Case 9: Old Harukawa Elementary School (Trip to Japan 3)

It was a good thing we investigated this locally famous haunt in my extended family’s hometown, as it burned down just a month later in September. This building, which served as the elementary school for the village from its construction in 1937 to its replacement in 1992 with a combined elementary and middle school campus, has long been rumored to be haunted, with reports of activity going back to when the school was still in operation in the 1960s.

For additional context, the school survived the air raids of World War 2 largely due to its brick construction, although it suffered moderate damage. The area around it was not as lucky. In the 1960s, the school underwent a renovation, which included the construction of five new classrooms in an additional wing. When this new wing was being built, the skeletal remains of several victims of the air raids were uncovered. Despite the remains being properly cremated and reinterred with Buddhist rites, the Hauntings began soon after the wing was built. Renovations and expansions often can be the impetus for Hauntings to start, as it is believed these activities can disturb spirits.

There were, however, two more events that led to paranormal activity inside the school.

In 1969, a ten-year-old girl was accidentally hit by a car right outside the school. Despite a student of the nearby Harukawa Girls’ Academy and the elementary school nurse rendering first aid almost immediately and an ambulance arriving just a few minutes later, the girl died of her injuries. Ever since then, people have reported seeing a girl in tattered clothes standing on the sidewalk near the spot of the crash that will disappear whenever they get close to her.

In 1990, a maintenance worker for the school was found dead in the morning at his workstation by one of his colleagues who was opening the school for the day. He had been assigned to work in the evening, and had apparently suffered a fatal heart attack. The maintenance room at the current elementary school is dedicated to him in his memory, and has a plaque with his face on it next to the door, in fact. Those who have explored inside the abandoned school have reported hearing keys jangling around late at night, almost as if he is still walking the halls as a spirit.

The building has been explored many times by locals, oftentimes kids from either the local middle school, the private Harukawa Girls’ Academy, or boys in the village who attend a high school outside of the village in the neighboring town of Inoue or city of Yoshimatsu. All of them recall feeling very uneasy when inside the building, and some of them recall seeing paranormal activity. One woman, who we will keep anonymous, showed us a photograph she and her friend had taken when they walked inside the school as teenagers who went to the private girls school in Harukawa. This photograph showed the white figure of a person standing right next to her friend despite the two of them being totally alone.

Armed with this knowledge, we prepared ourselves for what would hopefully be a less eventful and less dangerous investigation, which, sadly, would prove to be the last of its kind in the building.

…

We walked into the abandoned school around 10 PM and set up our equipment on a desk in what used to be the main office. By this point, almost everything inside the school was covered in dust, and papers were strewn about the floor. Paint was peeling from the ceiling, and in some areas of the school, plants were growing on the walls and on the floor. It was the perfect setting for a haunt, especially in Japan.

“I hope this one won’t be so traumatizing,” Marie said as she turned on the EMF meter. “I’m still shocked you two directly confronted whatever was in the (Family B) house.”

“I’m surprised we weren’t physically attacked besides Yukiko getting shoved,” I replied. “I don’t think I ever want to step foot in that place ever again.”

Jared commented as he aimed the video camera down the hallway, “I just hope none of the air raid victims here are as angry as that one in their hou-“ Before we could even begin our investigation properly, we all heard footsteps from the opposite end of the hallway, prompting Jared to aim the camera down there to see what was going on. “What the Hell?”

Ashley asked as she grabbed a digital voice recorder, “Already? That was fast.”

Yukiko asked Jared, “Hey, can you see anything down there?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I got nothing on night vision. It’s totally empty.”

“Well I know where I’ll be going first,” Ashley remarked as she began to walk down the hallway, with Yukiko quickly joining her. “I’ll cover the first floor and the sidewalk where people see that little girl. Do you guys wanna cover the second floor?”

“Yeah, we can do that,” I assured her. Armed with a plan, we set out to formally begin our hunt.

…

Even though the night had started out promising with those disembodied footsteps, by midnight, none of us had found anything in the school. We each had taken many photos and even conducted an EVP session, but no results had come about. Marie commented as we looked around an empty classroom, “Man, it’s like they all ran away. We haven’t gotten a single piece of evidence since we split up.”

“I’m surprised,” I said as I looked out the window onto the rear courtyard of the school. “This place was supposed to be pretty haunted if the stories were true.”

It was around this moment that it began to rain, with water soon dripping into the school from a few small holes in the roof. Jared aimed the camera towards the rear courtyard and remarked, “This place is really falling apart, isn’t it?”

“I’m surprised it hasn’t been renovated into apartments or something,” I replied. “Or torn down. Either one would make more sense than just leaving it up to rot for over thirty years.”

“Hey guys,” Marie then asked us. “Do you see someone standing out front?”

Jared turned the camera back around towards the front and aimed it at the front entrance, finding nothing of note, much less a person. “No, why do you ask?”

Curious, I asked Marie, “Do you see someone out there?”

