In 2002, an elite private middle school in Kansai called R became famous throughout Japan following news reports of a mass-hysteria incident that took place during a school camping trip. Extraordinary testimonies were gathered from multiple witnesses, but the most baffling were those from the students themselves.
Various media outlets obsessed over the mysterious happening, but it was eventually dismissed as a case of mass hysteria. Unsatisfied with this explanation, our team independently interviewed U, who was a second-year student at R Middle School at the time, to obtain a firsthand account of the events that unfolded that night. The full text follows.
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The news said it was a case of mass hysteria, but it wasn’t like that at all. Me and my friends all saw it, and so did our teachers.
It’s been four years, but whenever I meet up with my classmates from back then, we never talk about it. It’s like a taboo subject. I mean, someone died, after all.
Our school always holds an overnight camping trip for second-years. We do outdoor activities and the like. In previous years, kids went to Okayama, but we went to , to this sort of recreational facility. I think some company owns it. But you know all that—it was on the news.
The place had been built recently, so everything was in really good condition. I heard companies held training activities there when it wasn’t being used for school events like ours. To be honest, we were all glad we didn’t have to stay in some run-down youth retreat.
During the day, we did a short nature walk and cooked at a nearby campground. After sunset, we ate dinner in the dining hall, and then each class gave presentations and performances. It was pretty fun. Then, from around eight until lights-out, we had free time.
The building’s main entrance faced the highway, but the bedrooms in the back looked out over the mountains.
There were four people to each room, and we all had a back door that opened onto a little balcony. Beyond the balcony was a dark forest leading up to the mountain. The building was two stories, and all the rooms had the same design, all facing the forest. During free time, some people hung out on their balconies and talked to the kids in the neighboring rooms. Some boys on the first floor were shouting to people on the second floor, playing the telephone game.
I was playing cards with my friends in our room when we heard a commotion out on the balconies. I was curious, so I asked the people outside what happened, and they said they’d heard a strange voice. We mumbled something like “Oh, sure. Real scary,” and walked out to join them.
By then, everyone was cramming onto the balconies, and I heard the people above us say “What is it?” and “Did you hear that?” And sure enough, when I listened closely, I heard a voice coming from deep within the forest.
“Heeey.”
It didn’t sound like someone shouting for help. It was more like someone calling out to us. We could hear the voice over and over, at regular intervals. It sounded like a man.
There was a boy in another class who was known as a troublemaker, and he just had to shout back. He cried, “Hey! Hey!” and the voice called out again, saying, “Heeey.” The boy kept responding and laughing with his friends.
They went back and forth like that until somebody said, “It’s getting closer, isn’t it?”
They were right. At first, the voice had been so faint that you could barely hear it. But now it was very clear. The only light was coming from our rooms, though, so we couldn’t see more than a few meters into the forest. By then, the voice was loud enough that I think we could have seen the person if it had been daytime.
We all started to get nervous and scared. Some kids ran back into their rooms and closed the sliding door. Everyone was talking among themselves, and one of the other students said they would run and get a teacher.
Me? I was scared, of course, but I was too curious to run. Everyone in my room was on our balcony, looking out into the forest.
Then a girl on the balcony next to ours called out.
“Are you okay?”
She was in a different class, but she was their student representative and running for student council, so I knew who she was. Because of her character, I was pretty sure she wasn’t joking around. She must have been genuinely concerned.
I remember that it suddenly went quiet as all the other kids waited for the voice to reply.
“Cooome! Come over heeere! I have persimmons!”
The words were very clear, but I’m not sure how to describe them. It was like the voice had no emotion to it. It came out in a flat monotone. It felt like whoever was speaking didn’t understand the meaning of what they were saying. Like some animal was only mimicking a human’s voice.
Everyone was more astonished than scared, but then the girl kept talking. I remember her voice was shaking slightly.
“What do you mean?”
Almost before she finished, the voice spoke again.
“Cooome! Come over heeere! I have persimmons! Cooome! Come over heeere! I have persimmons! Cooome! Come over heeere! I have persimmons! Cooome! Come over heeere! I have persimmons!”
It repeated the same words over and over.
Someone on another balcony screamed, and then everyone panicked and fled back into their rooms.
My group ran, too. We were practically crying. That’s when we heard someone yell “Hey! Who are you?!” and realized it was a teacher. I couldn’t see them from our room, but I could tell they were on one of the second-floor balconies. I was about halfway inside the room, looking back over my shoulder, when I saw a round light shining down on the forest. The teacher had a flashlight.
The light moved around the trees for a while until it briefly passed over something.
I’m still not sure what it was, but it looked like a person.
I didn’t see the whole thing, just a pair of legs in the light. They were weirdly white, with enormous bare feet. Whoever it was wasn’t wearing any shoes.
The feet were huge. Based on their size alone, I would’ve thought the person was three meters tall. But then they ran away and disappeared.
After that, the teachers gathered everybody together in the dining hall. They said they’d called the police about a trespasser and that we should stay inside that night and not go out on our balconies for any reason. Then they sent us back to our rooms. Lots of kids were in shock, and some even started feeling sick. We were supposed to go to the dam the next day, but the teachers canceled the tour, and we went home early.
The school later held a meeting to explain what had happened, and my mother attended. They said the police hadn’t found any trace of a trespasser, and they warned everyone not to answer any questions from the media about the incident.
I don’t think anyone outside my school knows about this next part, but after that incident, the girl who’d called out to the voice went a little crazy.
She’d stand up in the middle of class and shout, “I want to go to the mountain.” Eventually, she stopped coming to school. And then, a few months later, she died. Our teachers never gave a clear explanation about what happened, but I heard rumors she killed herself. Someone in her class who went to the funeral said her casket was closed so you couldn’t see her face.
They said they wished they could have seen her so they could say one last goodbye.