“You should not go to the toilet on this floor at 2 am.“

You can be challenged to solve the horror mysteries that happened to Hatsune Matsushima one night in a hospital.

The original story is from Hatsune Matsushima, who used to be a Japanese idol and is currently active as Kaidan youtuber. She’s got an ability to see “things”, and has shared so many scary stories from her own experiences.

Today’s story is also from her youth, when she was about 14 years old. To make it simple, I will use “I” as Hatsune herself from here.

This is when I was in the second year of junior high school.

I was on the track team, and there was a competition where I injured my knee. I was told that the injury was a bit serious, so I had to stay at a hospital near my home. 

At that time, my mum was also in the hospital. She was not injured but had a chronic illness. 

To talk about the situation at the time, I didn’t have my dad because he had left us after the divorce, so my maternal grandma came to our house from time to time.  But mostly it was like living alone for me. So when I moved to the hospital, I was rather happy to be able to “live” with my mum even though the hospital was not our own house.

And then it came to the first day in the hospital,  I was explained that since I would be having surgery this time, I would be in the hospital for a total of 10 days, including the observation period. After that explanation, the nurse in charge came to my bed. Her name was Sato-san.

After we had greeted each other, Mr. Sato said 

“I know it’s gonna be a bit hard for you for the next 10 days, but you are Matsushima-san’s daughter, who is on the third floor, right?”

She mentioned my mum, so I thought, “Oh, she knows my mum” Then I answered, “Yeah, that’s right. I may go to the third floor myself or my mum may come to my room. I hope it won’t bother you.”

However, Mr. Sato did not answer my response but changed the subject and said, “I have one thing to tell you. If you are Matsushima-san’s daughter, you should not go to the toilet on this floor at 2:00 am.”

When I heard what she said, I thought she was a bit mean at first, to be honest.

In fact, in my family, my grandma, mum, and I, the ability to see “things” was passed down through the female line. And, since my mum spent a lot of time in the hospital, she used to tell the nurses that there were spirits in certain parts of the hospital, and she was quite famous for telling stories like that.

Based on that, telling a girl not to go to the toilet at 2:00 am. There should be a scary story about seeing something that should not be seen. It was a bit mean to tell this to a 14-year-old girl who was already nervous on her first day in the hospital.

That being said, on the other hand, I have seen many spirits in my life. So, to be honest, I don’t think I am afraid of spirits if they are just there not giving any harm to me. So when I heard that story, I was more inclined to confirm it if she actually meant there was something scary.

So I thought to myself, when am I going to go to that toilet and do it?

First of all, I didn’t want to be there on the first day. If I had a really scary experience, I would have to stay in the hospital for another 9 days, and if that happened, it would be hard. Also, on the second day, I would have surgery and wouldn’t be able to walk for the next few days, so I figured it would be after that.

So, I decided the night before I left the hospital. I thought it would be easier to leave the hospital the next day, even if I felt scared.

For a while after the surgery, I asked Sato-san to give me sleeping pills so that I would never wake up in the middle of the night to avoid going to the toilet. Also, I didn’t even tell my mum that I had heard this story. I was just preparing to go to the toilet by myself.

So the day finally came…

I set my alarm for 1:50 a.m. and woke up to the sound of it. But the truth is, I was kind of nervous and didn’t sleep very deeply.

Anyway, I went to the toilet alone at 2 am.

There were four stalls in the toilet. The door to each stall was not a push/pull door but a sliding one. This is because there were also people on crutches or in wheelchairs. So, the sliding door was designed to be easy to open, even for such people.

When I saw the four stalls, I thought to myself, “Well, I didn’t ask Sato-san, which stall was the “scary one”. I don’t even know if it’s the toilet itself or a stall”

But I assumed that the scary stories usually happen in the one at the very back, so I went into the fourth one.

I sat on the toilet seat and waited a little while because I didn’t know what time it was without a watch at that time, but nothing happened after all.

Then it felt to me, “Maybe Sato-san told me that story because she was trying to get me to stay in the room. By telling me a scary story on purpose so that I would not slip out at night and walk around the hospital.” I even had such delusions.

When I was feeling a bit less scared, I thought it was time to go back to my room. Then I tried to open the door, but I realised it wouldn’t open. 

As it was the hospital, there was also an emergency call button inside the stall, so I tried pressing that, but it didn’t respond either.

While I was having a little panic, I noticed that there was a sound like “squeak, squeak” in the quiet.

At first I didn’t understand what this noise was, but then I realised, “Oh, that’s the sound of a wheelchair moving.”

“That could be someone in a wheelchair coming towards this toilet”.

So I had a bit of hope: “If this wheelchair person comes to the toilet, maybe he or she can get this door open, or maybe can get a nurse to come and get me out”.

Just as I heard the wheelchair coming into the toilet, I called out “Excuse me, I’m a bit stuck on the toilet. If you don’t mind, could you call the nurses’ station and ask for help?”

But, again, “squeak, squeak…”

This person didn’t answer anything, and I could only hear the sound of the wheelchair moving.

Just like that, it kept going, then “BOOM!”

It sounded like the wheelchair had bumped into the door of the stall I was in. I panicked and said, “Hey, wait a minute. There are other stalls open, and also I’m in trouble with my door. If you hit the door now, it’s going to be even more difficult to open.”

Even though I shouted, the person ignored me and didn’t stop hitting the door.

And then, “Gashaaaan!!”

