Tokyo Spectre Brigade (1)

August in Japan means 5 things: a week off of work, ramune, watermelon, taking 4 showers a day, and GHOSTS! This posts kicks off our first in a series of 心霊スポット(haunted spots) reports.

For our first outing, we decided to go all out, visiting the abandoned Fukiage tunnels in Ome, Tokyo. According to our source on Japanese hauntings, this place is supposed to be where it's at. Unfortunately, no ghosts were there along with it.... More on that at the end of the post. Here's what we found:

The road leading to the first of two tunnels. Yes, it is still daytime.... We figured we would hit the weaker of the two tunnels during the late afternoon to build up our courage.

"Beware of female phantom"

Enter at your own peril!

One of the biggest collections of awful graffiti in Japan. The scariest thing about the tunnel was that if you stand at one end and your friend talks to you in a hushed voice from the opposite side, you can hear them as if they were behind you talking into your ear.

This is the phantom we were warned about earlier. Mineral deposits and mold vaguely resembling a woman with long black hair wearing kimono or the restless soul of a scorned woman?

Michael Jackson's new haunt? This was embedded in the wall of the tunnel, below it in the mud was a pair of women's tights.

This tunnel is over 100 years old and is imfamous as one of Japan's most haunted spots. After climbing a (small) mountain, sneaking past the Japanese version of the house from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and trespassing on government land, we found that the city had recently sealed the place up for good. Despite DrSenbei's lackadaisical rattling of the huge padlock on the door, this pretty much brought our day to a close. Whammy!

Conclusion

If you live in the Kanto area and want a good excuse to get out of the city without having to go to another temple or shrine, this is your place. I might have sounded cynical in my captions, but the tunnel really was rather spooky and fun, ghost or no ghost. We took turns walking through it alone, and I have to admit that I kept looking over my shoulder and getting freaked out by the acoustics. That, plus knowing that I was somewhere I shouldn't be, made me feel like a kid again in the best way possible.

You can take a bus almost directly to the mountain with the tunnels, but I really recommend walking there to get the most out of the mountainside. Here is a MAP.

Ome is also famous for it's Showa era Japanese Cinema Street, where you can check out all sorts of vintage movies posters and the like. More info on that at this guy who I don't know's blog.