creepypasta origins

scary Japanese urban legends

#1: The Snake Woman (Nure-Onna)

Do you enjoy a nice, cool swim on a hot day? Perhaps you are particularly averse to receiving a cooling dose of urine at the local swimming pool? Maybe you just like the sand beneath your toes as you walk the beaches, choosing a nice, quiet, isolated spot from the rest of the city plebs.

You put down your towel, throw off the constricting second skin that is your clothing, and head toward the waves.

But hark! You spot a woman in the water; long black hair flowing around her alabaster skin as she flails weakly. With speed and grace to rival the very best studs of the Baywatch era, you fling yourself into the oddly calm waters and swim her way.

You swim toward the endangered beauty, your eyes meeting as you work desperately to save your drowning Ophelia.

...except that now you seem to be paralyzed. Also, Ariel now appears to be using her long, prehensile snake-body to gracefully close the romantic distance between you. Perhaps, you consider, she simply wishes to save you from this terminal case of leg cramps? Perhaps the piercing of your tender man-flesh by her snake-like tongue is some odd form of mermaid CPR? No, you are now being slowly digested by the Snake Woman, or, "Nure-Onna".

The moral of the story should be fairly obvious: Don't try to save a drowning woman. She could be a snake-monster in disguise!

#2: Human Pillars (Hitobashira)

(a/n i feel that isn't creepy so much as weird.)

If Soylent Green taught us anything, it's that there are a great many practical uses for the human body. Japan reminds us just how practical they can be by presenting the Hitobashira, or, "Human Pillars". Seeing as the country is already one at the technological forefront, we have to assume that if Japan tells us, "hey, it's okay to seal living people inside walls and foundations, it'll make that shit more durable!", it has to be true! Right? Right? Because fuck cement!

Dating as far back as the 17th century, the story goes that as an offering to the gods, living people could be sealed into buildings as sacrifices, which would apparently please the great LEGO gods and ensure stability and longevity to the construct in question.

Bones and other remains have been found on-site of several different locations, lending at least some possibility that human sacrifice may have been involved in the making of these buildings. One such location is Jomon tunnel, located on the Sekihoku Main Line. In 1968, in the aftermath of an earthquake (or possibly due to pissed off ghosts) a number of skeletons were discovered sealed into the walls of the tunnel, standing upright. But then, maybe Japan just gets really uptight if you abuse your smoke breaks one time too many.

Seeing as many of these structures stand today, perhaps modern workers should take note: Just howdedicated are you to your job?

#3: Hanako-San of the Toilet

Because Japan just loves to punish you for basic bodily functions, this urban legend takes place in a washroom: specifically the third stall from the end of any elementary school washroom (in some variations, it's on the third floor). Unlike the previous urban legends, where the creatures will come at you unprovoked, Hanako needs to be summoned. Though the idea of luring a ghostly little girl into an empty bathroom falls further from "scary urban legend" and closer to "that paedophile on the news last week" than we'd like.