Ghosts have become almost commonplace for us. Nevertheless, sometimes information appears that can, if not surprise us, then at least intrigue us. After all, ghosts are not only the hazy silhouettes of the dead, which are sometimes found in ancient buildings and annoy their living inhabitants. It turns out that they can be found on the roads, in the subway, and even … in the school toilet. They can also appear on ultrasound images and send curses.
Monsters of Japanese metropolises
The Japanese "Encyclopedia of Monsters" contains more than a hundred stories about various monsters and ghosts, allegedly living in various parts of Japan. Here is, say, a popular urban horror story about Kutisakeonna, or a woman with a torn mouth. She seemed to have been killed and disfigured by a jealous husband, and then returned as a vengeful spirit.
They say that this is not quite a myth: a woman with a gauze bandage on her face has been met on the streets more than once … She approaches the children who are alone on the street and asks: "Am I beautiful?" If the child hesitated with the answer, then Kutisake-onna tears off the bandage from his face and shows him a huge scar at the place of the mouth, going through the entire face from ear to ear.
In the mouth of a woman, you can see sharp teeth that do not look like humans, and a forked tongue that resembles a snake. “Am I beautiful now?” Asks the stranger. In no case should you answer negatively, otherwise Kutisake-onna will cut off your head with scissors. True, even an affirmative answer will not make your lot easier: the ghost will cut your mouth open, and you will remain with the same scar for life. It is best to give an evasive answer like, "You look okay." Or try to ask the question before the ugly woman. Then she won't touch you.
One of the most common urban myths in Japanese megacities is the myth of the Dressing Hanako. She supposedly lives in the school toilet. Rather, it can appear in the third toilet stall on the third floor.
Therefore, before entering it, you must ask: "Hanako, is that you?" If an affirmative answer follows (usually pronounced in a very nasty voice), you must immediately run away as quickly as possible. If you open the stall door out of curiosity, then “an aggressive ghost can drown you in the toilet.
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Dirty curse
According to the head of the Azerbaijani Women's Crisis Center, Matanat Azizova, women who have become victims of "evil forces" often turn to her. The strangest story was told by an elderly woman. When she was still a girl, she said, the family was harassed by the girl's ghost, who braided the horses' mane and tail. “The father of this woman decided to catch the ghost by attaching a pin to it, and to him. According to the narrator, it succeeded, - Azizova says. - And then one day a ghost asked the girl to remove the pin. She did this, and the ghost vanished, saying at last that she cursed their kind. According to the curse, no matter how much the house is cleaned, it will still be dirty. And, as the elderly woman confessed, her house is really always dirty, despite repeated cleaning."
Phantoms on the roads of death
On the island of Borneo, there is a road along which thousands of prisoners of war passed during the Second World War. It is called the Death Road. Recently, retired Major John Talloch, who has studied historical events in the past, took a photograph in which you can see transparent silhouettes that look like people walking. True, the author himself does not believe in ghosts too much.
70 years ago, on this road, winding through the jungle, the Japanese drove the British and Australians captured by them for a month. They treated the prisoners very cruelly: they practically did not feed them, beat them and forced them to go barefoot. Many died of hunger and beatings on the way, while the rest were beaten with bayonets by the guards so that they would not be freed by American soldiers. Only six prisoners managed to escape, and they survived. This is considered the worst atrocity of the Japanese military during the Second World War.
John Talloch specially arrived in Borneo to take pictures of Death Road. Subsequently, looking at the photographs, in one of them he saw silhouettes resembling walking skeletons or people who are in an extreme degree of exhaustion.
Talloch is a realist, far from any mysticism, so he first tried to find a materialistic explanation for the anomaly in the picture. In the end, he decided that the phenomenon was nothing more than the reflection of a white towel that was lying on the dashboard while he was taking photographs. However, when the author showed the photo to other people, they called it "strange" and "frightening", and also argued that the "reflections" very much resemble human figures.
Ghosts are found on other military roads as well. For example, on the border of Buryatia with the Irkutsk region, there is the Khamar-Daban ridge, through which the trail leads to the city of Baikalsk. It is notorious among local residents - it is called the path of death, or the path of Genghis Khan.
During the Civil War, in January 1920, the remnants of the defeated corps of General Vladimir Kappel retreated along this path. Many of them died in the mountains from hunger and frostbite. Nobody picked up the bodies of the dead. Tourists staying here often see shadows near the tents. They say that these are the ghosts of the dead and not buried Kappel's soldiers. Sometimes people find weapons and orders in the vicinity of the trail. However, those who pick them up and take them with them begin to pursue various misfortunes …
Horror in the subway tunnels
They say that people who died in the subway stay there forever and then roam the tunnels in the form of ghosts. Here is one such story.
Once Alexei Kalachev from Nizhny Novgorod and his girlfriend Tatyana were returning home by metro at about half past eleven in the night. They had to get off at the Zarechnaya station.
“The car was still in the tunnel,” says Alexey. - Tanya and I got up and went to the door. The train slowed down a little. We were already preparing to leave, when, right before leaving the platform between the train and the wall, we clearly saw a dull white spot, vaguely reminiscent of a man in a construction helmet. It was so unexpected that we even jumped away from the door!"
On July 13, 1984, during the construction of the Moskovskaya metro station in Nizhny Novgorod (then still the city of Gorky), the walls were destroyed. Two young workers from a student construction brigade were killed. It is possible that their ghosts are now walking through the tunnels.
Face on ultrasound
Ghosts can look like a projection of the face of the deceased and "appear" in the most unexpected places. So, the spouses Marcelo and Famela de Sousa were shocked when several years ago, during an ultrasound procedure, they saw on the screen … the face of Marcelo's late mother.
The study was conducted at 10 weeks of gestation. Marcelo was the first to notice the mysterious image on the monitor, and later his wife drew attention to him, looking at the pictures. Of course, the image looked rather blurry, but still it very much resembled the face of the man's mother, who had died four months earlier.
The birth went well, and now de Souza's little daughter is already three years old. Marcelo is convinced that the image that arose during the ultrasound scan was a sign that his mother gave from the other world - she wanted to show that her soul should move into a baby.
“I knew right away that it was her,” he says. - She returned to us to continue to take care of us and love. I showed the picture to many of my friends and they were shocked by the similarity."
However, the supernatural "reproduction" of the image of a deceased person anywhere is in itself a rather frightening event. Although it is possible that someday science will find an explanation for this.
Researcher Michael Cohen believes that the appearance of such patterns may be just an optical illusion, and their resemblance to the "original" is just an accident. However, who knows, suddenly the inhabitants of the other world manifest themselves in this way?
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №51. Author: Dina Kuntseva