When Things go bump in the Japanese night.........

When things go bump in the Japanese night....

"I'd been playing Call of Cthulhu with(if I remember right) Alex (GM), Emma, "Stan" and Rob Lemos - maybe
Lee Gunby was in that session, too... Anyway, it was a pretty bizarrescenario, and I remember it actually creeped me out; I stayed up theentire night reading one of the paperbacks you used to have lining
the windowsill (in the old school above the shop) to keep my mind focused on anything but whatever was going "bump" in the night.

I remember a fog had developed on the river (the one you would havebeen jumping into), and that didn't help matters, either. There areforces "out there" against which a perfectly rational, scientific mind is of no use or comfort. No. Really!

Trust me, folks, Minami-ashigara is Japan's answer to Dunwich. No onecomes away from KevCon unchanged. When I said "life" I guess I really meant "sanity," which amounts to the same thing.

Must dash - *they* are coming"

- MG

This area is amazingly old. People have lived here forever it would seem. Odawara is an old castle town and Minami Ashigara has seen many samurai battles for supremacy
over her hallowed ground.

Some people say they can still hear the clang of swords in theforest at night.Some people say those screams are just cats. Can cats speak? Iknow there are forces out there, perhaps there are portals where the universesmeet,
time stands still and the samurai live and ride again. Einstein himself said time does not exist, everything is now, now is all there is.

A twig snapped, I looked behind me and nothing was there but the mist. What`s that? The horn of a samurai`s helmet? No just a tree branch. No more "Blair Witch Project," I have been watching too many scary
movies.

Not only that but I had been interested in the topic for a while now, doing layman`s research on ghosts. I had just finished reading Joshua P. Warren`s famous book, "How to Hunt Ghosts." Then my wife told me this story:

Takushi had been only 6 when he crossed the road without looking. His death was
painless. His parents agonized over it. Why weren`t we there? Why didn`t we teach him about looking both ways better. Arguments followed. Remorse. Depression. They nearly divorced, but time slowly healed. Still there was a hole in their hearts. A sense of a future lost.

Finally acceptance followed but then a strange thing happened. Takushi was sighted running in front of the same tunnel. This couldn`t be possible. Takushi was dead. Or was he? No of course he was, we saw the body. We saw the blood. Our little boy was gone. It must be someone else.

The Shizawas waited in front of the tunnel one Saturday night. It was hot and humid, those nights that Japan is famous for. Out of the tall grass a boy appeared, he darted not looking, wearing the same shorts and T-shirt that
Takushi had worn that night, the taxi had no time to stop. Except for rubber on
asphalt there was no sound, no horrific sound of car meeting little boy. The taxi driver, extremely distraught
got out and looked front and back of the taxi. There was no body. He looked to the side of both sides of the road but no bloody corpse was to be found.

There was no body.

The Shizawas consulted a man who claimed to be an expert on ghosts. He had written several books and seemed to know what he was talking about. They hired him. Kobayashi said that Takushi doesn`t know he is dead, so he is staying close to where he died. "Sometimes ghosts can manifest on humid nights, when the electrostatic energy is high. I have seen this many times. Yet some people don`t see it, but they sure do feel it and
you can draw that energy to yourself by using a Ouija board or by even playing a scary boardgame. Maybe you have felt a strange tingling going up your spine while watching a scary movie. That`s the same thing. There are many things we still don`t understand with our technology."

Kobayashi said, "Somehow we have to let Takushi know that he is dead so he can go on to where he is meant to go. Could Takushi read?"

"Yes a little," his mother replied. "He couldn`t read much kanji but he could read hiragana."

He thought to himself. "That`s what we`ll do then, we`ve got to contact him and let him know he is dead."

English teacher Shibuya rounded the corner with his wife and child, "Damn! Traffic jam!
Looks like we won`t reach Tokyo for a while now. Darn it I gotta work tomorrow." They approached the tunnel. Look someone has left flowers near the tunnel entrance and there is a painted message on the tunnel.

"Takushi, you don`t have to die anymore."