The Pulling: A True Ghost Story from a Haunted Japanese Island

• 
• Post on X
• 

In the world of ghost stories, spirits are often said to pull the living into their realm. On the remote Japanese island of Niijima, where I grew up, this isn’t just a saying; it’s a chilling local custom known as hippariau—the “pulling.” When one person on the island dies, it is an unspoken rule that several others will follow in quick succession. This is a story of when I, and two of my friends, came face to face with the spirits responsible for “the pulling.”

A Strange Obon Tradition

About 20 years ago, during summer vacation from college, I brought two of my friends to my home on Niijima Island. It was the Obon season, a traditional Japanese period for honoring the spirits of ancestors, and I wanted to show them our island’s unique customs.

On Niijima, for the graves of those who have died within the past year (a tradition called niibon), families place a glass case, about a meter wide, on the tombstone. Inside, they create a beautiful display with photos of the deceased, flowers, and their favorite things from life—sake, snacks, or even pachinko balls. It’s a poignant and deeply personal way to remember the recently departed.

Wanting to share this unique sight, I took my two friends to the community cemetery late one night.

Three Friends, Three Different Hauntings

The cemetery was quiet. We lit a bundle of incense and walked through the grid-like paths, placing sticks at the graves of my family and acquaintances. As the three of us moved deeper into the cemetery, I glanced down a narrow path to our right.

There, an old woman in a kimono, her back bent with age, was staring at me. She was smiling, her mouth moving as if trying to say something, while her hand drew a large circle in the air. Then, I realized something was terribly wrong. She was translucent. I could see the gravestones behind her, right through her body.

I gasped, “What?!” and at that exact moment, my two friends also cried out.

“Did you see that?!” I yelled, “The translucent old woman!”

“What? No…” one of them replied, his face pale. He said, “I just smelled something strange from that direction… not incense, but an old, nostalgic smell, like the inside of my grandmother’s closet.”

Then, the other friend chimed in, his voice trembling. “I’ve been hearing a voice in my right ear. It keeps saying, ‘Koko da yo, koko da yo, hippariau dantō wa koko da yo…’ Hey, Uematsu, what does dantō mean?”

The three of us had experienced three completely different paranormal events, at the same place, at the same time. I had seen something with my eyes, one friend had smelled it with his nose, and the other had heard it with his ears.

And the word my friend heard, dantō? It’s a local island dialect for “grave.” There is no way he could have known that word.

As we stood there in a panic, I realized the translucent old woman had vanished. We cautiously peered down the narrow path again. It was then that we noticed something we had missed before: that section of the cemetery was filled, almost exclusively, with the glass cases of the niibon—the graves of those who had died within the last year.

The Meaning of “The Pulling”

When we pieced our experiences together, a chilling narrative emerged. The translucent old woman, drawing a circle in the air, was trying to tell us something. And the voice my friend heard, in a dialect he shouldn’t have known, was the key.

“Here it is, here it is… the graves of ‘the pulling’ are here.”

The spirits of this island, it seems, pull each other into the afterlife. Is it out of loneliness? Or a resentment that they had to go alone? I don’t know. But the custom of “the pulling” is deeply ingrained in our island’s culture.

Even this year, the strange phenomenon continues. When one person dies, several others soon follow. The pulling is very, very real.

※ Unauthorized reproduction, video creation, and uploading of this article's content to YouTube, blogs, or other platforms is strictly prohibited.

Related Articles