Senganjō (千貫森)

A mountain of 462 meters, rising in quiet solitude from the Abukuma Highlands in Iino-machi, Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture. Its cone is almost too perfect — too symmetrical to be explained away by human hands or the whims of nature — and so the whisper has taken root among locals: that this may be the remnant of an ancient pyramid.

According to legend, in ages long past, a giant spilled soil from the carrying basket on his back, and from that spillage the mountain was born. Known by several names over the centuries — "Tangara-yama," "Tōge-yama," and others — it served as a landmark for travelers along the Ōshū Kaidō road, visible even from the Shirakawa Barrier far to the south. Something was always there to be seen, even from a great distance.

In the modern era, repeated sightings of unidentified luminous objects in the vicinity of the mountain began to be reported. The lights were said to crawl low along the ground, or to vanish straight upward without a trace, and in time the surrounding area came to be known as "the village of UFOs." The UFO Fureai-kan, a public facility dedicated entirely to the phenomenon, houses some three thousand items of documentation — photographs, footage, and more — drawing researchers of UFOs and unknown creatures from across the country.

The theory that the mountain itself serves as a landing site remains, officially, nothing more than rumor. Yet when the mountain's composed and orderly form is set beside the recurring reports of strange lights, the word coincidence begins to feel just a little too light.

Whether those lights are natural electrical discharges from the geology beneath, or whether something else has chosen this mountain again and again — Senganjō keeps its answer hidden, as quietly as ever, today.