“It looks like someone’s standing on the sidewalk in front of the school,” Marie explained. “They look pretty short, too.”

“We can’t see them, Marie. Only you can.”

At this point, Marie grew silent, still watching the front entrance, her eyes fixed on what only she could see as me and Jared wondered what to do. “I’m feeling pretty uneasy about this, man,” he told me on the side as we stepped back and conversed among ourselves.

“Me too. I know she’s the most spiritually aware of all of us, but this is unusual, even for her.”

“It’s a girl.” Marie’s words echoed throughout the room. “She’s… Standing there. She seems upset.”

Determined to get to the bottom of this, I opened up a window to the front and snapped several photos in the direction of where Marie was looking, seeing if maybe I could capture whatever she was seeing on camera. “Is she moving at all?”

“No. She’s just crying and standing still.” She then closed her eyes and turned away, telling us, “I can’t look at her anymore. I feel like I’m gonna start bawling my eyes out if I keep looking.”

As I flipped through the photos I had taken, Jared asked me, “Did you get anything on camera?”

“Hang on, I’m looking,” I replied as I got to the photos I had taken from the second floor looking out towards the main entrance. As I did, we heard what sounded like whispering from out in the hallway and all turned around to find nobody there. “Huh?”

A frightened Jared asked us, “Did you guys hear that?”

“Yeah,” replied Marie, who walked over and looked out into the hallway to see if anyone was present. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Hold up guys,” I then said as I looked at two of the photos I had taken of the front entrance. “Look at this.” Both photos seemed to show a white figure standing by the roadway. Although no discernible features could be made out, it appeared to be of the same approximate height as a young elementary school girl. Perhaps this was the girl that passersby have seen for years, the girl that lost her life in that tragic accident so long ago.

“That’s her,” Marie affirmed. “That’s the girl I saw. She looked so upset. I couldn’t hear her say anything, but she seemed to be calling out for something.”

Our analysis of the photos was cut short when we heard the sound of a young child giggling from the hallway, which made all of us freeze in fear. The sound of disembodied laughter could not be more stereotypically scary, especially coming from a child. I whispered to the others, “What the fuck…”

“This is getting freaky,” Jared replied. “Ghost kids scare the shit out of me.”

As we ventured out into the hallway, I turned on the digital voice recorder once more to see if maybe we could capture an EVP. “We can hear you,” I called out to whoever was upstairs with us in Japanese. “Can you speak to us directly? We’d like to hear from you.” It was at this point that my digital voice recorder captured what sounded like a little girl replying to me, also in Japanese: ‘Good evening…’

Marie decided to try to communicate with them next, albeit doing so in English. “I know it’s a long shot,” she asked. “But can you understand English? Only my friend Takeo can speak Japanese. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Translating for her, I asked, “Does anyone here speak English? My friend Marie-san wants to speak to you.” We captured another EVP in response to this question as well. Surprisingly, it was indeed in English, albeit very accented and hard to make out. After analysis following the investigation, we determined it was a child of unknown gender saying, ‘Hello, I am (indiscernible)…’

…

While we were capturing EVPs upstairs, Yukiko and Ashley spent most of their time taking photos of the entire first floor, documenting the school very well. They paused roughly around the time Marie began to see the little girl out front to begin looking over the photos they had taken. Yukiko filmed Ashley looking over the photos, and as she did, something rather interesting happened on camera.

Three small white orbs seemed to fly past Ashley as she sat down in the only chair left in an otherwise empty classroom. We were unable to debunk this as dust or something else blown by the wind, as Ashley’s hair was not moving and there was no wind blowing into the school, especially not as fast as it would have had to blow for the three orbs to move like they did.

As they flew past, Yukiko noticed them and asked, “Woah, what was that?”

Ashley looked up from her photo camera and asked, “Huh?”

“I just saw like three orbs fly past your head,” she explained. “Did you feel anything?”

“No. How did you see them?”

“I saw a very faint shape and then looked into the camera. I know for a fact I got it on tape.” As she pointed to the rough area where the three orbs appeared, the door behind them slammed shut, causing both of them to jump in fright. “What the Hell?!”

“Oh shit,” Ashley screamed as she got up from her chair.

Yukiko aimed the camera at the door as she called out in Japanese, “Who’s there?! Who slammed that door?!”

Ashley looked around the room, but found no one else inside. “Whoever it was, I can’t see them.”

Yukiko asked the spirit who shut the door once more, “Who’s here with us? Did you slam the door shut?” They then heard a man’s voice from behind the door, but could not make out what he said, causing both of them to look to the door in panic. “There’s someone here with us, Ashley.”

“Did you catch what that guy said?”

“No, did you?”

“Not a clue.” Ashley then turned back to her camera and looked at the photo she had stopped at. “Wait a sec… Yukiko, look at this.” The photo she had stopped on was a photo of the same classroom they were in that she had taken just before they had entered. The photo seemed to show a face peering at them from the doorway, as if the spirit was taking a peek at them from behind the wall. Its eyes were glowing a bright white, and its face looked like that of an older man. “That’s creepy as Hell.”

