Girlfriend and I went to a Haunted Forest, Japan.

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Aokigahara forest is dubbed the Suicide Forest by Japanese people because hundreds of people walk in every year t kill themselves. It started in the Feudal days when poor peasants would carry elderly or disabled people into the forest to die since they could not contribute to society. Other times samurai who failed their Lords in battle also went into the forest to commit suicide. Its said there are many ghosts in the forest and that u can get lost and die. Its also said that compasses and cell phones do not work in the forest either, trapping non suicidal people as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara

I gotta say I was NOT aware of its dark dark history until we arrived at the town of Kawaguchiko. We had read that theres great natural beauty by Mt Fuji so we went with a camera and some hiking stuff. The towns people we met at the local inn told us all about what happens in the Jukai....one of the workers even thought we were going in there to commit suicide! OMG she thought we had like a forbidden love thing going on and our parents wouldnt accept our relationship (I am surprised that this still goes on in this day and age).

anyway I was looking for a thrill and wanted to hike so we went into Aokigahara the day after....and boy oh boy.....it was the CREEPIEST place ever. I didn't actually expect to find anything....we went pretty far into the forest taking pictures of the awesome wildlife there. However, we reached a place with rock formations and found a lot of disturbing things....ripped up pictures of familes, something that looked like a suicide note nailed to a tree and clothes. There was rope lying around and lots of yellow tape.

At this point my girlfriend felt very uncomfortable and wanted to leave so we backtracked....and thats when I stumbled on some bones. I freaked out, it was still wearing decaying jeans and Nikes. I f***ing started running. The more we ran the more the forest seemed to envelop us....I started freaking out some more thinking paranoid thoughts about how we might die in the forst. we ran around desperately I started to see things. No straight up ghostly apparitions....but a few times I could have sworn I saw somebody standing next to a tree but when I looked back there was nothing. That freaked me out somemore and in turn my girlfriend got really really really scared and looked like a crazy person (eyes wide, darting left and right).

She shrieked and scared the living hell outta me. I turned around and saw something orange moving thru the trees and brush.....my blood froze and all the hair on my body stood up. I was like, F**K THIS! and started to back up when I saw a figure emerge from the brush. It looked like a Buddhist monk in robes and I was just speechless. I just stood there...my girlfriend went running the other direction crying ... she left me there...but I realized that it was an actual human being and not a ghost. He came shuffling along and spoke in very deliberate Japanese, "Nani ni shi ni kita no?" (why are you here) . I said, "asobi ni, oretachi wa america kara kimashita, gomen na sai gomen!" (To play, we're from American im sorry!). I dont know why I was apologizing but I did. The man looked me over carefully and asked, "ja anata to ano gaijin wa shinu tsumori wa nainn da ne?" (so you and that foreigner have no intention of dying then?) At a time like that I noticed that he still viewed my girlfriend as a foreigner and not me, even though I'm American....goes to show that Japanese people are indeed somewhat xenophobic....anyway.... i said no no no we're here to hike and take pictures. He told me to NOT take pictures and pointed me in the direction to an exit.

I said thanks really fast and ran off mind racing and adrenaline pumping. I wanted to get the fk out of there. I called out my girlfriends name a few times and she came running back from somewhere nearby luckily....but she was pretty sure the man in the robes was a ghost and she was bawling cus she was so scared. The monk gave me good directions because we emerged by a parking lot where there were people.

A mountain rangers came running towards us looking all serious. He pulled out a phone and called somebody. He said, 'daijoubu da, mo daijoubu da, antara atama tsukatte tadashii koto oh shita" (its gonna be alright, you used your head and did the right thing). Apprently he saw how scared we looked and my girlfriend was still crying, he thought we tried to commit suicide but decided against it at the last moment and came back out. I explained the best I could that thats not what we were doing...I told him about all the stuff we found and the monk. Some of the other people were gathering around us whispering , ' oh poor things! must be forbidden love! so sad!" But i told them we wernt there to die, we looked the way we did because we were scared and running. They were like "OMG YOU SAW YURE I (Japanese for ghost) !?!?! AND YOU TALKED TO IT!?!?!?? GO TO THE NEAREST TEMPLE NOW!" Others said they heard rumors of a Buddist Monk who lives in the forest who tries to prevent suicides and to pray for the dead....apparently thats who I encountered. What is not known is if he was real or a yurei. Either way, real or not he did help so I wasnt very disturbed by it but we went to a Jinja anyway and talked to a priest.

I am never going back there again. EVER. I recently almost committed suicide myself so it really hit me hard...but the experience convinced me I would never ever tr to take my own life again.

Yeah Destination Truth went there. Creepy place and extremely sad circumstances that transpire to cause people to kill themselves.

I've wanted to go there for some time. I heard it's a really depressing place. Really creepy, as you communicated through your text.

Ah! That forest looks awesome, it's all bumpy and nobbly and it looks really wild.
I wouldn't be too worried about the history personally, since ghosts are kinda mythical creatures and all...

That's a cool looking forest.

very good story telling.