Agaribito: Crossing the "Borderline" - Japanese Creepypasta/Urban Legend

You guys go to the mountains and feel liberated, don’t you?
That’s because you’re about to cross a kind of borderline. The borderline of “Agaribito” between the human side and beyond…

Today, we will dive into the mysterious creepypasta (urban legend) of “Agaribito” that was posted on 2chan.

What is “Agaribito” in Japanese urban legends

Agaribito (アガリビト) is a Japanese character/term to describe some group of people in deep mountains. Their first appearance was in a creepypasta story on the Japanese message board 2channel (often shortened as 2chan).

Agaribito urban legend Story (podcast)

The original story was posted by a young man in one of the threads on 2chan. He shared his experience of a weird encounter in a deep mountain where his grandma lived.

From here, I will describe “I” as this young guy for convenience.

↓Tap ｢+｣ to expand to read more, ｢–｣ to close each story chapter!

Those who crossed “the borderline”

You guys go to the mountains and feel liberated, don’t you? You feel refreshed, right?

That’s because you’re about to cross a kind of borderline.

People who are constantly protected by towns, villages and other human-made structures tend to be more open. That means you’re off the hook, right?

No matter how refreshing it is, you don’t do stretching and deep breathing in the middle of town, do you?

Mountains with rubbish are still ok. If there are man-made objects, people can manage to stay on this side.
But not with 100% nature. It makes people go crazy or revert to being animals.

If you get lost or something, the worst thing that can happen is that you subconsciously think that help might not come, and you might die.

That’s a natural thing as an animal, but that’s not a usual feeling as a human being.

Like the bubble of soda gradually wearing off, common sense and morals are gradually disappearing.

You die at this point; that’s actually the best-case scenario. But if you stay alive with that mental condition…

If you guys happen to see a completely naked person on a mountain that has not been touched by humans, you should run away.

My grandma called them ‘Agaribito’.
Where my grandma lives, Agaribito is recognised as a god.

So it occurred to me that some of those people, like people who go missing in cold cases, might be among them.

Is it like you go mad and violent?
No, it is a bit different.

My grandma says that city people are more violent, like they get depressed and commit suicide. Or you know you sometimes see people who make noise or fight on a train.

Agaribito is not like this kind of person. They are more calm. Maybe that’s because it’s more like the from the human world to the natural one I suppose.

I don’t know if this is the right example, but Buddha was once a prince, but he became enlightened when he fell into the wild. That’s what Agaribito would be closed to.

The encounter on the other side

Ok, I will start with telling the little bit of background of my grandma.

My grandma is from Kyushu (九州), and her surname is Koga (古賀).
Koga is one of the common names of the Ninja family, but there are a lot of people with the surname Koga in that part of Japan, so I’m not sure she is related to this

This was a story from when I was in junior high school.

I was doing the lure fishing, which was popular at the time, at a nearby mountain stream from my grandma’s house.
When I was visiting my grandmother’s house, there was nothing else to do but fish, so I was bored.

So I threw my favourite skeleton G, which is the fake part that looks like a small fish and is attached to the tip of the lure, as hard as I could, and it became my new game. After playing like this for a while, the skeleton G flew into the woods on the other side of the river.

Now that I think back, that river was the “borderline” between the human side and the other.

Anyway, I crossed the river to the other side and looked for the Skeleton G, but I couldn’t find it.

At the time, my allowance was 1,000 yen a month, so a lure of 2,000 yen was a treasure for me. So, I think I wandered around in the woods for about an hour.

Then, suddenly, I heard the sound of branches breaking behind me.

For some reason, I wasn’t worried that it might be a bear or some other wild animal. Rather, I wondered if it could be my father or grandmother who had come looking for me. Even though there was no way they could have…

Then I turned around and saw a person standing there. Naked.

Nnngh

I would normally be surprised if I saw a naked person in the city, but it was in a very rural area, so it wasn’t unusual in the neighbourhood for people to swim naked in the river.

I said, “Oh, hello”.
He smiled and looked at me, so I thought he wasn’t a bad person.

