“Wait. How could these tyre tracks be here?”
Where did they come from? Where would they lead us?

Today, I’m gonna share this mysterious Kaidan story from Ryokichi Iyama.

The original story is from Iyama Ryokichi. He is again a comedian/Kaidan teller.

He works for a Kaidan bar, Thriller Night (スリラーナイト), in Shinjuku Tokyo where you only pay about 30 dollars for all-you-can-drink and listening to Kaidan stories live from several kaidan tellers. By the way, this is a pretty good deal and interesting place if you like Kaidan, so if you happen to be a Japanese speaker living in the Tokyo area, you should definitely go and try it.

Anyway, this story was one of his experiences when he was younger before becoming a Kaidan teller in public…

From here, I will describe “I” as Ryokichi himself for convenience.

I used to go to many haunted places when I was younger. The story I’m going to tell is about the first haunted place I went to.

I’ve been with people who love Kaidan stories my entire life, so obviously, all my friends are into scary things as much as I am.

We can call my friends Ken, Yuma, and Takashi for now.

One day, Takashi bought his first car, and we decided to go for a drive. Where shall we go? Let’s go to a haunted place. It was a very natural thinking process for us. Yes, for sure, because we all love scary things.

When we asked ourselves which haunted places we should go… I live in Kanagawa Prefecture, which is next to Tokyo, not too far from it.

I did a search for haunted places in Kanagawa. When I searched, a lot of places came up.

Then we picked one. It’s a tunnel deep in the mountains. It’s not a completely abandoned tunnel. But the road at the end of the tunnel was already gone, so technically, it was abandoned because it was not usable anymore. 

Anyway, we set off in the middle of the night to go there. The four of us were chatting and going deeper and deeper into the mountains. Then, there were fewer and fewer houses, and the lights started to fade.

By the time we got to the mountains, it was pitch black. There are no lights at all. The only light was the headlights of the cars.

We kept going. Then there’s a gate that says you can’t drive through. We had to get out of the car and walk a bit.

Then, we saw the entrance of the tunnel. Wow, there’s a scary atmosphere there, like something scary was about to happen. That was the feeling we all had.

Well, we came here to have scary feelings anyway. So we decided to go in.

But nothing happened at all. It was so dark, and we only had a handlight each, so we had to walk slowly there. But that was it. We reached the end of the tunnel with no problem.

“What should we do?”

“Well, let’s turn off the lights and go back one by one.”

We tried that. But nothing happened when we went back as well.

It was a disappointment. But we had no choice but to go home. We returned to the car, made a U-turn, and left the tunnel.

We went down the road in a huff. I was looking out the window, and I went like, “What…?”

Ken asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Look, there’s a wrecked hut.”

Since the tunnel was a disappointment, I wanted to do more for that night.

So I continued like, “Do you guys wanna go to that hut? Maybe we still have some hopes to experience something scary there.”

“Yeah, great. Why not!” Yuma seemed to be on board with my idea.

Then, we decided to have a stop at the hut before heading home.

But as we got closer and closer, we found out something.

There’s a driveway. But There’s a step of about two metres from the road. Then there’s a flat area. The hut was at the end of that level ground.

So there’s a height difference. It seemed we couldn’t get to it with the car.

“Well, pull over here, then”, Ken said that. Well, It seemed to be the only option.

“All right, let’s get off and head up.” Then, Yuma and I were following Ken.

But Takashi, who was the driver of the car, won’t get out of the car.

“What are you doing?”

“Are you scared or something?”

We kind of made fun of him, but he simply said,

“No, I’m not scared. We’re in the middle of the road. You never know if other cars come, and I’ve got to move when they do. That’s why I will stay here.”

Well, if that’s the case, there was nothing more we could say. We left Takashi, and the three of us climbed the step.

There’s a hut about 20 metres up. It’s a strange place. While trees and plants were growing thickly, the area around the hut was bare earth. It looked weird.

Ken said, “What is that?” 

“Scarier than a tunnel, isn’t it?” said Yuma.

And I aligned with them like, “Yeah, I was gonna say that too, haha.”

As we were getting closer in the dark, I had to light up the ground not to fall.

Then, suddenly, I found a trail of tyres between us and the hut. I thought, “Wait. How could these tyre tracks be here?”

Do you remember that I said there was a difference in height? That was why we left the car and came here on foot.

Why are there tire tracks here? Where did they come from?

When I followed the line with the light, the tracks just came out of the trees. We had come for the hut, but I was more curious about the tyre tracks now. I wondered where they lead.

So I said, “Why don’t we put the hut behind us and follow these tyre tracks?”

“Yeah, that sounds fun.”

“Let’s follow the tracks.” Ken and Yuma also seemed interested.

Then we changed direction.

The moment we started walking along the tyre tracks.

“Pah-pah-pah-pah-pah!” There’s a horn.

“What?” We jumped and turned around.

It was from the car. And we could see Takashi looking really panicked and honking horns. We couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his hand gestures seemed to say.

“Come on, get down here now.”

We didn’t understand what was going on at all, but we ran back to him because he looked so serious.

We got in the car.

Takashi said, “Did you guys get in? Are you all in?”

I replied, “Yeah, what is it?”

But he didn’t really answer, and “Okay, we’re leaving now.”

“What is going on?” Ken also seemed concerned and wanted to know what happened.

But Takashi kept going like, “Let me focus on driving safely now, so there’ll be no accidents. Just shut up for a second.”

While we drove down the mountains, nobody spoke at all, and there was silence for some time.

After a while, there was a convenience store. Takashi pulled over in the car park there.

He said, “OK, it should be fine now.”

I asked, “What’s going on?”

He said, “Did you not see it?”

“We didn’t see what?”

He continued, “The big Torii gate, did you not see that?”

Torii (鳥居) is a gate usually placed at the entrance of a Shinto shrine. So obviously, there was no such thing when we were up there.

Ken said, “Um, we didn’t see Torii there. Are you sure that it was really torii?”

“Yes, I saw it for sure.”

Yuma also asked, “What about that torii?

Then Takashi started talking about his side of the story.

He was watching us from down there in the car. He saw us heading directly to the hut. Then he noticed there was a big Torii gate right next to it. Also, something was buzzing behind the gate.

It was dark, so he couldn’t see it clearly at first. But after staring at it for some seconds, gradually, it became clear.

It was something white moving. That white something is… A lot of people dressed in white!

“What is that…?”

Then, they suddenly stopped moving. And they started beckoning to us!

Takashi said, “At that moment, you guys suddenly changed direction and started walking towards the torii! I thought it was dangerous, so I honked my horn…”

“What were you thinking of going that way?”

That was his story. So we explained about the tyre tracks.

We could only get back because Takashi was honking there. But what If we had gone straight in the direction of that Torii gate…

We went back to silence again in horror.

---