]

That's quite possible the other students think she is that legend.

Guess I'll keep an eye out for her again.

[danse_etoile]

Right.

Small. Grey haired. Mushrooms.