May 26, 2025 • 63 mins
Mark, Pam, and Jess
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Aokigahara (Japan's Suicide Forest)
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Discuss
Aokigahara (Japan's Suicide Forest)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Have you ever wondered what was out there in the
night sky, stared up at the stars in the hopes
of seeing something out of the ordinary. Have you heard
unexplainable noises coming from a vacant room or watched the
shadow across the wall in front of you. Have you
asked yourself if there is life after this one or
if you had life before? What about strange creatures that
(00:28):
are mythical and elusive? Have you experienced dejeuvus or felt
a prompting to leave because you felt you were in danger.
If you have, you were on the Fringe.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome to other episode of On the Fringe. I'm Mark,
I Pam, and I am Jess. The Three Musketeers are back.
So we've got an interesting show tonight. We're going to
talk about a Yoki Gahara forest in Japan, which is
(01:20):
known as Japan's suicide Forest. So before we get started,
I want to warn everybody that this is a sensitive
topic and so we're going to try to treat it
as respectfully as we can, and we're going to try
to concentrate on some of the other stuff besides what
(01:41):
it's famous for. Now we are going to talk with
that talk about that. But you'll notice if you're on
here on the live or on YouTube or whatever, we're
running a link to the National Suicide Crisis Hotline. For
those of you who are listening, you dial nine eight.
(02:03):
It is manned by both English and Spanish speaking people
twenty four hours to day, seven days a week. Somebody
will talk to you. Please, if you're feeling any feelings
like that, call talk to somebody, get some help, because
we in no way want to codone anything like that.
(02:25):
We want people to get the help that they need.
So I believe this is still National Mental Health Month. Yes, yes,
so this is a good episode for that. Please, if
you need the help, there are people there out there
to help you. So we're going to get started. So
(02:48):
everybody has heard of Japan's suicide Forest. It's at the
foot of Mount Fuji, and the locals call it ju Kai,
which means the sea of trees. The trees are literally
so dense that it looks like you can walk across
(03:08):
the top of them. A volcanic eruption. And I can't
remember what year it was six something or maybe yeah, yeah,
So this was all lava in eight sixty four and
as many of you know, lava fields and eruption zones
(03:34):
can many years later turn into incredibly rich environments, lots
of nutrients in the soil, And this is what's happened. There,
literally a sea of trees. It's very inhospitable to walk
in the ground is very uneven. There's roots all over
the top of the ground because they're growing right out
(03:54):
of the stone. And plus it's dangerous. There's a lot
tubes that can break open and you can fall in
uh and many people get lost and perish there accidentally
because compasses don't always work right because there's a high
(04:17):
amount of iron in the lava flows. So if you
do go, because there are many reasons to go. Besides,
you know what we're talking about, stay on the paths,
stay with the guides, because.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Us we were talking about this backstage. I went and
looked at the website for this particular force, and it
doesn't appear that you can even gain access legally anyway
without being groups.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, I would like to go. I would like to
go to the Narosowa ice cave cave, or really the
Lake Psycho bat Cave. I want a bat cave under
the house, though it needs to come with a car
and a butler. But I mean and no bats and
(05:15):
no bats. Bats are so messy.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Yeah, well they're.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Cute, man. I mean, we've never seen him in the
same room with.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
That, that's true.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I don't know. I do need a butler though. Have
you seen my house? It's bad. I need a maid
and a butler. So let me get my notes out here. Look,
I actually have notes. So I'm still trying to turn
over that new leaf, you know, and be proactive. I
(05:52):
know how many episodes in a row. Now I've actually
been adequately prepared.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Spantay so.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
A Yoki Gahara forest. There are a lot of folklore
and superstitions about this forest in particular, but about forests
in general. In Japan. The Japanese people are a very
spiritual people. They believe in eight million gods and all
(06:29):
kinds of demons and creatures which may or may not
be both a god or a demon or or what
have you. Everything has a spirit, so there are very
spiritual people. So they have a lot of beliefs, and
so there are stories, especially in a Yoki Gahara about
(06:54):
your eye or the ghosts of the dead, and a
lot of this. It was back to the eighteen hundreds
when there's a myth about ubasute and it's the act
of literally abandoning the old lady. So when times were
(07:19):
hard and they were having trouble feeding their families, it
would sometimes happen, and thankfully not often, but oftener than
I would like to think, they would lure or take
their sick or elderly family members and abandon them in
(07:42):
a forest for them to die with dignity.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I don't know how much dignity that was.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I find it excessively cruel, but I mean that was,
and I'm sure that everybody does. This is supposedly where
a lot of these ghostly spirits, angry spirits come from.
From this practice.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Memai out there in the forest to die, I wouldn't
be surprised when she comes back to haunt you.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I would be a little angry.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Myself, ungrateful, brat.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That is the main things they talk about, uh, But
then they talk about all of the other things that
you might find in a Japanese forest. There are tingu,
which are part human part bird. You know, they often
have red faces or a long nose or beak kodama.
(08:46):
I'm actually pronouncing these pretty well. I actually had some
Japanese lessons, so I'm not going to butcher these quite
as bad as normally. So sorry, sorry for those of
you whose languages I have abused and I will continue
to abuse because I can't hardly speak English. So the
(09:07):
kodama are spirit beings like small gohot serenities h yamabko uh.
They're a small elusive mountain spirit or yokai uh joe rogumo,
which is a spider that can shape shift into a
(09:28):
beautiful woman and lure you into your web. I know
that's scary. This one I'm gonna birch butcher because it's
very long. Mo ku mo ku wren, which actually I
think I might have pronounced right. I just can't string
it all together. Their eyes appearing in torn soji paper
(09:49):
with the sliding doors. It's made out of the real
thin paper. They're just eyes that stare at you. Yeah yeah, Tanuki.
These are actually kind of cute looking. I mean, I've
seen the dragon. They're a raccoon dog with magical powers,
often shown with comical or exaggerated appearance. They're kind of
(10:11):
like a squirrel.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Huh, like a pokemon or something.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, I mean a lot of these were based on
some of these uh Japanese folk like Kapa. That'st one
I've got is Kappa, which is a pokemon. It's a
turtle like humanoid with a water filled head dish and
a beak faced one which are large horned ogres with
(10:40):
red or blue skin. So they have all sorts of
things that you know, the uh in Japanese folklore that
might might be out there to get you. Uh. Shouldn
bokuk shouldn't boku uh. Sacred trees believe to be the
(11:02):
physical form or home of a kami, which is a
Shinto deity. It's one of their eight million gods uh.
And then mountain Kami deities of the mountains and forests.
So there's all sorts of things that Japanese folklore in
general says might be in the forest. Well, if there's a.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Little raccoon dog thing out there, I'm gonna die because
I'm gonna want to pet it.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, I actually, I mean the tanuki's sound like they
would make a great pet. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. So, yeah,
we're all going find one there. If you find one,
I would really like to know.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Is it just me or do like all like Asian
type related names of things like super cute, sounding like
nothing sounds scary.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Some of them sound I mean they are right. When
you look at the background of their folklore and then
you go to this forest, what you see is a
very dark, dungeony looking place. The canopy is so thick,
(12:19):
very little light hits the ground. The ground is hard
to navigate, the trees are bent and twisted in sometimes
bizarre shapes. And it's incredibly quiet because the volcanic soil
there absorbs the sound, and the trees even are so
(12:40):
thick even the wind can't get down to the grounds.
You don't hear the wind. And then Jess was telling
us that the volcanic gases runs off all the birds,
so it's super quiet and airy. So it's like.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
This the perfect place to get creep the heck out.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Perfect creep zone, and so the when you add all
this folklore to it, it looks like the perfect place
to run into these things. So I can see where
the scary feeling. But most of the problems that they're having,
I believe comes from two books that were published in Japan,
(13:32):
one in the sixties and one shortly after. Uh Let
Me see if I can find the name of the one.
The other one is the Complete Guide to Suicide, which
is often found on the the victims.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Of their Yeah, has Unfortunately, that book named that actual
forest as.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
A perfect place, a perfect place. Why would you do that?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And why would you allow it to stay in print?
I mean, I'm not I'm not a book banner by
any means, but that one would.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It's not like it's an old book. It was. It
was printed in nineteen ninety three, so it's not like
it's from you know, the early.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I would really, if I was serious about fixing things,
that would do my best to make sure that book
just ceased to exist.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah, yes, I would.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
I would almost claim to say that the person who
wrote in that book, and then the people who published it,
and the people who distributed it and the stores that
sold it should all be held accountable for murder.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
I'm just saying I think I think it's actually kind
of an underground print thing. I don't think it can
be printed anymore. Several of the booklets I saw online
were it looked like they were photocopied and stable together. Yeah,
so there's that. But it is a super spooky place
(15:06):
and even some of the caves around there, which I
really want to visit, are super spooky just because they're caves.
For instance, that Narusawa ice cave. It never gets above
two degrees celsius year round, which is like thirty five
(15:26):
degrees thirty seven. Ice exists in there all year round.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It's beautiful. I've got some pictures, you know. Let me
let me share this picture because it is absolutely gorgeous.
There's now get online and look up some of these caves.
This is the main reason I would want to go there.
And it's beautiful, even though it's spooky. The whole forest
is beautiful. Let me share.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
It looks Yeah, it looks like something out of a
fairy tale or it's very wild.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's it's gorgeous. I mean they've shown some blue light
on there to make it even prettier.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Bit it looks like the backdrop for a prom.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
It really does. Just me. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Even his understanding was the forest was already renowned for
suicide before the books were published. Yeah, it was, it.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Was not not as not as much. And after the
two books were published and then it got really really Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Out of the first book was called Tower of waves,
and it was a fictional story, but in the main character,
the girl ends up walking into the forest to do
exactly that, to take her own life, and it was
kind of an epic type of story that people just
kind of wanted to follow along with. So a double
(16:58):
whammy there.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So, and I have heard that it is a really
good book if you read Japanese literature. I don't know.