I thought he might be able to help me look for the lure, so I said, “My lure has gone missing. Have you seen it somewhere?”

He came up to me and said, “Nn”.
He started walking and scurrying around me, kept saying “Nnngh, nnngh”.

And he lifted the rock up. I thought he was looking under it for the lure, so I said with a small laugh, “No, no, it can’t be there”.

He said, “nn-nn-nn-nn-nn”, smiled and threw the rock at me.

It took me about two seconds to realise the significance of the rock that crossed the side of my head.

When I looked at the person’s face, his eyes had no hegemony at all, or rather they were glazed over, and I was very scared, just like this → <●> <●>.

When I prepared myself, the person let out a strange voice that I didn’t understand, something like “Gyahhhhh”.

They I could hear the same “nnngh nnngh” voices, not from a single person but many. It sounded like a lot of naked people were gathering over here. I heard a lot of sounds around me, like branches breaking.

“Ahhhhhhhh”, that’s the sound I lost it.

I ran around and didn’t know which direction I was coming from or going to. I got scared and was shaking and shaking when I saw something shining in the distance.

It was my skeleton G. I traced the lure’s line to the river and went home soaking wet.

I told my grandma what happened. She told me, “Boy, that’s Agaribito”.

“Agaribito…… people around here call them Agari-san, but they’re not dangerous. There are many people in the village who think they are human beings. But like you, I saw Agari-san once when I was young.”

The grandma’s past

That was the original story from the guy on 2ch. At the time he posted this, he had grown up and had already started working.

After posting this, he also wanted to know a little bit more about the truth, then he had a chance to visit his grandma and talk about Agaribito again.

From here, this is the story that his grandma experienced when she was younger encountering Agaribito…
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When grandma was still young, the war was almost over and the village was full of children who had been evacuated from the town.

The whole ground of the primary school in the village was turned into a field and potatoes and radishes were planted to supplement the food for the evacuees.

Those working in the field were the children from the town who had never even done it before. Grandma, a schoolgirl at the time, used to feel sorry for them and used to give them liver oil, sugar cubes and other things.

They were told there was plenty of food and that they would be safe, so they evacuated, but in reality they had to work in the fields with lice-covered rice cracker bedding.

The children became thinner and thinner.

One night, some children escaped from their house, stole vegetables from the fields and ran away into the mountains.

A search party was formed and grandma and some men went into the forest to look for them. It was dark and scary and there were bears and other things, but Grandma was hungry and she couldn’t help it, so she deliberately got separated from the search party and went digging for Jinenjo (a kind of potato that’s usually from mountains).

She found some wild jinenjo off the road, washed them in the river and ate them raw when she heard people’s voices approaching from the other side.

Grandma rushed off the road and hid behind a tree. She was shaking all in fear of what her family would say if they found her in such a situation.

Remembering that time, she said fondly with a giggle, “It was a strange time when you were more scared of your family and neighbour in the same village than of an enemy aeroplane.”

There was a group of…

She tried to hide and get away with it, but when she looked in the direction of the voices, she heard something that sounded like singing.

She said she saw a few figures walking around, singing a slow song like a recitation of a poem.

However, the group was clearly not the village search party. The men and women in the group were all naked; their eyes were vacant and their bodies seemed somewhat plump, unlike those of the villagers.

Then she saw some of the children were clothed. Those children walking unsteadily by their side were the evacuated kids who had gone missing.

Grandma was scared, but maybe these people were from the neighbouring village that came across the river. She felt a need to report them anyway. So, she decided to follow the group.

Grandma tried to save the children at least, but they were surrounded by a group of naked people and couldn’t do anything about it.

Fortunately, the moon was out, and she didn’t lose sight of the group, but she was worried about returning home safely.

After walking for a while, the group stopped at an open area in the forest. Grandma was watching from a distance and the group started to gather around some kind of dark mass.

After a while, the dark mass began to move and get up. The mass was shaped like a person but in an unusual way.

The black mass’s upper body was shaped like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, with a long neck and long arms and legs.

It moved like a puppet, with no feet on the ground, and it made her feel so scared and frightened that she struggled to hold back her tears.

