Who is the man…? Why did he steal it…? I bet you would say ‘Ew’ after hearing this human-based horror story of Hitokowa Kaidan.

The original story is from Masao Yoshii, a comedian and actor who is now famous as a Kaidan teller as well in Japan. The story focuses on his wife’s real experience when she was younger.

From here, I will describe “I” as the wife of Masao for convenience.

When I was a senior in high school, I lived in an apartment building with my mother, my father, and my sister. Our rooms were on the ground floor, and the living room had a balcony outside the window where we dry our clothes.

One day, at about 2 am in the summer, everyone else was sleeping in their rooms.

And I was the last one to be awake. I was watching TV in my room, thinking it was time to turn it off and go to bed.

Then suddenly….”KYAAAA!!!”

I heard a huge scream. It sounded like it was coming from my mother’s room.

I rushed to her room anyway. And my father and sister came running in as well. We found the mother sitting alone on the futon in the pitch-dark room.

I asked her, “What’s wrong?” 

The mother said, “A man. There was a man just climbed onto the blanket”.

“What?” There came a little bit of tension between us. But when we looked around, we didn’t see any men. 

I was gonna tell her that, she slowly pointed to the dark behind us.

When we turned around, the man, who had been possibly hiding behind the door, came out and ran to the balcony, jumped over the fence, and ran away.

It was so sudden and quick that my sister and I were too surprised to move. But shortly after, the father said, ‘Call the police right now’, and he went outside after the man.

From here, this is the story that I heard from my father later.

He searched around the building, but the man was nowhere to be found. So he decided to wait for the police to come.

When he came back to the balcony and tried to climb up, he found a pair of shoes under there.

It seemed like the man who ran away had probably taken off his shoes before entering the apartment to avoid leaving any traces. So he thought of collecting them as evidence.

Then he saw there was a man standing about 10 metres away and He was barefoot.  So obviously, “This guy!”, so the father chased after him and caught him.

The police came afterwards, and the man was arrested.

The other day, my mother was called to the police station.

It was mainly to confirm that the arrested man actually did it, so she would have to see his face. She wasn’t completely feeling comfortable going there alone, so I decided to go with her.

At the police station, she was asked to look at that man through the magic mirror.

The police asked,  “Is this him?”

“Umm, actually, I’m not sure.”

You know, it was late at night when the housebreaking happened, and it was pitch dark, so she couldn’t see his face.

The police said, “Don’t worry, we have other ways too. We have various items confiscated from this man’s room. Could you take a look at them as well?” 

And when they took her to another room. In that room, we found dozens or hundreds of pairs of underwear laid out on a blue sheet.

The police said, “I’m sorry to ask, but there might be some of your things in here. Could you please have a look through?” 

There was no choice, and in a way, it was better than looking at the face of the culprit. So She looked through them but didn’t find her underwear in the end.

While My mother was telling this to the police, I was also looking through the panties. Then I noticed some underwear looked familiar.

I said, “Hey, maybe this is mine. Mine from the third grade.”

And I was looking elsewhere as well. Then there were other ones of mine again and again! 

“Oh, that’s the one from junior high school. Oh, this is the one I thought was missing recently.”

I started feeling really weird. Think about one possibility.

I talked to the police officer, “Um, can I also see the man’s face too?”

When I looked at his face, I immediately recognised him. It turned out to be that the man was my old class teacher from the third year of primary school.

This is something we found out later in the investigation. 

It seems that the teacher had been stealing my underwear for about 10 years, from when I was in the third year of primary school until I was a senior in high school at the time.

He couldn’t stop at the end and finally decided to go to my room and rough me up or something. Actually, my mother and I swapped the rooms for the layout change just a few days before the housebreaking day.

He didn’t notice this change yet, and that’s why he went to my mother’s room by mistake. But what if we didn’t decide to swap the room…

The teacher had probably been in love with me ever since he was in charge of my class. And even after his homeroom year was over, he seemed to have been stalking me, or rather, stealing my underwear at times.

There is a little follow-up to this story.

The man has already been released many years ago. But the scary thing is, sometimes he still sends a letter of apology to my parents’ house. About once or twice a year.

First of all, if he was really sorry, I don’t think he would have sent a letter of apology in the first place. And even if he did, it would be appropriate to send it in a proper format, like an envelope, to show his sincerity.

However, he wrote the apology on a stylish postcard. For example, a postcard with a picture of a night view in Paris.

That kind of thing raises the suspicion, “Is he really sorry?”  It makes me wonder if this case is not over yet…

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