My idea of Japanese literature is my manga collection. Yes,
I have one, And this does not surprise anybody who
(17:20):
listens to the show.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
No, we would be shocked if you didn't have a collection.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, well, it's all digital because I'm cheap. But still
I do have a collection.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I'n wrong with that. You know what I thought was
interesting was I knew that there was a couple of
movies that had been made, but I didn't realize until
I was looking through some stuff today that there was
one made in twenty twenty one as well, And it's
called The Suicide Forest Village and it's by the people
that made the Grudge, the same makers.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Event Well, yeah, and it actually appears in a lot
of manga and anime. It is so very famous for that,
and you know, that place has got to be hometed.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, the listing of haunting aspects is huge, Like when
we get into that, there's like a list a mile
long of things that supposedly happened. And I also I scrounged.
I was trying to find some like personal stories of
people who have gone in to kind of see if
you know, I could glean anything from those, and there's
not a lot because it's not local to us, so
(18:30):
we're not going to find a whole bunch on it
in English. I did, however, find one paranormal group who
went in there quite a few years ago, but they
listed their entire story online of kind of what happened.
It was super interesting and some of the stuff that
happened to them.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, I feel like it would be a very interesting
place to investigate. I'm not sure I would because I'm
not sure how respectful that would be, right, you know,
And I really wouldn't want to advertise it because I
wouldn't want to encourage, you know, what's been going on.
I really want to discourage what's been going on. But
(19:12):
I can't stop those people anymore than I can go
to California and stop people from jumping off the Golden Gate,
which is, by the way, the number one place in
the world for suicides. Yep, even and this one's only
number two. So if that tells you it's how famous
this one is, you know, the Golden Gate's even more famous. Ah.
(19:40):
But yeah, it would be an incredible place to investigate,
but I would probably not publish anything from it, just
so I wouldn't encourage anything, you know. But with that,
you want to tell us some of the stories you found? Cool?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Oh yeah, well, let's let's go through like some of
the stuff that happens there first, and then I'll hop
in on their story because it validates a little bit
of it and not others. So I found and you
guys hop into with anything that you heard out of
my listing. So inside of there there are cursed and
(20:22):
ritual sites that were used for quite a long time.
In fact, I found one personal story of a I
can't remember what they're called. It's equivalent to what up
like a park ranger would be for something in the US.
They have like park rangers for that area and nature guides.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I think is as close as I could find it.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Yeah, yeah, kind of.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
I found one report from one that said he walked
in once and ran onto a group of sixty people
performing an entire an entire like meditative fire thing happening.
That they were trying to summon a demon, and it
took him forever to get it broke up and get
(21:06):
him out of there. That was just the kind of
stuff he said that they dealt with that. No, so
that's not good. There's complaints about incredible cold spots, even
on summer days. Cold spots that are so low you
can see your breath in them. Disembodied voices, footsteps, the
(21:29):
sounds of people following you as you walk through, lights
and orbs that follow people all the way through, the
feeling of sickness, getting dizzy, bad luck and sometimes bad
luck that'll follow you out for a time of course,
hauntings and paranormal activity that follows people home and will
(21:52):
actually last for months afterwards, which is a common occurrence
with any kind of paranormal activity. If you stick with
it for too long, it's gonna take a trip with you.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
That would definitely be a place I would not take
a stone or rock or stick or anything.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And some of the spookier things that happen the people
who go through there searching the forest. It's so easy
to get lost in. They trail plastic tape through the
forest so they can follow it back because even though
they know the forest probably better than anyone, they get
lost so bad because sometimes compasses work and sometimes they don't.
(22:32):
And yeah, the GPS doesn't work too good because the
trees block.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Yeah, the compasses don't work because all the iron ore
that's in the the the ash, the lava flow.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Now they say you hold it at chest level, they
generally work, but if you hold it any lower, it
gets closer to the iron deposits and it may or
may not just enough to make it so you get
truly unforgettably lost. But the creepy thing thing is is
a lot of these people have reported part of their
tape being torn off and disappearing. So they get back
(23:09):
part way and their tape's gone.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Yeah, that's that's one of the things I have in here.
They actually have a supposed demon that's in charge of that.
Oh yeah, he snips the ribbons. He's the ribbon snipper.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
And you know, this is not a small place. It
is thirteen point five square miles and nothing but trees exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, And you'd think as small as it is, which
is still pretty big, that it wouldn't have such a
I mean, shouldn't have been able to develop such a
huge reputation. But some of the smaller forests in the
world have these huge reputations. One of the things that
(23:57):
we're probably going to talk about at some point is
the hot To Bayou for us, which is very small,
that has so much stuff that goes on in it.
This one's the same. It's a bit bigger, big enough.
They call it the Sea of Trees, but just so
much goes on there. Besides you know what it's known for.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I thought it was interesting too. It's really only like
two hours outside of Tokyo, which Tokyo is a huge city.
So yeah, it's interesting very far. Ian said, lights and
orbs could be seismic activity. I'm increasingly convinced geology has
a lot to answer for.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah. I don't think you're wrong.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Ian, Yeah, no, I don't think you're wrong.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
It's like Mark says, you know, magic and the paranormal
and the supernatural is just science we haven't figured out yet.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yep, a lot of it.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Yeah, Okay, So moving on, we'll get through the rest
of this so walking trails that shift directions and the forest.
They actually think that the forest in hole turns in
place so that the exits change, And there might be
(25:17):
something to that I'm going to talk about here in
just a little bit. They claim there's magical places inside
that people will run onto and it'll only be found
the one time and then it disappears. There's stories about
all these little like it's almost like a Fay type situation.
The forest demon who'll cut the ropes or the ribbons
(25:39):
used by the hikers to find their way out, apparitions
of the victims of the suicides. And also the monks.
Mark didn't mention at the beginning, but there was also
an entire group of monks for quite a I think
it was two or three hundred years use the forests.
They would go out and go into a self deep
meditation and would just basically starve and starve to death.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, they also have monks today that go into the
forest on a regular basis, and they have little Buddhist
shrines set up all over to help dispel the evil
creatures of the forest.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Yeah, and then missing time people report going in for
a short hike and they leave thinking they've been there
for thirty minutes, and when they come back out, they
find out they've been gone for a few days, and shrieks,
growls and screams. They apparently the screaming is usually children,
(26:38):
the sound of children screaming, and that's the one that's
heard most often. And there's you know, little you know,
you're usually.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Say if you follow the screams, you're going to find
a victim.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
There's all sorts of stories, so I was I always
like to try to find personal stories that go along
with these places, because I think it kind of brings
it home for people a little bit more if you hear,
you know, like an everyday person's personal experience. And I
couldn't find a lot on this because first of all,
it's out of our country. Most of the people who
(27:10):
go in here do not speak our language, so I
couldn't find a whole lot. But I did find one
really interesting one a team and I'm not gonna say
who they are or because I don't have rights to
their story or anything, but I'm gonna tell you a
little bit about it. They went there a number of
years ago, and it was a a girl and a
guy and their two ghost hunting friends, and they flew
(27:34):
into Tokyo and drove out of Tokyo, and like Pam said,
it's only like two or two or four miles away
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You can see from you can see Fuji from Tokyo.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, yeah, and it's right at the base of Fuji.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
So yeah, and they decided to go hiking through and
they were going to stay overnight. They were going to
camp out overnight and see what happened and believe it
or not. Interesting, This is going to set this up
a little bit better so you guys can understand how this.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Place is set up.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
They said, they were very surprised it was set up
for people to really be a part of it. There
was two huge areas you could park and then go
up into the forest and go hiking. And they were
separated by this suicide forest, one on either side, and
there was a walking trail to get to the other
side that goes through the middle of the suicide forest.
(28:32):
So imagine that. So you're seeing kind of like an
h shape. So you got a parking lot here, a
parking lot here, and in between a is the forest,
and there's a path that goes right through the middle
of it to take you right to the other side,
but it was from the point of view from the girl.
When they got there, she said, the parking lots and
the areas right around that were kind of done up
(28:53):
for families to hang out, little parks and stuff like that.
She said, but once you walked into the tree line,
it almost went dead quiet. Their voices just went away,
and they walked in and it just got more dense
and more quiet, no bugs, no birds. And then of
course they started seeing the lines that would go in
(29:14):
to the forest, and they opted not to They I
think they showed one picture of one ribbon and then
decided not to show the rest because they didn't think
it was proper, and I don't think it was either,
But they said it was just the scariest, lowliest place.
It was broad daylight outside but dark as night inside.
And they said they actually kind of forgot about what
(29:36):
time was like in there, because it already feels like nighttime,
so you just kind of lose how long you've been inside.
Any who, long story short, She and her husband actually
decided to go back because she caught cold and she
didn't want to be out there much longer. But the
other two decided to stay out there and camp, and
so they walked. They hiked thirty minutes in with them
(30:00):
to get to their camping spot, and then decided to
go back. And they went straight back on the same trail,
and what had taken them thirty minutes to walk took
them two hours to get back out of. And another
interesting thing was is they took that exact same trail back.
They followed their entire path back, and not only did
it take two hours to get back, it also took
(30:21):
them to the wrong parking lot. So the whole story
about the entire the entire forest almost like rotating. Yeah,
she wondered, really if, because if that was it, you know,
because they ended up having to walk the trail all
(30:41):
the way back through again to get to their to
get their car on the other side.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Now even more interesting than that, they said, on their
way back, they were followed by shadows the whole way there,
skirting behind the trees. They were trying to hurry because
it was starting to scare them, and they were also
hearing that weird whispering and sometimes that screaming sound behind them.
So they ended up they found their car. They got
(31:08):
back into Tokyo and stayed the night, and in the
morning at about that she said, it was probably about
five in the morning, they got a frantic phone call
from the two that had stayed overnight in the forest saying,
come and get us now, we can't do this anymore.
