Japanese Taxi Drivers pick up Ghosts of 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami

>SENDAI--In early summer 2011, a taxi driver working in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, which had been devastated by the tsunami a few months earlier, had a mysterious encounter.

A woman who was wearing a coat climbed in his cab near Ishinomaki Station. The woman directed him, “Please go to the Minamihama (district).” The driver, in his 50s, asked her, “The area is almost empty. Is it OK?” Then, the woman said in a shivering voice, “Have I died?”

>Surprised at the question, the driver looked back at the rear seat. No one was there.

A Tohoku Gakuin University senior majoring in sociology included the encounter in her graduation thesis, in which seven taxi drivers reported carrying "ghost passengers" following the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

>Yuka Kudo, 22, went to Ishinomaki every week in her junior year to interview taxi drivers waiting for fares. She asked them, “Did you have any unusual experiences after the disaster?”

She asked the question to more than 100 drivers, and many ignored her. Some became angry. However, seven drivers recounted their mysterious experiences to her.

>Another taxi driver who was in his 40s told of an unexplainable occurrence.

According to the driver, a man who looked to be in his 20s got in his taxi. When the driver looked into the rear-view mirror, his passenger was pointing toward the front.

>The driver repeatedly asked the man for his destination. Then, the passenger replied, “Hiyoriyama" (mountain). When the taxi arrived there, however, the man had disappeared.

The seven drivers' accounts cannot be easily dismissed as simple illusions. That is because if a passenger climbed in their taxi, the driver started the meter, which is recorded.

>If the passengers were indeed "ghosts," they were still counted as riders. As a result, the drivers were forced to pay their fares.

>>17315015
(continued)

>Some of the seven drivers jotted down their experiences in their logs. One showed his driver’s report, which noted that there was a fare that went unpaid.

As the "ghosts" the drivers encountered were all youthful, it is believed they could be the spirits of victims of the 2011 disaster.

>“Young people feel strongly chagrined (at their deaths) when they cannot meet people they love. As they want to convey their bitterness, they may have chosen taxis, which are like private rooms, as a medium to do so,” Kudo said.

What impressed Kudo was that the drivers did not have any fear toward their ghost passengers, but held them in reverence. They regarded the encounters as important experiences to be cherished.

>The taxi drivers were feeling the daily sorrow of residents in Ishinomaki where many people were killed by the tsunami. One said that he lost a family member in the disaster.

Another said, “It is not strange to see a ghost (here). If I encounter a ghost again, I will accept it as my passenger.”

>Kudo came from Akita Prefecture, which was not struck by the tsunami. Before interviewing taxi drivers, she had only thought of the victims as “thousands of people” who had died in the disaster.

“(Through the interviews,) I learned that the death of each victim carries importance,” she said. “I want to convey that (to other people).”

End.

thanks great post

>>17315041
No problem.

The Japanese always did love their share of wandering spirits and whatnot. Something something unfinished business

That's a kawaii taxi driver baka desu senpai.

It's the Onryō ooooo

>>17315074
She's not a taxi driver. She's a university student who collected the stories for her senior thesis.

>>17315010
Japs always lie about spoopy bs or they over exaggerate shit

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>>17315114
Like /x/ doesn't?

Perhaps some of the spirits have not come to terms with the fact that they have died and are still in limbo.

>>17315118
But when japs do it they gain from it

The drivers didn't remain anonymous did they

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>>17315142
>The drivers didn't remain anonymous did they
Nigga I literally just posted the article in the thread and it clearly shows that they remained anonymous. Read the fucking thread dipshit.

>>17315010
>Discuss
The taxi drivers been reading too much manga, notably Midnight by Osamu Tezuka, whose protagonist is a taxi driver and encountet strange people too.

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>>17315230
I'm more of a Junji Ito fan myself.

>>17315142
Oh yes, they totally gained from it.
Remained anonymous and lost money. Surely they'd do it again after such profit from their lies, eh?

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>>17315245
in the year 2016 junji ito has become entry level. everyone on tumblr pretends they read him. have to dig into some Drainage City debauchery now.

Kudo a QT

>>17315705
Anon, do you remember that one website which hosted Ito's translated mangas and also some other guy's horror mangas? It was about those two authors only and for love of fuck I can't find the name of that other mangaka. Pls respond.

>>17316107
All I remember from that other author is a manga about someone visiting a grandmother in the countryside and having to cross some kind of bridge overlooking a river.

Very interesting, thanks OP.

Good read

I was in Japan during and after all that (Stationed in Misawa 2009-2012). I remember June of 2012 I was visiting Otsuchi which is this tiny ass town where 90% of it was wiped off the face of the earth, leaving foundation and piles of wreckage everywhere.

One night, I was tired as hell so instead of bothering with a hotel room, I decided to car camp for the night. Since it was just me and nobody in any direction for miles on end, I figured I'd be good. I set up the back of my subaru forester and got comfy. Middle of the night I wake up to IZ playing on my radio. Which was odd since the car was turned off. Annoyed at this (And assuming I had started the car to get heat or something) I turned it all back off and settled back in.
However, I kept hearing some odd noises that made me get out of the car and look around. Turns out the noises were voices. Talking carrying on the wind but not a soul in sight. Now I know from my time in the army that you can expect human voices to carry about 500 meters or even 1000 if conditions are perfect, so I got to looking around and really listening. If I was right in my assumptions, there had to be 2 people between 25 and 75 meters away. But in the direction I was hearing them from, there was nothing. I could see clear to the water (300 meters) and then some, but there was nothing.