After a while, that black creature began to sing a poetic song.

When she was shaking with anxiety because it was a very good voice, the group of people began to sing along with the black creature.

When the voices came together, they sounded like bagpipes.
The group sang while staring into the air, saying, “N~n~n~n~n~.”

After a while, the group stopped singing when the black creature bent to the ground. The group then took the children’s clothes off and brought them in front of the black creature.

The black creature said something, and then the group broke apart again, singing poetry and took the children somewhere.

Grandma wanted to run away, but she was too scared to move from the spot.

Something scary is going to happen here now. She felt intuitively that she needed to run away, but she couldn’t move or speak. She was so upset that she thought she would be crushed like a stone if she didn’t lift a finger or scream, so she tried to scream recklessly.

After trying for a while, a mosquito-like voice came from the back of her throat.

“……… ah.”

Then she felt the black mass wander over and look at her, and Grandma seemed to pass out as it was.

In my head, the eyes of Agaribito, whom I had seen so long ago, were vividly visible.

They should look like these → <●> <●>

Characteristics of Agaribito

State of transition from human to beyond

Agaribito is a group of people transitioning from human to something beyond. This transition is said to be triggered when they are exposed to nature like deep mountains that has not been untouched by humans.

Taking clothes off to be Naked

When they appear in mountains, they are unclothed and completely naked in most cases. That is because they are becoming less human to be Agaribito.

Weird Singing Voice

They use a singing voice that sounds like ”Nnngh, nnngh, nnngh” in nasal sound. (You can hear the sound in my podcast episode above, so check it out!)

Agaribito can’t speak in human language, so this is their only form of vocal communication.

Vacant Face with no feelings

They sometimes seem to smile but it is just superficial expression. When you look at the face of Agaribito carefully, their eyes have no feeling as if they are glazed over.

Converting human into “the other side”

In the story on 2chan, Agaribito is seen describing children who have wandered into the mountains, undressing and performing a kind of ritual to become one of them.

The storyteller man was able to escape them by luck, but if he had been caught he may have been similarly unclothed…

What could be the origin of Agaribito?

The origin and background of Agaribito were not revealed in the story posted on 2chan. However, several discussions have been found on the internet that appear to be of Agaribito origin.

Sanka: Wanderers in Former Japanese mountains

Until around the 1960s, there used to be a mountain people in Japan known as Sanka (山窩/サンカ). They lived from stream to stream, living in tent-like temporary huts, so they had no certificate of residence. And, of course, no nationality.

They were basically self-sufficient, but sometimes earned cash by selling bamboo crafts to people in villages. In the Showa period (1926-1989), many of Sanka went down to the villages and became Japanese citizens with nationality.

However, although only at the level of urban legend, some people say Sanka still exists today. They are said to be very strict about maintaining secrecy and traitors are violently dealt with. Sanka may have undergone a modern makeover and are now known as Agaribito.

Kuchiberashi: sad history of The abondoned in mountains

Many Japanese villages used to do “Kuchiberashi (口減らし)” in the past. When they were so poor that they couldn’t raise their kids or take care of the old, they went to the mountains and abandoned them there.

Of course, the family was not happy to do that, so they tried to justify their action by believing that the kids and the old got the blessing from the mountain god and that they were also divine.

Abandoned ones, on the other hand, have a grudge against people and try to attack them. But the villagers didn’t fight back because the abandoned were blessed by the mountain god.

Those abandoned people had been gradually called as “Tataribito (祟り人)” meaning the group of people who curse, which might have changed the sound to Agaribito at the end.

Do not let yourself too much refreshed in mountains…

It might be a little-known fact (possibly because of the image of Tokyo as a modern city), but 2/3 of Japan’s land is surrounded by forests and mountains. Within them, there may exist deep nature that few people have yet set foot in.

What if you see a naked person in Japanese mountains? You already know what you should do. Run away immediately!

And for yourself, do not to refresh yourself too much in the mountains. You don’t want to become one of Agaribito, do you?

↓Check out this related article as well to find out more about Japanese creepypastas/urban legends!