And they were like, well, can you wait a little while,
We still need to check out and do with all
this stuff. And they were like, you do whatever you want,
(31:30):
but we're walking right now. We're going to walk towards Tokyo,
and you meet us wherever you run into us. And
she said that they've never ever told her or her
husband what happened that night, Neither one of them have
ever said. But they found them five miles outside headed
back towards Tokyo. They literally just started walking while they
(31:53):
were on the phone with her and didn't stop.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
So they made five miles in two hours, basically.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Basically yeah, and they were like, we're out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Mark, can you pull those pictures up so we can
kind of show everybody a little bit what It'll give
them an idea. There's like a path that would have
gone through followed.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Walk path ideas about the missing time and stuff. There
you know, we've had missing time here, We've had this
disappearing and reappearing houses and whatnot around here. Think about
how close this is to this active volcano. There is
(32:34):
a high rate of conductive iron in the soil. And
what would you want to bet that there aren't multiple
lay lines through there? Oh?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Probably, so I could probably look that up.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, you could probably get time slips, dimensional slips, all
kinds of weird stuff going on there. And it would
be hard to tell from the normal creepiness that goes
on there because the trees are so dense, it's so dark,
it's so quiet. So yeah, I can totally see that. Uh.
(33:14):
And they do not actually encourage camping there anymore. It's allowed,
but they were going to discourage you as much as
they can without actually telling you that you have to leave.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yeah, you're going to be suized the entire time.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, it's a It's not a place I would care
to camp, yea, because the odds of getting lost in
there are even if you're even if you're an expert hiker,
it's astronautal, you are probably going to get lost.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Where this path is. You can't see the end, you know,
And so I'm sure, I confident if you turned around
and look the other way, it would look just like this.
So it's a very liminal filling place as well, which
pretty much opens it up to anything, right, And we've
(34:15):
got oh, come on there, it's like it's not showing,
I think. And there's one of the caves that are
in there. I'm not sure which cave this is.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
There's a lot of unnamed caves there where there's collapsed
lava tubes and stuff through there, and some places the
crust is probably thin enough with the trees disturbing it
where you could fall in and they would never find you.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
I could see that this. I love this picture. I mean,
this is how the entire ground is in there. It's
it's all LoVa, I mean it. I think it was
six months that no I could neither's it was six
months that the volcano erupted and it completely smothered out
villages and all kinds of things, and it left this round,
(35:12):
you know, in this very bubbly look. And then you've
got the trees on top of it, which the the
roots can't get down under that, so they're all across
the top of the ground too. And then you've got
like wild you know, rambles and stuff in there that
go everywhere. It's very cool looking.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
It is cool looking. And you brought up another point.
There were I'm sure more than one or two villages
in there that got totally wiped out in eight sixty six, was.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
It, Yeah, something like it was a thousand years ago.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
So yeah, so some of those mounds could be what's
left over our villages and that was not that was
not a good way to go. So there could be
you know, actual spirits there from that. Yeah, and it
would have helped build up the legends and stuff. Like
I said, Japan.
Speaker 6 (36:09):
Has a very rich ah folkal history, uh, which I
find utterly fascinating.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
But you know, when you get into a place like this,
it just makes you think that anything could be around
the corner.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean look at the Look
at the shape that this one tree is in. Yeah,
and the trees are like this all through there.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, trying to find some they're so the canopy is
so thick they can't. They have to grow sideways to
go up to get a to get sunlight.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
These make me think of there's I can't remember what
they're called, but there's uh, trees that are bent intentionally
by Native Americans that they would use to point towards
water sources and things like that. And this is what
it makes me think of it, because it's got that
really sharp bendner.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Maybe where they got the idea for bondsai, I don't know, Yeah,
maybe I don't know. I'm I wish I knew more
Japanese people. I could pick their brains about this.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
And you know, I ran across on my notes here.
We were talking about that there were monks that were there,
and one of the traditions did say that they would
meditate in the forest for a thousand days, subsisting on
nothing more than leaves and bark, and then they would
go to be buried alive to continue meditating in an
underground crypt and the ultimate goal was to transform the
(37:44):
body while still allied, into a type of money. Yes,
and yeah, so there's like the remains of eighteen of
these self momified monks are on They're on display in
different parts of Japan, which is crazy, and I cannot
I can try to pronounce the word so ku shin butsu,
soku shin butsu.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
That's pretty close. If I'm not reading it, I can't.
I can't pronounce Japanese very well.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I'm reading it, I can't pronounce it, So you're way
ahead of me. What did Ian say? Interesting that two
volcanic areas, Mount Fiji and Mount Shasta have a strong
association with weird activities. It's interesting that you say that, Ian.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Because more than one.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah too, when you guys were talking about them finding
what was it sixty people that were trying to raise
a demon that I was thinking of Mount Shasta and
the fact that somebody gathered there to try to work
magic things.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
A lot of volcanic locations in the world have a
lot of weird things that go on there, and so, yeah,
it is an interesting point that you've brought up, and
maybe that should be a show sometime, the correlation between
weird things and volcanic activity. Let me back it up there. Yeah,
(39:10):
that might be something interesting to look at in the future,
because Ian did bring up a very good subject there.
I mean, it is interesting.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
And I think it's pretty wild too that you know,
you've got Mount Fiji, which is the volcano which we
all know. You know, lava is molten rock, that's how
hot the volcanoes are. But right next to it. You've
got this ice cave that is got ice in it
all year round, all the time. It's a little little
above freezing constantly. So I think it's fascinating that it's
(39:44):
just consists of this, you know, just right next to
each other.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yeah, I'd really love to go there. I think they've
got some sort of glowing worm that lives in one
of those caves that is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
So that's been wild find it all right, I did.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
I'm gonna have to do a little bit more research
on it because it's really hard to find a flattened
map with the lay lines laid on it all the
way across. But there is a lay line that runs
through it. In fact, there's a huge conglomeration of them
that meet in the Sea of Japan, and one of
those go over it, and by the looks of it,
and don't quote me on this, because I can't be
for sure until I get it all laid out, I'll
(40:26):
have to work on a little bit, but it looks
like it may be the same lay line that runs
through Telequah.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Okay, everybody knows there's a lot of weird stuff in yeah. Sure.
And then there's the paranormal stuff.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, they're they're not far from our parallel this forest,
it's all along the same band.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
So interesting.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
So yeah, I'll have to do some work on that one,
but I'll do some work on it and we'll do
an update at a later time.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
All right, that sounds good. So we've got a few
more slides, do we?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I got a couple more. This next one was it's
a picture of just discarded belongings that are left in
an area of the force where the suicides are most
often occurring.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
And I have seen tons of photos of left behind belongings.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
This is one of many many that is that's it
is creepy.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
It's sad. I did quite a bit of research for
this one, and I was left with a a very
deep sense of sadness about how many people felt the
need to do this. Anybody who's listening, anybody who's watching
(41:56):
on the I encourage you to donate your time or
money to suicide prevention. I had family members. This one's
a hard one for me. So please share the hotline
nine eight eight with people. If you feel the need
(42:20):
to volunteer, Please volunteer, Please donate your money to these
organizations and for goodness sakes, if you know somebody who
needs someone to listen to them, please take the time
to do that.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah, you know, And if you know of someone who
you think might be in a bad way and are
needing help, you can also call the National Suicide Crisis
Hotline and they can help you take the next steps
to help them get the help that they need.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Absolutely, absolutely so, because a lot of times people don't
know a lot to do, so they do nothing.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, So that's why I'm leaving this
ticker run for the whole show again. It's the National
Suicide Crisis Hotline dial nine eight eight anywhere in the
United States, and you will get a hold of somebody
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Speaker 5 (43:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
So, And many of these people are doing this unpaid.
I'm sure they have some paid people doing it, but
it's it's important. Please please do that for me. If
you do get nothing else out of this show, please
do that. But let's get back to the paranormal stuff, because.
Speaker 4 (43:43):
Yeah, I was gonna say, interestingly, this isn't the only
forest that is known for this. They're all over the place.
We have one near us called the Parallel Forest, down
in Oklahoma, and unfortunately, the nearby Indian tribe had a
very high suicide rate inside the parallel forest for quite
a long time. Mark mentioned it earlier. The Hoya Batchu
(44:08):
that's in Romania has an extraordinarily high suicide rate inside
of it, and we'll have to do a fringe on
that sometime because the Hooya Batchu islip amazing. We touched
on it a little bit in Border Town Strange on
the Missing Time episode. Just the Missing Time stories are
(44:32):
amazing out of it.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
So, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
I I wish there was more stuff on the web
available for the Missing Time stories, for for the or Jucai.
Sorry for this, because there are I've heard them, They've
even mentioned them in you know, some of My man
(45:00):
Go and such.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
So it's I mean, look at the area in these witcheries.
You get just a little bit into those trees and
look back, you're not going to see the path regardless.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
I'm surprised that there's no sasquatch like activity there because
that looks squatchy to me. But I don't I don't
know if you know, I'm not aware if there's any Japanese.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Oh the other is is there?
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:34):
You can't remember what they're called.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
I'll find it.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
I'm on the hut, okay, well you're hunting.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Didn't run onto them, but that looks like a place
where you'd find one, right.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
We talked a little bit about how they stopped reporting,
and I ran across on my notes where it was.
So after a high number of suicides was reported in
two thousand and four, there was a total of one
hundred and eight within the forest, official stop publis the
deaths for fear of glorifying the practice, because it was
already glorified enough at that point. So in two thousand
(46:06):
and nine they started hiring people to patrol the forest
and to approach anyone that might not look like they
were the average tourist, you know, to find out if
they were okay and did they need help, and and
so it did help discourage some suicides, but there were
ongoing reports of bodies being discovered, and this particular so
(46:30):
the photographer that took this picture here, his name's Tama's Lazaar.
He did say that his guide that took him into
the area where most of the bodies were discovered, he
had that guide had once discovered thirty six bodies within
thirty seven days. That's nuts.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
These same groups of actually located lost hipers too, So that's.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
A good thing they have, for sure.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
So I wonder how many of the people who who's
they have found just got lost.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Yeah makes you wonder, doesn't it. Yeah, yeah, I found it.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
They're called they're called the hebbigone and it's it's the
same as a bigfoot or a yetti. Here's a little
sketchy sketch.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Oh nice.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Nice. So I would expect to maybe see one in
that forest. Maybe not, because the trees are so thick
they could get right up on you and you'd never
find them.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
I mean if they lived out there, they would know
the ins and out.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
So they say a human being gets twenty thirty feet
away from you in the right part of the forest,
you won't find them.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Well, look at the day that we took the paranormal
club just outside of town and walked them down over
Stone Bridge and stuff, and we passed a hunter that
was in a tree that none of us except for
one person saw, and that was on our way back out.