“No kidding,” my sister replied. “Maybe that’s who’s making all the noise here.”

“I’m gonna keep looking through the photos. I only have about ten more to look through.” Ashley then sat back down and continued to scroll through the pictures, doing so at a slightly faster pace so she and Yukiko could leave the room sooner. In the very last photo, she found another anomaly. “There’s something else here. Check this out.”

This photo was of Yukiko standing next to a window. A white figure seemed to be standing on the other side of the glass to her left, peering in and watching the two of them. This figure did not look like Ashley, nor did any of us see anyone resembling it walk by the abandoned school. Yukiko was obviously creeped out by this when showed the picture. “Let’s just get out of here and meet up with the others.”

“Good idea.” The two of them grabbed all of their supplies and then headed out of the room, eager to leave it behind after what they had witnessed.

…

In the same room we had started our investigation in, the five of us went over the evidence we had gathered so far while it continued to downpour outside. On the first floor, rain thankfully did not make it through unlike the second floor, so it gave me, Marie, and Jared a chance to dry ourselves a bit. “I got soaked up there,” I said to the others as I showed off how wet my clothes had gotten. “There’s so many holes in the roof, especially by the stairs.”

“We’re bone-dry,” Ashley replied. “We haven’t even seen any rainwater drip down from the ceiling.”

“So,” I then asked the rest of the team. “How’s it going so far? Has it been slow?”

“A little bit,” Yukiko replied, explaining what she and Ashley had been through. “We got two photos we think have ghosts in them, and a door got slammed shut in a room we were in. Besides that, there really hasn’t been much else.”

“Same here,” Marie added. “I think I saw the girl that got hit by the car, and we kept hearing whispers and children laughing upstairs, but before that, we hadn’t gotten anything.”

“To be honest,” Jared pointed out, given what had happened at our last investigation. “That’s not a bad thing. A slower-paced one was needed for all of us after what happened at the (Family B) house.”

“Agreed,” I said to Jared with a fist-bump. “I’ll take this over another damn possession or violent poltergeist or whatever the Hell else is out there any day.”

“The laughing children were creepy, but honestly, it’s not as bad as what I went through at (Family B)’s house.” Marie then set down her photo camera, but just as she did, she looked confused and then turned to the doorway leading out into the hallway. “Do you guys hear that?”

Curious, I asked, “Hear what?”

“It sounds like two people are talking out in the hallway.”

We all grew silent to see if we could hear what Marie was hearing, and to our surprise, we indeed could very faintly hear the sound of a conversation elsewhere on the first floor. We could not make out what was being said, but we could identify at least two different people. Ashley grabbed a video camera and turned it on before opening the door to the hallway and looking down both ends to see who or what it was, only to find nothing. “There’s no one else here, guys.”

Her statement was disproven as soon as she finished saying it when a chair left out in the hallway tipped over on its own and fell onto the floor, causing her to jump in fright and slam the door shut as she retreated out of the hallway. I asked her, “Ash, what happened?!”

“A chair just fell over,” she replied as she set the camera down on the table. “I got it on tape too! It just tipped over on its own!”

I ran out to see what she meant, and indeed found a chair lying on the floor. As I looked, I could feel the air around us getting colder. On a hunch, I pulled out my digital voice recorder and began to ask questions. “Can you hear us? We want to hear from you. Who are you? Did you go to school here?” Pause. “Did you work at this school?” Pause. “Did you die here?” Pause. “Do you have a message for anyone?”

As I retreated back into the room, Marie said to me, “I definitely feel a presence here with us. It feels like it’s an older man.”

“An older man? Maybe it’s that maintenance worker who died here.” I then began to play back the recording to see if we could catch anything. Sure enough, I got two responses. First, in response to being asked if they worked here, an older man replied with an affirmative ‘Yes.’ Then, in response to being asked if they had a message for anyone, the same older man replied with ‘Still here…’

“That’s definitely him. It sounds like an old man.”

Jared asked me, “What did he say? Was it in Japanese?”

Translating the EVPs for him, I replied, “Yeah. He said that he used to work here, and then he said something about still being here.”

…

For the rest of the night, we did not capture any further evidence. While it was indeed less active than our previous investigation, it was a much-needed breather following what we had gotten ourselves into at Family B’s house.

We enjoyed our trip to Japan, and it proved very fruitful for us in terms of ghost hunting. On top of it all, Comiket was an experience I will never forget. To say it puts most other cons to shame would be an understatement. It is very different from what most people in the West would think of when it comes to conventions, but if you ever get a rare opportunity to go, I would highly recommend going, although personally I would choose Winter Comiket unless you prepare yourself for the high heat and humidity of the average Japanese summer.

We would conduct two more investigations before the Summer Break ended for us and we would go back to school, both at sites far more local to Volendam, at least relatively speaking: Forest Park Cemetery in Troy and Widow Susan Road in Amsterdam.