I heard a loud noise, like something falling over. It sounded like the wheelchair had apparently fallen over. 

I was angry, but I was also worried about whether the person was alright. 

“Are you all right?”

I said, but there was just silence… Then suddenly, a very thin hand came out of the gap under the door and tried to grab my leg!

I panicked and shouted in a loud voice, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I can’t do it. Help, help pleeease!!”

Then suddenly the door opened… It was my mum standing there.

My mum, who looked very angry, opened up with “You, what are you doing!”

When I was too shocked to answer anything, my mum continued, “I thought you were told not to come here at two o’clock. So why did you come?”

And she pulled me out of the stall and said, “You should be going back to your room.”

Of course, there was no wheelchair there…

After we left the toilet, I asked my mum a lot of questions like, “I didn’t tell you about the toilet. How did you know?”

And I explained to her what had happened in the toilet and “You didn’t see anyone in a wheelchair out there?”

But she just replied, “Forget about that. You are going back to the room anyway”.

In the meantime, we got to my room, and my mum helped me lie down on the bed. But I was still scared. I said, “I can’t sleep like this”, and my mum said, “I’ll stay with you for a while, so get yourself calm down.”

From there, she stayed by my side for about an hour, during which time she comforted me with things like “Think of what happened today as a dream” and “You’re leaving the hospital tomorrow anyway, aren’t you? There’s nothing more to do now, so all you have to do is sleep until tomorrow morning” and many other words of comfort.

Thanks to that, I started to feel a bit calmer. My mum said it was time to go back to her room

Because she was so nice to me, I thought I could give her something in return. So I decided to walk her to the elevator hall.

There were three rows of elevators in the elevator hall, and my mum got into one of them. So that’s where we said bye-bye. 

I was about to walk out with my back to the elevator hall when I heard a “ding” sound as the elevator arrived.

“Hmm?” I turned around and saw that the elevator doors had opened and many patients were crammed inside. It was early in the morning, more than an hour after the 2 am toilet incident earlier. That alone is strange, isn’t it?

In the middle of these patients, I saw a girl in a wheelchair and Sato-san, a nurse who took care of me all the time, standing there. 

“Umm, Sato-san? Why are you…?”

I was about to speak to Sato-san but the elevator door quickly closed. I wondered why they closed the door when I was in the middle of talking to her, and somehow I checked what floor the elevator was going to while looking at the indicator light.

Then, from the fifth floor where I was at, it went up like floors 6, 7, 8 and up to R as the rooftop, and suddenly, the light for the basement of B1 turned on.

In my head, I was like “Hey, why is the B1 light on at the end after it’s gone up to the top?”

But there was so much going on at that point that I didn’t feel like investigating the mystery. I rushed back to my room and spent the rest of the morning not getting much sleep.

It was around 8:00 am when I could finally leave the hospital, so I rushed to my mum’s room saying, “Let’s leave here now, get the procedure done quickly”

But she said, “It’s fine to leave the hospital early, but did you greet the nurse who took care of you yet?”.

Actually, before 8:00 am, I had my daily temperature checkup like other mornings, but it was a different nurse who came, not the usual Sato-san.

So I thought, “Sure, I should say hello to Sato-san at least”.

When I went to the nurses’ station, I asked the receptionist, “Excuse me, I’m Matsushima, and I’m leaving the hospital today. I just wanted to say thank you to Sato-san because she took care of me until today”

She replied, “Hmm? Sato-san? Ok, please wait a moment,”

She looked a little confused and also asked another nurse, “Who is the nurse in charge of Matsushima-san? Do we have daily temperature history?”

After a while, the reception nurse came back and said, “Um, I’d like you to take a look here”

It was a piece of paper that seemed to keep a record of my temperature every morning. And in the nurse’s column,  there were handwritten signs with the name “Sato”.

I didn’t understand what it meant and asked, “Um, what’s wrong about this?”

The nurse replied, “In our hospital, it’s been a rule since a few years ago that the name column must be stamped with Hanko instead of a handwritten name signature. We check it every day, so it doesn’t make sense that the handwriting is still there.” 

And she continued, “Also, there is no one called Sato among our nurses…”

Umm…So what does it mean…? 

I was in the hospital for 10 days, and it seemed that Sato-san, who took care of me every day, had a record on paper, but she didn’t exist at all?

In addition to taking my temperature, we also exchanged conversations such as “I want to sleep well tonight, so please give me medicine to make me sleepy”. But that Sato-san is not here all the time…?

While we were talking, confusion spreaded to the other nurses, and the nurses’ station was getting a little noisy in chaos.

I started to get scared, so I said, “It’s okay if Sato-san isn’t here anymore”, and I forced myself to leave and head downstairs for the discharge procedure.

When I told my mum, who joined me there, that Sato-san was not there, she said, “Yeah? You mean she wasn’t on duty?” 

“No, it means she wasn’t there.” 

“What do you mean?”

The exchange went on. When I told her what happened, she was very surprised as well.

I continued, “Thinking back, things started to get weird last night. I went to the toilet at 2 am, and you came to my rescue and then…”

But my mum interrupted, “Last night? What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean? You came to save me last night when I was trapped in the toilet. You stayed with me for an hour, and I walked you to the elevator at the end.”

She replied, “No, I didn’t do that”.

That’s when my mum also came to realise, “So that’s why you were in such a hurry to get out of the hospital?”

We left the hospital shortly after, but neither of us could say anything because everything was still a mystery…

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