It looked within.
Speaker 7 (48:03):
Thirty, probably less than that, about twenty feet of him.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Oh I know, I didn't feel bad. We messed up
his deer hunt really bad. And if you're listening, or
somebody you know is listening, please tell the gentlemen that
we're very sorry too.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
Are sorry?
Speaker 7 (48:25):
I know one of the ladies was like sorry, and
he just shook his head setting in the tree. I
did have looking for this is this is the last
slide that I had. And this is a sign that
they have posted at the entrance to the forest, and
(48:48):
it translates into quietly, think once more about your parents,
siblings or children. Please don't suffer alone, and first reach.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Out and then they give you a number yep.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
And they put enough along the bottom to call.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
So I like the idea of the three digit number.
I hope that many other countries adopt this to make
it easier to share.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
And I think you can. Can't you text that number two?
I don't think you actually have to call.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
You might be able to. I'm not sure I've got
the the site here. There is a website https slash
slash nine eight eight lifeline dot org.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
So yeah, you can text it text nine eight eight
Because I know there's a lot of people that don't
like to talk on the phone, and this would be
a way that you could do it without any to
do that.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Folently, So please do that. Ian has a good one, says,
I wonder if there's a prime eval genetic built in
fear of force for humans, thinking of fair fairy tales
hundreds of years old, hands on, Greteline, the little red
riding Head, et cetera. I think you're correct, because when
(50:12):
you go into forests, they have things like wolves and
bears and.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Snakes, and it's so easy for you kids to get lost,
you know, or bit or you know.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah, the normal forest is bad enough to get lost
in some place as dense as that, it's got to
be absolutely frightening and as quiet as it is, you know,
it just absorbs the sound, so somebody could be one
hundred yards from you never hear them.
Speaker 5 (50:42):
Hey, Mark, I mailed you.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
I emailed you a picture of the hippogone.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Roger.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
It's pretty it's pretty great. I thought it deserved more
than like me sticking my phone up by.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
My Oh that's all right, hold on, we're going to
share this, bad boy. This is this is fun.
Speaker 5 (51:11):
Yeah, I will say there.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
I don't believe there's one continent on the planet that
does not host some version of Bigfoot.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, I was a topic, but this is this is
the first one I've seen for japan video. I am
having trouble. We're going to have to Why can't I
share that? It's not letting me here? Were you get it?
(51:45):
I got it?
Speaker 4 (51:47):
Hey, because everyone at home needs to see this?
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Is it? Isn't it lovely?
Speaker 4 (51:55):
I don't know what's funnier, the big like statue or
the little fine I don't know.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
They're They're both pretty.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
They're both pretty spectacular.
Speaker 5 (52:06):
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
I like the conveniently grown flowering bush.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
In the way as it conveniently hides the nethers.
Speaker 5 (52:22):
There we go, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Am by the way. Because of the subject matter and
and stuff, I'm going to mark this as explicit when
I post it on uh spreaker for all of our
audio listeners out there in the podcast.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Yes, I do think we need to touch a little
bit on the good deeds that also go along with
the story. We were talking about it backstage. There's several
people that act actually spend their time at the forest
nearly daily, and they follow these people in and sit
(53:08):
with them and try to talk them through it and
talk them out of it.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
And succeed a lot.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Yeah, it takes a very special kind of person to
take that because you're taking that onto yourself too. That's
a lot of depression and other things. I would I
wouldn't even know. I'm not going to say, like I
I know what that's all about. But there are people
that try to help.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
There's one guy that plays music pretty much all that
every day. Yeah, out there trying to reach people through music.
Speaker 5 (53:40):
So that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
A lot of bad stuff goes on there, and I
can see why people have associated this with some of
the darker folklore that exists there, because it's kind of
a dark place even before the beautiful though it is,
(54:02):
it is it, it is something else.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
I can see why there's so much literature written on
it prior to the tragedies that have happened there, right.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Right, But it's it's also a very old society. You
find that with those very old old places, they just
carry all.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
The isolated They were very very isolated into uh well
up into you know, the fourteen to fifteen hundreds, nobody
could get you weren't allowed in Japan for the most part,
there was only a couple of ports where foreign ships
(54:44):
were allowed to dock and trade happened there and then
you left.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
M Yeah so yeah, which contributes a lot to the
fascinating variety of folklore that they have and the creatures
that they have in their folklore.
Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah. I believe that they refer to it as eight
million gods. That's wild, you know, and they don't seem
overly powerful except over their little geographic region or what.
And you know, if there's eight million of them in
(55:26):
a country that small, all of them would have relatively
small domains. I don't pretend to understand, even though I
am familiar with a lot of the stories, because I
do enjoy reading a light novels and manga and whatnot,
(55:48):
and so a lot of my miseducation comes from there.
And then I as a guilty pleasure, I do enjoy
watching Japanese television, especially the sillier ones. Even dubbed their
(56:09):
freaking hilarious.
Speaker 3 (56:11):
So what's it called crunchy crunchy roll? Crunchy roll?
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yeah, Yes, I used to have have the premium subscription
to crunchy Roll. I don't have time for that anymore
because I work on airplanes. But understood a lot of
the Japanese dramas and stuff are really good. I wish
they were in English because I think a lot of
(56:37):
people would really enjoy them. But even subbed and dubbed,
they're good.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
I can't remember what it's called. It's on Netflix and
it's about it's set in I believe it's set in Tokyo,
and it's dubbed, but it's about a just a little
restaurant pretty much and the people that come in there
all the time, and the chef tells the stories about him,
and it's so good. I cannot think of the name
of it. I'm going to have to find it.
Speaker 2 (57:07):
It is a very rich culture, it is. I do
recommend people if you're going to go there, please study
the culture somewhat. They are very traditional people even today,
and try to learn enough of the language to be polite.
The new translation software they've got is brilliant, so that's
(57:31):
not a bad investment. So anyway, I don't have a
lot more on the subject, do you girls have I actually.
Speaker 4 (57:40):
Have one more thing if you guys want to hear
it perfect absolutely so. I found one more story, but
it's not in the forest. It's underneath the forest in
one of the caves. Oh, because apparently the caves are
just as haunted. And we discussed the caves a little
bit earlier. And I don't know exactly which cave this
happened in, but one cave's worse than the other. And
(58:01):
in this particular cave they hear a lot of whispering
which actually could probably be explained by air or moving
through the cave.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
I think that's cave of winds.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Maybe apparition operations, shrieks, schools and screams, the feelings of
grief or despair, and the big one apparently the tunnels
move just like the forest does above. They have issues
with the different tunnels and stuff that the spilunkers use
moving on them or shifting or changing directions. And back
(58:35):
in two thoy and seventeen they had two spilunkers that
were trapped down in the cave for a few days.
They went missing, and they finally emerged after three days
with an incredible story. They had taken one of the
main routes down that everyone takes and it gets down
to the end where it kind of fingers out a
little bit, and they took one of the fingers to
(58:58):
go down in a little bit further and when they
got done, when they hit the end of it, they
turned around to go back, and they hit another dead
end and they were literally literally trapped inside of a
double ended section that had no way out. It's as
if like somebody had come and sealed off the end
that they.
Speaker 5 (59:17):
Were in and they were stuck.
Speaker 4 (59:24):
Perhaps they slept and lived in there for a couple
of days without an end, without a way out, and
they went to bed, and when they woke up, it
was opened again as if it had never been closed,
and they just slumped their way right back on out again.
With that incredible.
Speaker 3 (59:45):
Story disappearing reappearing cave entrance.
Speaker 5 (59:52):
Well, I mean, but they were.
Speaker 4 (59:53):
They were down in the very depths of it in
one little finger, and they they went out of the
main walk and went through this little finger, got to
the end of it, turned around to come back out again,
and that entrance to the finger was gone.
Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
So they were deep down in.
Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Well, there are a lot of tubes, so yeah, you know,
they go everywhere.
Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
Yeah, they said that, you know, they can't prove it
that that that's what happened, But that was the same
story both men told when they in.
Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
There for two whole days if they didn't have to,
you know exactly. Yeah, that's wild. I did find that
Netflix show. It's called Midnight Diner or Shinya Shokudo in Japanese.
It's so good. It's just like a little anthology of
customer stories that mark you would probably like it, for sure.
(01:00:46):
I think anybody would like it. But you like the
culture too, makes me think you would really like it.
But Midnight Diner. Give it a watch. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
All right. Well, if everybody is about I'm gonna call
this one, and once again I remind everybody who's listening
or watching National Suicide Crisis Hotline down nine eight eight
if you or someone you know needs help, please use
it for goodness sake. There is help out there, and
(01:01:21):
I hope that many other nations adopt a system similar
to this for the same reason. It's very easy to
memorize and share, so please do. And I'll put that
in the notes for the for the podcasts to do that.
(01:01:46):
All right, So with that said, I'd like to wish
everybody good night, thanks for sticking with us for an hour,
and we will catch you in two weeks and next week,
what are you guys going to be talking about on
Border Town Strange.
Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
We're going to have Jason Roberts back on about a
month and a half ago he did. We went over
the book. The agony remains with him. He was part
of the crew that investigated the area of the books
based on He had a little bit of stuff that
he had to take care of. But he'll be back
for part two and we're going to go over lots
(01:02:23):
of photos and investigation stuff and it should be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Awesome that we have.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
That's where this story takes place, is in Telequas, right right, interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
I'm looking forward to that. I hope all of you
are too. With that, I'd like to wish everybody a
good night and stay weird.
Speaker 5 (01:02:47):
And happy Memorial Day.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Yes, Memorial Day at the time of this, so please
have a good rest of your Memorial Day. Good night.
Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
All can never be
Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
All right,
Have you ever wondered what was out there in the
night sky, stared up at the stars in the hopes
of seeing something out of the ordinary. Have you heard
unexplainable noises coming from a vacant room or watched the
shadow across the wall in front of you. Have you
asked yourself if there is life after this one or
if you had life before? What about strange creatures that
(00:28):
are mythical and elusive? Have you experienced dejeuvus or felt
a prompting to leave because you felt you were in danger.
If you have, you were on the Fringe.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome to other episode of On the Fringe. I'm Mark,
I Pam, and I am Jess. The Three Musketeers are back.
So we've got an interesting show tonight. We're going to
talk about a Yoki Gahara forest in Japan, which is
(01:20):
known as Japan's suicide Forest. So before we get started,
I want to warn everybody that this is a sensitive
topic and so we're going to try to treat it
as respectfully as we can, and we're going to try
to concentrate on some of the other stuff besides what
(01:41):
it's famous for. Now we are going to talk with
that talk about that. But you'll notice if you're on
here on the live or on YouTube or whatever, we're
running a link to the National Suicide Crisis Hotline. For
those of you who are listening, you dial nine eight.
(02:03):
It is manned by both English and Spanish speaking people
twenty four hours to day, seven days a week. Somebody
will talk to you. Please, if you're feeling any feelings
like that, call talk to somebody, get some help, because
we in no way want to codone anything like that.
(02:25):
We want people to get the help that they need.
So I believe this is still National Mental Health Month. Yes, yes,
so this is a good episode for that. Please, if
you need the help, there are people there out there
to help you. So we're going to get started. So
(02:48):
everybody has heard of Japan's suicide Forest. It's at the
foot of Mount Fuji, and the locals call it ju Kai,
which means the sea of trees. The trees are literally
so dense that it looks like you can walk across
(03:08):
the top of them. A volcanic eruption. And I can't
remember what year it was six something or maybe yeah, yeah,
So this was all lava in eight sixty four and
as many of you know, lava fields and eruption zones
(03:34):
can many years later turn into incredibly rich environments, lots
of nutrients in the soil, And this is what's happened. There,
literally a sea of trees. It's very inhospitable to walk
in the ground is very uneven. There's roots all over
the top of the ground because they're growing right out
(03:54):
of the stone. And plus it's dangerous. There's a lot
tubes that can break open and you can fall in
uh and many people get lost and perish there accidentally
because compasses don't always work right because there's a high
(04:17):
amount of iron in the lava flows. So if you
do go, because there are many reasons to go. Besides,
you know what we're talking about, stay on the paths,
stay with the guides, because.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Us we were talking about this backstage. I went and
looked at the website for this particular force, and it
doesn't appear that you can even gain access legally anyway
without being groups.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, I would like to go. I would like to
go to the Narosowa ice cave cave, or really the
Lake Psycho bat Cave. I want a bat cave under
the house, though it needs to come with a car
and a butler. But I mean and no bats and
(05:15):
no bats. Bats are so messy.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Yeah, well they're.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Cute, man. I mean, we've never seen him in the
same room with.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
That, that's true.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I don't know. I do need a butler though. Have
you seen my house? It's bad. I need a maid
and a butler. So let me get my notes out here. Look,
I actually have notes. So I'm still trying to turn
over that new leaf, you know, and be proactive. I
(05:52):
know how many episodes in a row. Now I've actually
been adequately prepared.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Spantay so.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
A Yoki Gahara forest. There are a lot of folklore
and superstitions about this forest in particular, but about forests
in general. In Japan. The Japanese people are a very
spiritual people. They believe in eight million gods and all
(06:29):
kinds of demons and creatures which may or may not
be both a god or a demon or or what
have you. Everything has a spirit, so there are very
spiritual people. So they have a lot of beliefs, and
so there are stories, especially in a Yoki Gahara about
(06:54):
your eye or the ghosts of the dead, and a
lot of this. It was back to the eighteen hundreds
when there's a myth about ubasute and it's the act
of literally abandoning the old lady. So when times were
(07:19):
hard and they were having trouble feeding their families, it
would sometimes happen, and thankfully not often, but oftener than
I would like to think, they would lure or take
their sick or elderly family members and abandon them in
(07:42):
a forest for them to die with dignity.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I don't know how much dignity that was.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
I find it excessively cruel, but I mean that was,
and I'm sure that everybody does. This is supposedly where
a lot of these ghostly spirits, angry spirits come from.
From this practice.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Memai out there in the forest to die, I wouldn't
be surprised when she comes back to haunt you.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I would be a little angry.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Myself, ungrateful, brat.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That is the main things they talk about, uh, But
then they talk about all of the other things that
you might find in a Japanese forest. There are tingu,
which are part human part bird. You know, they often
have red faces or a long nose or beak kodama.
(08:46):
I'm actually pronouncing these pretty well. I actually had some
Japanese lessons, so I'm not going to butcher these quite
as bad as normally. So sorry, sorry for those of
you whose languages I have abused and I will continue
to abuse because I can't hardly speak English. So the
(09:07):
kodama are spirit beings like small gohot serenities h yamabko uh.
They're a small elusive mountain spirit or yokai uh joe rogumo,
which is a spider that can shape shift into a
(09:28):
beautiful woman and lure you into your web. I know
that's scary. This one I'm gonna birch butcher because it's
very long. Mo ku mo ku wren, which actually I
think I might have pronounced right. I just can't string
it all together. Their eyes appearing in torn soji paper
(09:49):
with the sliding doors. It's made out of the real
thin paper. They're just eyes that stare at you. Yeah yeah, Tanuki.
These are actually kind of cute looking. I mean, I've
seen the dragon. They're a raccoon dog with magical powers,
often shown with comical or exaggerated appearance. They're kind of
(10:11):
like a squirrel.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Huh, like a pokemon or something.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, I mean a lot of these were based on
some of these uh Japanese folk like Kapa. That'st one
I've got is Kappa, which is a pokemon. It's a
turtle like humanoid with a water filled head dish and
a beak faced one which are large horned ogres with
(10:40):
red or blue skin. So they have all sorts of
things that you know, the uh in Japanese folklore that
might might be out there to get you. Uh. Shouldn
bokuk shouldn't boku uh. Sacred trees believe to be the
(11:02):
physical form or home of a kami, which is a
Shinto deity. It's one of their eight million gods uh.
And then mountain Kami deities of the mountains and forests.
So there's all sorts of things that Japanese folklore in
general says might be in the forest. Well, if there's a.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Little raccoon dog thing out there, I'm gonna die because
I'm gonna want to pet it.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, I actually, I mean the tanuki's sound like they
would make a great pet. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. So, yeah,
we're all going find one there. If you find one,
I would really like to know.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Is it just me or do like all like Asian
type related names of things like super cute, sounding like
nothing sounds scary.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Some of them sound I mean they are right. When
you look at the background of their folklore and then
you go to this forest, what you see is a
very dark, dungeony looking place. The canopy is so thick,
(12:19):
very little light hits the ground. The ground is hard
to navigate, the trees are bent and twisted in sometimes
bizarre shapes. And it's incredibly quiet because the volcanic soil
there absorbs the sound, and the trees even are so
(12:40):
thick even the wind can't get down to the grounds.
You don't hear the wind. And then Jess was telling
us that the volcanic gases runs off all the birds,
so it's super quiet and airy. So it's like.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
This the perfect place to get creep the heck out.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Perfect creep zone, and so the when you add all
this folklore to it, it looks like the perfect place
to run into these things. So I can see where
the scary feeling. But most of the problems that they're having,
I believe comes from two books that were published in Japan,
(13:32):
one in the sixties and one shortly after. Uh Let
Me see if I can find the name of the one.
The other one is the Complete Guide to Suicide, which
is often found on the the victims.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Of their Yeah, has Unfortunately, that book named that actual
forest as.
Speaker 5 (13:57):
A perfect place, a perfect place. Why would you do that?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And why would you allow it to stay in print?
I mean, I'm not I'm not a book banner by
any means, but that one would.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It's not like it's an old book. It was. It
was printed in nineteen ninety three, so it's not like
it's from you know, the early.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I would really, if I was serious about fixing things,
that would do my best to make sure that book
just ceased to exist.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah, yes, I would.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
I would almost claim to say that the person who
wrote in that book, and then the people who published it,
and the people who distributed it and the stores that
sold it should all be held accountable for murder.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
I'm just saying I think I think it's actually kind
of an underground print thing. I don't think it can
be printed anymore. Several of the booklets I saw online
were it looked like they were photocopied and stable together. Yeah,
so there's that. But it is a super spooky place
(15:06):
and even some of the caves around there, which I
really want to visit, are super spooky just because they're caves.
For instance, that Narusawa ice cave. It never gets above
two degrees celsius year round, which is like thirty five
(15:26):
degrees thirty seven. Ice exists in there all year round.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It's beautiful. I've got some pictures, you know. Let me
let me share this picture because it is absolutely gorgeous.
There's now get online and look up some of these caves.
This is the main reason I would want to go there.
And it's beautiful, even though it's spooky. The whole forest
is beautiful. Let me share.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
It looks Yeah, it looks like something out of a
fairy tale or it's very wild.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's it's gorgeous. I mean they've shown some blue light
on there to make it even prettier.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Bit it looks like the backdrop for a prom.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
It really does. Just me. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Even his understanding was the forest was already renowned for
suicide before the books were published. Yeah, it was, it.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Was not not as not as much. And after the
two books were published and then it got really really Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Out of the first book was called Tower of waves,
and it was a fictional story, but in the main character,
the girl ends up walking into the forest to do
exactly that, to take her own life, and it was
kind of an epic type of story that people just
kind of wanted to follow along with. So a double
(16:58):
whammy there.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So, and I have heard that it is a really
good book if you read Japanese literature. I don't know.
