Can I tell you something?
It's about Shinjuku Chuo Park… I can't say I've confirmed any of it, and if you asked me exactly where I heard it, I'd have a hard time answering. But once this story got into my head, I couldn't shake it.
It happened in early autumn last year, apparently. A man who was into photography went to the park at night to take pictures. Past eleven o'clock, alone. They say the moment you step inside, the air changes completely — even with the lights of all those high-rises in Nishi-Shinjuku lined up in the distance. The temperature, I mean. That night it was especially bad, they said. October, but cold enough that his breath came out white.
He walked toward Hakone Hill. That small rise deep in the park. The glow from the buildings doesn't reach it, the trees grow thick, and even in daylight it stays a little dim. At night it's darker still. He had a flashlight, but I heard he said it started to feel like the circle of that beam was the entire world — everything beyond it simply ceased to exist.
He'd gone a little way up the slope when it happened.
He was about to take a shot, eye pressed to the viewfinder, trying to capture the streetlight filtering through the trees. And at the very edge of the frame, something appeared.
At first he thought it was a branch. But the way it moved was wrong. There was no wind. It swayed slowly, up and down.
He lowered the camera and looked with his own eyes. And there it was — hanging. Something in the shape of a person. From one of the branches.
Its feet weren't touching the ground.
He couldn't move for a while, apparently. It wasn't quite fear — his mind just kept insisting this was impossible, and his body stopped listening to him. Then, the moment he tried to turn the flashlight toward it, it was gone. Not all at once. Gradually, like mist thinning, it faded and disappeared.
He looked into it afterward, and apparently over the years, around Hakone Hill, a number of people have… well. The park staff know about it too, but they don't say anything. Because that's the kind of place it is.
That alone would have been enough.
But on his way home, he realized. The photograph. In the moment he'd had his eye to the viewfinder, he must have pressed the shutter without thinking. There was one image left in the camera.
He says he hasn't looked at it. He hasn't deleted it either.
Because if he looked at it, he thinks — he just can't bring himself to delete it.
Wait, there's more.
Have you ever heard about what's under the ground in that park? It was originally the site of an old Imperial Army facility, and when they did construction work, human bones turned up. This was a long time ago, but from what I've heard it wasn't just one or two. Some people say there's no proper record of where they were laid to rest.
On nights when the fog lies heavy, if you walk along the edge of the park, you can sometimes hear footsteps — the sound of hard soles striking stone. Not leather shoes, not sneakers, nothing that makes a sound quite like that. Something harder. Knock. Knock. Not coming closer. Just there. One person said it didn't seem to come from the ground beneath their feet, but from somewhere inside the earth.
In the daytime, that park is a genuinely lovely place. Children running around, pigeons picking their way across the path, people eating lunch on the benches. But when all of that has been stripped away, in the dead of night, if you walk toward Hakone Hill alone —
There are people who say you shouldn't look up at the trees there.
As for the reason — you might be better off not asking.
