Thursday, October 8, 2015

The Haunted Yamanaka Lake (闹鬼的山中湖)

The Yamanaka Lake is located at the foot of Mount Fuji. Interestingly, Yamanaka Lake is not famous of its scenery; as the matter of fact it is in fact the place is famous of its haunting. Please bear with me if I have repeated myself in previous postings.

The first weekend we were in Japan was to go to the hot spring hotel for a dip. My friend Yuki told me a few stories about Yamanaka ghost stories. I could only remember three of them roughly:

Story 1:

This is a story of a Japanese lady tour guide. Legend has it that a Japanese lady tour guide committed suicide in the hot spring hotel. Since then, at 3am every day, the hotel guest would be awakened by strange knockings on the door, TV being switched on automatically, the bed being vigorously shaken. All of those happenings were said to be the working of diligent tour guide as it was her duty to wake up all team members.

Story 2:

This is the story of an old grandpa that happened in another hotel at the lakeside of Yamanaka Lake. It was said that the predecessor of the hotel was a cottage owned by an old grandpa. Even though the cottage is no more, people can at time see the apparition of an old man in the hotel.

Story 3:

The hot spring hotel swimming pool is out of bound after night. If anyone ventures into the pool at night, one may see a blob of long hair slowly rises from the pool in front of him/her. It is said that this is the restless soul of a lady drowned in the same pool some time ago.

In another incident, one may notice a man in front of he/her. This person will always back the person in the pool. Whatever case that may be, one should not greet this person for if he turns his head; the unlucky ones will only see a face with no features. And this unfortunate person may not be able to get out from the pool and he/she may drown. It is believed that this featureless face is the soul of a waiter committed suicide after being scolded by previous manager. He died because he has no face to see his colleagues.

After the dinner, I suddenly got an urge to get out of the hotel and strolled along the banks of Yamanaka Lake. Yuki was too scared to go out and she warned me of the possibility of meeting with a ghost. I shrugged and ventured out.

There were practically no one at the Yamanaka Lake, the lake is a natural lake and the water is pretty clear. I dipped my feet into the lake and then took some photos. After that, I saw an old Shinto shrine nearby so I followed a white pebble path that leads to the front of the shrine. There were two Kitsune (fox) statues guarding both sides of the shrine. So I stood in front of the shrine, stroke my palms and made a wish according to what Yuki taught me. After that I, took another photo.

After wandering around the place for a while, I returned to the hotel.

Yuki was sitting in a sofa and drinking her coffee in the hotel main hall. I sat in another sofa opposite Yuki and boasted about my courage of wandering out alone. As I was telling Yuki about the Kitsune shrine, she looked at me with astonishment and said: “There is no shrine out there!”

So, I thought of showing her the photos I took… And to my surprised; there is not a single photo in my camera memory card! Still unconvinced, I revisited the place I went last evening and indeed; there was no shrine whatsoever!



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