My idea of Japanese literature is my manga collection. Yes,
I have one, And this does not surprise anybody who
(17:20):
listens to the show.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
No, we would be shocked if you didn't have a collection.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, well, it's all digital because I'm cheap. But still
I do have a collection.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I'n wrong with that. You know what I thought was
interesting was I knew that there was a couple of
movies that had been made, but I didn't realize until
I was looking through some stuff today that there was
one made in twenty twenty one as well, And it's
called The Suicide Forest Village and it's by the people
that made the Grudge, the same makers.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Event Well, yeah, and it actually appears in a lot
of manga and anime. It is so very famous for that,
and you know, that place has got to be hometed.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Yeah, the listing of haunting aspects is huge, Like when
we get into that, there's like a list a mile
long of things that supposedly happened. And I also I scrounged.
I was trying to find some like personal stories of
people who have gone in to kind of see if
you know, I could glean anything from those, and there's
not a lot because it's not local to us, so
(18:30):
we're not going to find a whole bunch on it
in English. I did, however, find one paranormal group who
went in there quite a few years ago, but they
listed their entire story online of kind of what happened.
It was super interesting and some of the stuff that
happened to them.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, I feel like it would be a very interesting
place to investigate. I'm not sure I would because I'm
not sure how respectful that would be, right, you know,
And I really wouldn't want to advertise it because I
wouldn't want to encourage, you know, what's been going on.
I really want to discourage what's been going on. But
(19:12):
I can't stop those people anymore than I can go
to California and stop people from jumping off the Golden Gate,
which is, by the way, the number one place in
the world for suicides. Yep, even and this one's only
number two. So if that tells you it's how famous
this one is, you know, the Golden Gate's even more famous. Ah.
(19:40):
But yeah, it would be an incredible place to investigate,
but I would probably not publish anything from it, just
so I wouldn't encourage anything, you know. But with that,
you want to tell us some of the stories you found? Cool?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Oh yeah, well, let's let's go through like some of
the stuff that happens there first, and then I'll hop
in on their story because it validates a little bit
of it and not others. So I found and you
guys hop into with anything that you heard out of
my listing. So inside of there there are cursed and
(20:22):
ritual sites that were used for quite a long time.
In fact, I found one personal story of a I
can't remember what they're called. It's equivalent to what up
like a park ranger would be for something in the US.
They have like park rangers for that area and nature guides.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I think is as close as I could find it.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Yeah, yeah, kind of.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
I found one report from one that said he walked
in once and ran onto a group of sixty people
performing an entire an entire like meditative fire thing happening.
That they were trying to summon a demon, and it
took him forever to get it broke up and get
(21:06):
him out of there. That was just the kind of
stuff he said that they dealt with that. No, so
that's not good. There's complaints about incredible cold spots, even
on summer days. Cold spots that are so low you
can see your breath in them. Disembodied voices, footsteps, the
(21:29):
sounds of people following you as you walk through, lights
and orbs that follow people all the way through, the
feeling of sickness, getting dizzy, bad luck and sometimes bad
luck that'll follow you out for a time of course,
hauntings and paranormal activity that follows people home and will
(21:52):
actually last for months afterwards, which is a common occurrence
with any kind of paranormal activity. If you stick with
it for too long, it's gonna take a trip with you.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
That would definitely be a place I would not take
a stone or rock or stick or anything.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And some of the spookier things that happen the people
who go through there searching the forest. It's so easy
to get lost in. They trail plastic tape through the
forest so they can follow it back because even though
they know the forest probably better than anyone, they get
lost so bad because sometimes compasses work and sometimes they don't.
(22:32):
And yeah, the GPS doesn't work too good because the
trees block.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Yeah, the compasses don't work because all the iron ore
that's in the the the ash, the lava flow.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Now they say you hold it at chest level, they
generally work, but if you hold it any lower, it
gets closer to the iron deposits and it may or
may not just enough to make it so you get
truly unforgettably lost. But the creepy thing thing is is
a lot of these people have reported part of their
tape being torn off and disappearing. So they get back
(23:09):
part way and their tape's gone.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Yeah, that's that's one of the things I have in here.
They actually have a supposed demon that's in charge of that.
Oh yeah, he snips the ribbons. He's the ribbon snipper.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
And you know, this is not a small place. It
is thirteen point five square miles and nothing but trees exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, And you'd think as small as it is, which
is still pretty big, that it wouldn't have such a
I mean, shouldn't have been able to develop such a
huge reputation. But some of the smaller forests in the
world have these huge reputations. One of the things that
(23:57):
we're probably going to talk about at some point is
the hot To Bayou for us, which is very small,
that has so much stuff that goes on in it.
This one's the same. It's a bit bigger, big enough.
They call it the Sea of Trees, but just so
much goes on there. Besides you know what it's known for.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I thought it was interesting too. It's really only like
two hours outside of Tokyo, which Tokyo is a huge city.
So yeah, it's interesting very far. Ian said, lights and
orbs could be seismic activity. I'm increasingly convinced geology has
a lot to answer for.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah. I don't think you're wrong.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Ian, Yeah, no, I don't think you're wrong.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
It's like Mark says, you know, magic and the paranormal
and the supernatural is just science we haven't figured out yet.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yep, a lot of it.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Yeah, Okay, So moving on, we'll get through the rest
of this so walking trails that shift directions and the forest.
They actually think that the forest in hole turns in
place so that the exits change, And there might be
(25:17):
something to that I'm going to talk about here in
just a little bit. They claim there's magical places inside
that people will run onto and it'll only be found
the one time and then it disappears. There's stories about
all these little like it's almost like a Fay type situation.
The forest demon who'll cut the ropes or the ribbons
(25:39):
used by the hikers to find their way out, apparitions
of the victims of the suicides. And also the monks.
Mark didn't mention at the beginning, but there was also
an entire group of monks for quite a I think
it was two or three hundred years use the forests.
They would go out and go into a self deep
meditation and would just basically starve and starve to death.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, they also have monks today that go into the
forest on a regular basis, and they have little Buddhist
shrines set up all over to help dispel the evil
creatures of the forest.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Yeah, and then missing time people report going in for
a short hike and they leave thinking they've been there
for thirty minutes, and when they come back out, they
find out they've been gone for a few days, and shrieks,
growls and screams. They apparently the screaming is usually children,
(26:38):
the sound of children screaming, and that's the one that's
heard most often. And there's you know, little you know,
you're usually.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Say if you follow the screams, you're going to find
a victim.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
There's all sorts of stories, so I was I always
like to try to find personal stories that go along
with these places, because I think it kind of brings
it home for people a little bit more if you hear,
you know, like an everyday person's personal experience. And I
couldn't find a lot on this because first of all,
it's out of our country. Most of the people who
(27:10):
go in here do not speak our language, so I
couldn't find a whole lot. But I did find one
really interesting one a team and I'm not gonna say
who they are or because I don't have rights to
their story or anything, but I'm gonna tell you a
little bit about it. They went there a number of
years ago, and it was a a girl and a
guy and their two ghost hunting friends, and they flew
(27:34):
into Tokyo and drove out of Tokyo, and like Pam said,
it's only like two or two or four miles away
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You can see from you can see Fuji from Tokyo.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, yeah, and it's right at the base of Fuji.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
So yeah, and they decided to go hiking through and
they were going to stay overnight. They were going to
camp out overnight and see what happened and believe it
or not. Interesting, This is going to set this up
a little bit better so you guys can understand how this.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Place is set up.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
They said, they were very surprised it was set up
for people to really be a part of it. There
was two huge areas you could park and then go
up into the forest and go hiking. And they were
separated by this suicide forest, one on either side, and
there was a walking trail to get to the other
side that goes through the middle of the suicide forest.
(28:32):
So imagine that. So you're seeing kind of like an
h shape. So you got a parking lot here, a
parking lot here, and in between a is the forest,
and there's a path that goes right through the middle
of it to take you right to the other side,
but it was from the point of view from the girl.
When they got there, she said, the parking lots and
the areas right around that were kind of done up
(28:53):
for families to hang out, little parks and stuff like that.
She said, but once you walked into the tree line,
it almost went dead quiet. Their voices just went away,
and they walked in and it just got more dense
and more quiet, no bugs, no birds. And then of
course they started seeing the lines that would go in
(29:14):
to the forest, and they opted not to They I
think they showed one picture of one ribbon and then
decided not to show the rest because they didn't think
it was proper, and I don't think it was either,
But they said it was just the scariest, lowliest place.
It was broad daylight outside but dark as night inside.
And they said they actually kind of forgot about what
(29:36):
time was like in there, because it already feels like nighttime,
so you just kind of lose how long you've been inside.
Any who, long story short, She and her husband actually
decided to go back because she caught cold and she
didn't want to be out there much longer. But the
other two decided to stay out there and camp, and
so they walked. They hiked thirty minutes in with them
(30:00):
to get to their camping spot, and then decided to
go back. And they went straight back on the same trail,
and what had taken them thirty minutes to walk took
them two hours to get back out of. And another
interesting thing was is they took that exact same trail back.
They followed their entire path back, and not only did
it take two hours to get back, it also took
(30:21):
them to the wrong parking lot. So the whole story
about the entire the entire forest almost like rotating. Yeah,
she wondered, really if, because if that was it, you know,
because they ended up having to walk the trail all
(30:41):
the way back through again to get to their to
get their car on the other side.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Now even more interesting than that, they said, on their
way back, they were followed by shadows the whole way there,
skirting behind the trees. They were trying to hurry because
it was starting to scare them, and they were also
hearing that weird whispering and sometimes that screaming sound behind them.
So they ended up they found their car. They got
(31:08):
back into Tokyo and stayed the night, and in the
morning at about that she said, it was probably about
five in the morning, they got a frantic phone call
from the two that had stayed overnight in the forest saying,
come and get us now, we can't do this anymore.
