By Viktor ’26

We all love a good creepy urban legend,—-quick, go chant “Bloody Mary” in front of a mirror with the lights off. Ok, if your survived, here’s some urban legends you may not be familiar with from Japan.

Starting off is aka manto (赤マント) (red cloak), a ghost who haunts bathrooms. This urban legend has many versions and variations since it’s pretty old. Aka manto is said to haunt public bathrooms but mostly in the girls bathrooms, and sometimes huants the last stall. He appears to others using the toilet and asks a question, “red paper or blue paper” sometimes even said as “red cloak or blue cloak”. No matter what you pick you’ll just die but in a different way, and you can’t outsmart him by saying another color as you would be dragged to the underworld, also in some version picking yellow would make you be killed by being drowned in the toilet. Only way to get rid of him is by running away or ignoring him.

Next is kuchisake-onna, (口裂け女) (slit mouth woman) who roams the streets. By the name you already know how she looks, mouth being slit, ear to ear, but in the legend she hides her hideous mouth with a mask or other item. She looks pretty normal as in Japan, wearing a mask is common for people who are sick so she doesn’t look out of place, with the mouth being hidden, it’s said she looked beautiful. When being alone and walking around an area with no other people, she’ll appear and ask a question, “am I pretty?”, saying no would get you immediately killed on the spot with her scissors that she carries. If you say yes, she would reveal her slit mouth and ask again “am I pretty?”, saying no would get you killed, and saying yes would just result in her cutting your mouth just like hers. The ways to avoid her is by saying she’s average, or distract her with money / hard candy.

Last one I’ll be explaining is hachishakusama, (八尺様) or (eight feet tall) who takes children. She has a look of a woman, beautiful or ugly that depends on the version, but the only inhumane thing is her height, which is 8ft tall. She may look like a woman but has a deep masculine voice when she repeats “Po” (ぽ). What she does is lure children away and kidnaps them, some say she takes those who are 9 to 11 years old. It’s said that for months she will stalk a child and when she stops, she’ll take them and kill them. Since there are different versions of the story, she may look different but most see her wearing a white summer dress with a wide brimmed hat and has long black hair. She may wear shoes but in some versions, she doesn’t or has sandals or maybe even white ot black high heels.