Creepy part was what they were saying

"My bed is gone"
"Where am I?"
Things like that.

I'm about 70% sure it was just kids but...
The fact that I could see clearly a fair way around me (There was a half moon that night) but there was no people there made me think that there was a chance there were ghosts.
Things like

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Gonna post a few pictures I guess as well.

I still have nightmares about Japan. Especially the one about the girl I pulled from the wreckage.

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>>17316107
>>17316131
hmm, not sure of the website and that story doesn't ring a bell...

Maybe it was liiike Suehiro Maruo, Furuya, Hideshi hino (doubtful), Kazuo Uemezu, Kanako Inuki or Hanawa?

uhh... maybe Tsuge? Should ask around in that manga thread, maybe someone else would know.

Sorry for just naming names but i don't think I've read that specific manga.

>>17317495
pls
can't sleep

>>17317495
Want to share that story?

>>17317716
Sure I guess.
So this was a week after the disaster itself. I helped coordinate and drive the buses mostly because I was one of two people in our unit with a bus driver license (Funny side note, on Saturday I'm off to learn how to drive Semi trucks. I'm out of the Army these days and need the cash. I don't wanna do gov work anymore. Too much weird shit). So we usually deployed out as a company to help with recovery efforts while working with S and R teams. We were with some swedes I think this time.

Anyways, we were in this area of Hachinohe near the Kabushima shrines, going through wreckage, looking for bodies and people who might still be trapped.
Well, we found an arm jutting out from some mud and wreckage. Since I was nearby, I dug a bit until we could make out most of the torso and such. It was a girl, fucked if I could tell her exact age. Somewhere between 16 and 25 or whatever. Well I began pulling at her to get her free since her body didn't look to be under anything heavy. However, when I pulled at her, her body came free. I fell back and she freaking lands on me. Now here's the thing that's kind of fucked up about some of these bodies: They are mangled as fuck. As I pulled her out, her freaking stomach got torn open by some exposed metal or something, so this mess of coagulated blood just spills all over me along with god only knows what else.
I think what terrified me more was that her mouth kind of fell open or something because there was mud and shit all over my face but it was the foulest smelling mud ever.

In my nightmares though, she's a freaking zombie and she's pissed that I didn't save her a few days before since she looked like she had only been gone about 3 or 4 days.

In my nightmares though, she's joined by all the others who died in similar circumstances. And as I try to pull her out, all her dead friends are there to grab and pull me into the mud and wreckage. Thousands of arms grasping greedily at me...

Yeah. fun stuff...

neat

>>17317886
You did what you could Anon. You're just blaming yourself somewhere deep inside. She has nothing against you.

>>17317886
That's just awful, anon. I'm sure an experience like that never leaves you, but I hope it fades with time and you are able to move on. Listen to this guy. >>17318474

>>17315010
This smells like bullshit. She should provide the names of the drivers to atleast have people verify her accounts. This sounds like fiction.

>>17318859

Yeah she needs to cite sources for her senior paper, so the skeptical fucks online can long distance call these cabbies..

>>17315010
Goddamn she's cute as fuck. I usually don't go for asians.

>>17315010
are asians like africans?
do they openly believe in paranormal?

>>17318944
In one word: Yes.
http://www.examiner.com/article/japanese-supernatural-beliefs-a-brief-introduction

>The seven drivers' accounts cannot be easily dismissed as simple illusions.

Because whoever wrote this artical is lying. If you go there and show the taxi drivers this artical you will find out no one has told any of these stories

>>17315010
>This apparently happens all the time
>Nobody filmed in the year 2011+

>>17317485

you understand japanese?

>>17319091
I suck at the language actually. I only ever learned basic shit.
When I talk I sound like I'm a kindergartner or something. All broken as fuck.

>>17319094

just wondering. interesting story you have. were you frightened?

>>17319102
Frightened?
Terrified would be the word I'd use. Every earthquake afterwards would cause me to freeze up. I avoided actually getting into the ocean for a while (Which is odd considering I love the water). For a while I took heavily to geology to understand what all happened.

So yeah. Yeah I was frightened. When the earthquake itself hit I was trying to sleep because I was supposed to be at work that night. So when it hit I was first annoyed but was groggily amused because the earth was rocking me to sleep, but as it got bigger and bigger and I heard my place groaning and things falling all around me I became panicked. When it struck home that this was the big one all I could think of was some saying a paleontologist named Tom Holtz once told me "It's not the earthquakes that kill people. It's the collapsing buildings and stuff that kills people".

During it though, the word I'd use would be sublime. No amount of fancy sentence construction will ever be able to capture that moment for me.

>>17317531
Thanks anyway, I found some of those names earlier and it was not them, but there are two new names here.

Kudo is cute.

bamp

>>17317495

any moar pics anon?

>>17317886
That wasn't your fault and none of them blame you. You did what you could.

What weird stuff about the military made you leave?

Bump for Japanonymous

>>17321852
No, could you clarify a little?