And they were like, well, can you wait a little while,
We still need to check out and do with all
this stuff. And they were like, you do whatever you want,
(31:30):
but we're walking right now. We're going to walk towards Tokyo,
and you meet us wherever you run into us. And
she said that they've never ever told her or her
husband what happened that night, Neither one of them have
ever said. But they found them five miles outside headed
back towards Tokyo. They literally just started walking while they
(31:53):
were on the phone with her and didn't stop.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
So they made five miles in two hours, basically.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Basically yeah, and they were like, we're out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Mark, can you pull those pictures up so we can
kind of show everybody a little bit what It'll give
them an idea. There's like a path that would have
gone through followed.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Walk path ideas about the missing time and stuff. There
you know, we've had missing time here, We've had this
disappearing and reappearing houses and whatnot around here. Think about
how close this is to this active volcano. There is
(32:34):
a high rate of conductive iron in the soil. And
what would you want to bet that there aren't multiple
lay lines through there? Oh?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Probably, so I could probably look that up.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, you could probably get time slips, dimensional slips, all
kinds of weird stuff going on there. And it would
be hard to tell from the normal creepiness that goes
on there because the trees are so dense, it's so dark,
it's so quiet. So yeah, I can totally see that. Uh.
(33:14):
And they do not actually encourage camping there anymore. It's allowed,
but they were going to discourage you as much as
they can without actually telling you that you have to leave.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yeah, you're going to be suized the entire time.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, it's a It's not a place I would care
to camp, yea, because the odds of getting lost in
there are even if you're even if you're an expert hiker,
it's astronautal, you are probably going to get lost.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Where this path is. You can't see the end, you know,
And so I'm sure, I confident if you turned around
and look the other way, it would look just like this.
So it's a very liminal filling place as well, which
pretty much opens it up to anything, right, And we've
(34:15):
got oh, come on there, it's like it's not showing,
I think. And there's one of the caves that are
in there. I'm not sure which cave this is.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
There's a lot of unnamed caves there where there's collapsed
lava tubes and stuff through there, and some places the
crust is probably thin enough with the trees disturbing it
where you could fall in and they would never find you.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
I could see that this. I love this picture. I mean,
this is how the entire ground is in there. It's
it's all LoVa, I mean it. I think it was
six months that no I could neither's it was six
months that the volcano erupted and it completely smothered out
villages and all kinds of things, and it left this round,
(35:12):
you know, in this very bubbly look. And then you've
got the trees on top of it, which the the
roots can't get down under that, so they're all across
the top of the ground too. And then you've got
like wild you know, rambles and stuff in there that
go everywhere. It's very cool looking.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
It is cool looking. And you brought up another point.
There were I'm sure more than one or two villages
in there that got totally wiped out in eight sixty six, was.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
It, Yeah, something like it was a thousand years ago.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
So yeah, so some of those mounds could be what's
left over our villages and that was not that was
not a good way to go. So there could be
you know, actual spirits there from that. Yeah, and it
would have helped build up the legends and stuff. Like
I said, Japan.
Speaker 6 (36:09):
Has a very rich ah folkal history, uh, which I
find utterly fascinating.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
But you know, when you get into a place like this,
it just makes you think that anything could be around
the corner.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean look at the Look
at the shape that this one tree is in. Yeah,
and the trees are like this all through there.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, trying to find some they're so the canopy is
so thick they can't. They have to grow sideways to
go up to get a to get sunlight.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
These make me think of there's I can't remember what
they're called, but there's uh, trees that are bent intentionally
by Native Americans that they would use to point towards
water sources and things like that. And this is what
it makes me think of it, because it's got that
really sharp bendner.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Maybe where they got the idea for bondsai, I don't know, Yeah,
maybe I don't know. I'm I wish I knew more
Japanese people. I could pick their brains about this.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
And you know, I ran across on my notes here.
We were talking about that there were monks that were there,
and one of the traditions did say that they would
meditate in the forest for a thousand days, subsisting on
nothing more than leaves and bark, and then they would
go to be buried alive to continue meditating in an
underground crypt and the ultimate goal was to transform the
(37:44):
body while still allied, into a type of money. Yes,
and yeah, so there's like the remains of eighteen of
these self momified monks are on They're on display in
different parts of Japan, which is crazy, and I cannot
I can try to pronounce the word so ku shin butsu,
soku shin butsu.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
That's pretty close. If I'm not reading it, I can't.
I can't pronounce Japanese very well.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
I'm reading it, I can't pronounce it, So you're way
ahead of me. What did Ian say? Interesting that two
volcanic areas, Mount Fiji and Mount Shasta have a strong
association with weird activities. It's interesting that you say that, Ian.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Because more than one.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah too, when you guys were talking about them finding
what was it sixty people that were trying to raise
a demon that I was thinking of Mount Shasta and
the fact that somebody gathered there to try to work
magic things.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
A lot of volcanic locations in the world have a
lot of weird things that go on there, and so, yeah,
it is an interesting point that you've brought up, and
maybe that should be a show sometime, the correlation between
weird things and volcanic activity. Let me back it up there. Yeah,
(39:10):
that might be something interesting to look at in the future,
because Ian did bring up a very good subject there.
I mean, it is interesting.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
And I think it's pretty wild too that you know,
you've got Mount Fiji, which is the volcano which we
all know. You know, lava is molten rock, that's how
hot the volcanoes are. But right next to it. You've
got this ice cave that is got ice in it
all year round, all the time. It's a little little
above freezing constantly. So I think it's fascinating that it's
(39:44):
just consists of this, you know, just right next to
each other.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yeah, I'd really love to go there. I think they've
got some sort of glowing worm that lives in one
of those caves that is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
So that's been wild find it all right, I did.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
I'm gonna have to do a little bit more research
on it because it's really hard to find a flattened
map with the lay lines laid on it all the
way across. But there is a lay line that runs
through it. In fact, there's a huge conglomeration of them
that meet in the Sea of Japan, and one of
those go over it, and by the looks of it,
and don't quote me on this, because I can't be
for sure until I get it all laid out, I'll
(40:26):
have to work on a little bit, but it looks
like it may be the same lay line that runs
through Telequah.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Okay, everybody knows there's a lot of weird stuff in yeah. Sure.
And then there's the paranormal stuff.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, they're they're not far from our parallel this forest,
it's all along the same band.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
So interesting.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
So yeah, I'll have to do some work on that one,
but I'll do some work on it and we'll do
an update at a later time.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
All right, that sounds good. So we've got a few
more slides, do we?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I got a couple more. This next one was it's
a picture of just discarded belongings that are left in
an area of the force where the suicides are most
often occurring.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
And I have seen tons of photos of left behind belongings.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
This is one of many many that is that's it
is creepy.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
It's sad. I did quite a bit of research for
this one, and I was left with a a very
deep sense of sadness about how many people felt the
need to do this. Anybody who's listening, anybody who's watching
(41:56):
on the I encourage you to donate your time or
money to suicide prevention. I had family members. This one's
a hard one for me. So please share the hotline
nine eight eight with people. If you feel the need
(42:20):
to volunteer, Please volunteer, Please donate your money to these
organizations and for goodness sakes, if you know somebody who
needs someone to listen to them, please take the time
to do that.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah, you know, And if you know of someone who
you think might be in a bad way and are
needing help, you can also call the National Suicide Crisis
Hotline and they can help you take the next steps
to help them get the help that they need.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Absolutely, absolutely so, because a lot of times people don't
know a lot to do, so they do nothing.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, So that's why I'm leaving this
ticker run for the whole show again. It's the National
Suicide Crisis Hotline dial nine eight eight anywhere in the
United States, and you will get a hold of somebody
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Speaker 5 (43:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
So, And many of these people are doing this unpaid.
I'm sure they have some paid people doing it, but
it's it's important. Please please do that for me. If
you do get nothing else out of this show, please
do that. But let's get back to the paranormal stuff, because.
Speaker 4 (43:43):
Yeah, I was gonna say, interestingly, this isn't the only
forest that is known for this. They're all over the place.
We have one near us called the Parallel Forest, down
in Oklahoma, and unfortunately, the nearby Indian tribe had a
very high suicide rate inside the parallel forest for quite
a long time. Mark mentioned it earlier. The Hoya Batchu
(44:08):
that's in Romania has an extraordinarily high suicide rate inside
of it, and we'll have to do a fringe on
that sometime because the Hooya Batchu islip amazing. We touched
on it a little bit in Border Town Strange on
the Missing Time episode. Just the Missing Time stories are
(44:32):
amazing out of it.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
So, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
I I wish there was more stuff on the web
available for the Missing Time stories, for for the or Jucai.
Sorry for this, because there are I've heard them, They've
even mentioned them in you know, some of My man
(45:00):
Go and such.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
So it's I mean, look at the area in these witcheries.
You get just a little bit into those trees and
look back, you're not going to see the path regardless.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
I'm surprised that there's no sasquatch like activity there because
that looks squatchy to me. But I don't I don't
know if you know, I'm not aware if there's any Japanese.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Oh the other is is there?
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (45:34):
You can't remember what they're called.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
I'll find it.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
I'm on the hut, okay, well you're hunting.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Didn't run onto them, but that looks like a place
where you'd find one, right.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
We talked a little bit about how they stopped reporting,
and I ran across on my notes where it was.
So after a high number of suicides was reported in
two thousand and four, there was a total of one
hundred and eight within the forest, official stop publis the
deaths for fear of glorifying the practice, because it was
already glorified enough at that point. So in two thousand
(46:06):
and nine they started hiring people to patrol the forest
and to approach anyone that might not look like they
were the average tourist, you know, to find out if
they were okay and did they need help, and and
so it did help discourage some suicides, but there were
ongoing reports of bodies being discovered, and this particular so
(46:30):
the photographer that took this picture here, his name's Tama's Lazaar.
He did say that his guide that took him into
the area where most of the bodies were discovered, he
had that guide had once discovered thirty six bodies within
thirty seven days. That's nuts.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
These same groups of actually located lost hipers too, So that's.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
A good thing they have, for sure.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
So I wonder how many of the people who who's
they have found just got lost.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Yeah makes you wonder, doesn't it. Yeah, yeah, I found it.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
They're called they're called the hebbigone and it's it's the
same as a bigfoot or a yetti. Here's a little
sketchy sketch.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Oh nice.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Nice. So I would expect to maybe see one in
that forest. Maybe not, because the trees are so thick
they could get right up on you and you'd never
find them.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
I mean if they lived out there, they would know
the ins and out.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
So they say a human being gets twenty thirty feet
away from you in the right part of the forest,
you won't find them.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
Well, look at the day that we took the paranormal
club just outside of town and walked them down over
Stone Bridge and stuff, and we passed a hunter that
was in a tree that none of us except for
one person saw, and that was on our way back out.
It looked within.
Speaker 7 (48:03):
Thirty, probably less than that, about twenty feet of him.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Oh I know, I didn't feel bad. We messed up
his deer hunt really bad. And if you're listening, or
somebody you know is listening, please tell the gentlemen that
we're very sorry too.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
Are sorry?
Speaker 7 (48:25):
I know one of the ladies was like sorry, and
he just shook his head setting in the tree. I
did have looking for this is this is the last
slide that I had. And this is a sign that
they have posted at the entrance to the forest, and
(48:48):
it translates into quietly, think once more about your parents,
siblings or children. Please don't suffer alone, and first reach.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Out and then they give you a number yep.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
And they put enough along the bottom to call.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
So I like the idea of the three digit number.
I hope that many other countries adopt this to make
it easier to share.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
And I think you can. Can't you text that number two?
I don't think you actually have to call.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
You might be able to. I'm not sure I've got
the the site here. There is a website https slash
slash nine eight eight lifeline dot org.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
So yeah, you can text it text nine eight eight
Because I know there's a lot of people that don't
like to talk on the phone, and this would be
a way that you could do it without any to
do that.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Folently, So please do that. Ian has a good one, says,
I wonder if there's a prime eval genetic built in
fear of force for humans, thinking of fair fairy tales
hundreds of years old, hands on, Greteline, the little red
riding Head, et cetera. I think you're correct, because when
(50:12):
you go into forests, they have things like wolves and
bears and.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
Snakes, and it's so easy for you kids to get lost,
you know, or bit or you know.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah, the normal forest is bad enough to get lost
in some place as dense as that, it's got to
be absolutely frightening and as quiet as it is, you know,
it just absorbs the sound, so somebody could be one
hundred yards from you never hear them.
Speaker 5 (50:42):
Hey, Mark, I mailed you.
Speaker 4 (50:45):
I emailed you a picture of the hippogone.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Roger.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
It's pretty it's pretty great. I thought it deserved more
than like me sticking my phone up by.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
My Oh that's all right, hold on, we're going to
share this, bad boy. This is this is fun.
Speaker 5 (51:11):
Yeah, I will say there.
Speaker 4 (51:12):
I don't believe there's one continent on the planet that
does not host some version of Bigfoot.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, I was a topic, but this is this is
the first one I've seen for japan video. I am
having trouble. We're going to have to Why can't I
share that? It's not letting me here? Were you get it?
(51:45):
I got it?
Speaker 4 (51:47):
Hey, because everyone at home needs to see this?
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Is it? Isn't it lovely?
Speaker 4 (51:55):
I don't know what's funnier, the big like statue or
the little fine I don't know.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
They're They're both pretty.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
They're both pretty spectacular.
Speaker 5 (52:06):
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
I like the conveniently grown flowering bush.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
In the way as it conveniently hides the nethers.
Speaker 5 (52:22):
There we go, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Am by the way. Because of the subject matter and
and stuff, I'm going to mark this as explicit when
I post it on uh spreaker for all of our
audio listeners out there in the podcast.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Yes, I do think we need to touch a little
bit on the good deeds that also go along with
the story. We were talking about it backstage. There's several
people that act actually spend their time at the forest
nearly daily, and they follow these people in and sit
(53:08):
with them and try to talk them through it and
talk them out of it.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
And succeed a lot.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Yeah, it takes a very special kind of person to
take that because you're taking that onto yourself too. That's
a lot of depression and other things. I would I
wouldn't even know. I'm not going to say, like I
I know what that's all about. But there are people
that try to help.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
There's one guy that plays music pretty much all that
every day. Yeah, out there trying to reach people through music.
Speaker 5 (53:40):
So that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
A lot of bad stuff goes on there, and I
can see why people have associated this with some of
the darker folklore that exists there, because it's kind of
a dark place even before the beautiful though it is,
(54:02):
it is it, it is something else.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
I can see why there's so much literature written on
it prior to the tragedies that have happened there, right.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Right, But it's it's also a very old society. You
find that with those very old old places, they just
carry all.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
The isolated They were very very isolated into uh well
up into you know, the fourteen to fifteen hundreds, nobody
could get you weren't allowed in Japan for the most part,
there was only a couple of ports where foreign ships
(54:44):
were allowed to dock and trade happened there and then
you left.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
M Yeah so yeah, which contributes a lot to the
fascinating variety of folklore that they have and the creatures
that they have in their folklore.
Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah. I believe that they refer to it as eight
million gods. That's wild, you know, and they don't seem
overly powerful except over their little geographic region or what.
And you know, if there's eight million of them in
(55:26):
a country that small, all of them would have relatively
small domains. I don't pretend to understand, even though I
am familiar with a lot of the stories, because I
do enjoy reading a light novels and manga and whatnot,
(55:48):
and so a lot of my miseducation comes from there.
And then I as a guilty pleasure, I do enjoy
watching Japanese television, especially the sillier ones. Even dubbed their
(56:09):
freaking hilarious.
Speaker 3 (56:11):
So what's it called crunchy crunchy roll? Crunchy roll?
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yeah, Yes, I used to have have the premium subscription
to crunchy Roll. I don't have time for that anymore
because I work on airplanes. But understood a lot of
the Japanese dramas and stuff are really good. I wish
they were in English because I think a lot of
(56:37):
people would really enjoy them. But even subbed and dubbed,
they're good.
Speaker 3 (56:45):
I can't remember what it's called. It's on Netflix and
it's about it's set in I believe it's set in Tokyo,
and it's dubbed, but it's about a just a little
restaurant pretty much and the people that come in there
all the time, and the chef tells the stories about him,
and it's so good. I cannot think of the name
of it. I'm going to have to find it.
Speaker 2 (57:07):
It is a very rich culture, it is. I do
recommend people if you're going to go there, please study
the culture somewhat. They are very traditional people even today,
and try to learn enough of the language to be polite.
The new translation software they've got is brilliant, so that's
(57:31):
not a bad investment. So anyway, I don't have a
lot more on the subject, do you girls have I actually.
Speaker 4 (57:40):
Have one more thing if you guys want to hear
it perfect absolutely so. I found one more story, but
it's not in the forest. It's underneath the forest in
one of the caves. Oh, because apparently the caves are
just as haunted. And we discussed the caves a little
bit earlier. And I don't know exactly which cave this
happened in, but one cave's worse than the other. And
(58:01):
in this particular cave they hear a lot of whispering
which actually could probably be explained by air or moving
through the cave.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
I think that's cave of winds.
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Maybe apparition operations, shrieks, schools and screams, the feelings of
grief or despair, and the big one apparently the tunnels
move just like the forest does above. They have issues
with the different tunnels and stuff that the spilunkers use
moving on them or shifting or changing directions. And back
(58:35):
in two thoy and seventeen they had two spilunkers that
were trapped down in the cave for a few days.
They went missing, and they finally emerged after three days
with an incredible story. They had taken one of the
main routes down that everyone takes and it gets down
to the end where it kind of fingers out a
little bit, and they took one of the fingers to
(58:58):
go down in a little bit further and when they
got done, when they hit the end of it, they
turned around to go back, and they hit another dead
end and they were literally literally trapped inside of a
double ended section that had no way out. It's as
if like somebody had come and sealed off the end
that they.
Speaker 5 (59:17):
Were in and they were stuck.
Speaker 4 (59:24):
Perhaps they slept and lived in there for a couple
of days without an end, without a way out, and
they went to bed, and when they woke up, it
was opened again as if it had never been closed,
and they just slumped their way right back on out again.
With that incredible.
Speaker 3 (59:45):
Story disappearing reappearing cave entrance.
Speaker 5 (59:52):
Well, I mean, but they were.
Speaker 4 (59:53):
They were down in the very depths of it in
one little finger, and they they went out of the
main walk and went through this little finger, got to
the end of it, turned around to come back out again,
and that entrance to the finger was gone.
Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
So they were deep down in.
Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Well, there are a lot of tubes, so yeah, you know,
they go everywhere.
Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
Yeah, they said that, you know, they can't prove it
that that that's what happened, But that was the same
story both men told when they in.
Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
There for two whole days if they didn't have to,
you know exactly. Yeah, that's wild. I did find that
Netflix show. It's called Midnight Diner or Shinya Shokudo in Japanese.
It's so good. It's just like a little anthology of
customer stories that mark you would probably like it, for sure.
(01:00:46):
I think anybody would like it. But you like the
culture too, makes me think you would really like it.
But Midnight Diner. Give it a watch. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
All right. Well, if everybody is about I'm gonna call
this one, and once again I remind everybody who's listening
or watching National Suicide Crisis Hotline down nine eight eight
if you or someone you know needs help, please use
it for goodness sake. There is help out there, and
(01:01:21):
I hope that many other nations adopt a system similar
to this for the same reason. It's very easy to
memorize and share, so please do. And I'll put that
in the notes for the for the podcasts to do that.
(01:01:46):
All right, So with that said, I'd like to wish
everybody good night, thanks for sticking with us for an hour,
and we will catch you in two weeks and next week,
what are you guys going to be talking about on
Border Town Strange.
Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
We're going to have Jason Roberts back on about a
month and a half ago he did. We went over
the book. The agony remains with him. He was part
of the crew that investigated the area of the books
based on He had a little bit of stuff that
he had to take care of. But he'll be back
for part two and we're going to go over lots
(01:02:23):
of photos and investigation stuff and it should be fun.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Awesome that we have.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
That's where this story takes place, is in Telequas, right right, interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
I'm looking forward to that. I hope all of you
are too. With that, I'd like to wish everybody a
good night and stay weird.
Speaker 5 (01:02:47):
And happy Memorial Day.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Yes, Memorial Day at the time of this, so please
have a good rest of your Memorial Day. Good night.
Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
All can never be
Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
All right,
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