The Suicide Woods of Mt. Fuji

"The perfect place to die." That's how Aokigahara was described in Wataru Tsurumui's bestselling book The Complete Manual of Suicide. A dense, dark forest bordering Mt. Fuji, Aokigahara is infamous throughout Japan as a popular spot for those taking their final journey. In 2002, 78 bodies were found within it, replacing the previous record of 73 in 1998. By May of 2006, at least 16 new suicides had already been found. More than a few of them were even carrying copies of Tsurumui's book. No one knows how many bodies go undiscovered.

Signs emblazoned with messages such as "Please reconsider" and "Please consult the police before you decide to die!" are nailed to trees throughout the forest. However, the woods have such a reputation that these minor deterrents do little to stop the determined. Local residents say they can always tell who is going into the forest for its stunning natural beauty, who is hunting after the macabre and who is planning never to return. "We've got everything here that points to us being a death spot. Perhaps we should just promote ourselves as 'Suicide City' and encourage people to come here," the exasperated mayor of Aokigahara has been quoted as saying.

Part of the appeal is dying at the foot of the sacred Mt. Fuji. Part of it is the foreboding nature of Aokigahara, so dense and thick that from just a few kilometers inside it no sounds can be heard other than those produced by the forest itself. Legends surround the place; for instance, there are said to be massive underground iron deposits that cause compasses to go haywire, trapping innocents along with the purposely suicidal. Japan's Self Defence Force regularly runs training exercises throughout Aokigahara, and claims to have had no trouble with their military-grade lensatic compasses. They admit, though, that commercially available equipment would be pretty much useless.


Aokigahara is considered the most haunted location in all of Japan, a purgatory for yurei, the unsettled ghosts of Japan who have been torn unnaturally soon from their lives and who howl their suffering on the winds. Spiritualists say that the trees themselves are filled with a malevolent energy, accumulated from centuries of suicides. They don't want you to go back out.

However, even in these haunted woods, regular humans still have a job to do. Forestry workers rotate in and out of shifts at a station building in Aokigahara, and occasionally they will come upon unfortunate bodies in various states of decomposition, usually hanging from trees or partially eaten by animals. The bodies are brought down to the station, where a spare room is kept especially for such occasions. In this room are two beds: one for the corpse and one for someone to sleep next to it. Yup, you read that correctly. It is thought that if the corpse is left alone, the lonely and unsettled yurei will scream the whole night through, and the body will move itself into the regular sleeping quarters. In inimitable style, the workers jan-ken (rock-paper-scissors) to see who gets to sleep with the body. And you thought your job was rough. (above taken from the SeekJapan website http://www.seekjapan.jp/article-1/767/The+Suicide+Woods+of+Mt.+Fuji )

Hunting ghosts in Regina

REGINA -- If there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call?

Ghost Hunters! ... Research Team.

Dana Hryhoriw and Wendell Kapay are the Ghost Hunters Research Team (GHRT). They've been helping people with paranormal problems since 2004 -- for free, mind you, all for the greater good.

"One of the biggest things for us is we're not exactly what you see on TV," explains Hryhoriw. "To us, these spirits were and are still somebody's loved ones. We go by respect first and foremost. We try to communicate with the spirits rather than banish them."

Hryhoriw and Kapay say they help roughly 30 people in Regina every year deal with suspected spirits or unexplained noises in their houses. Every investigation is strictly confidential.

"Usually when we go there we'll take a look at every alternative possible. We don't necessarily go there looking for a spirit, but we also don't debunk our client's claims," Hryhoriw says.

They communicate with the spirits using a variety of equipment including night-vision camcorders, cameras, voice recorders, motion sensors, thermometers, candles and compasses.

"I like to use a compass ... Because of the magnetic force of the spirit, it makes the compass kind of dance around when you stand still," Hryhoriw says.

They've saved clips on their tape recorder: A girl's voice in an empty graveyard, a mysterious voice saying "hi" in a suspected haunted house. They've also accumulated creepy photographs over the years. Some have random smoke appearing, while others have orbs streaking through the frame.

They have always considered ghost hunting a hobby, but when they moved from Wynyard to Regina in 2004 they formed their research team. More precisely, the research team formed after the night Hryhoriw saw her first ghost.

She says she and her partner wanted to explore Darke Hall at the University of Regina campus on College Avenue. Just as they were leaving, Hryhoriw says she saw something she'll never forget.

"I looked up at the front doors of Darke Hall, and there was a man standing there," she says. "Just the way he was standing there and looking at us, it was like 1,000 volts of electricity surged through me. It took my breath away."

She didn't know at the time that this mysterious man, who appeared and disappeared in the old hall, was actually Francis Darke, the founding father of Darke Hall. They went to a library to find out more information on the hall when she saw him in a book.

"That's the man I saw," she says pointing to his picture in the library book. The man, 64 years deceased, appeared to her looking the same as he did in a photo taken in the early 1930s.

Both Hryhoriw and Kapay experienced the paranormal at a young age. Kapay explains some of the noises he heard as child.

"I would hear things in the night that I shouldn't have been hearing," he says. Like the rocking chair that would rock back and forth when only he and his brother were home. When his father died, Kapay believed that his spirit stayed in the house.

"Cupboard doors were opening and closing on their own," he says.

Hryhoriw's first real paranormal experience happened while she was in the eighth grade. She was very close to her grandfather when she was young, and in the months before he died she had the same dream every night.

"I was in school, wearing these certain type of clothes. I'd get a call to the office, so I'd leave my homeroom, go down to the office and they would tell me, 'Get ready, your parents are picking you up, your grandpa has passed away,'" she recalls.

Night after night, the same visions played in her dreaming mind. In every dream she had the same clothes on and every time the same result occurred. Disturbed by the dreams, she decided against wearing those particular clothes together and valued every moment with her grandfather.

One day she had slept in so she threw on some clothes in a rush. When she got to her homeroom class, the moment played out just as it did in her dream.

"The minute the secretary said, 'Please send Dana to the office,' I looked down and I realized I was wearing those clothes and I cried all the way to the office," she says. "It hit me like a ton of bricks."

Losing someone so close to her stung, so she's vowed to help out others who have lost loved ones as well.

"If somebody has unfinished business, or they passed away without being able to say goodbye to a loved one, for me, my ultimate goal would be to capture that message and just to be able help them pass on," she says.

With Halloween approaching, calls are coming more frequently for the Ghost Hunters. Because so many people ask for their help, they won't stop their investigations, not until the day they finally get an answer.

"For most people it's one of the most popular unanswered questions: What's out there?" she says. (above taken from the Leader-Post website )

How To Photograph Ghosts

GHOST STORIES can be frightening... ghost voices in EVPs can be intriguing… but what people really want in the way of haunting evidence are photographs. Photos and videos of ghosts provide the most dramatic evidence for the existence of the spirit world, providing we can be certain that they have not been Photoshopped or otherwise hoaxed. That's why so many ghost hunting groups are so eager to point to the orbs and "ecto" in their photos – they desperately want that hard evidence. Unfortunately, orbs and "ecto", in my opinion, stand as rather poor evidence for ghostly activity since so many other things, such as dust and water vapor, can account for them.

So how can we succeed at photographing ghosts? Here are some ideas.

GO WHERE THE GHOSTS ARE

This seems like an obvious point, but how do we know where the ghosts are? Well, at any given moment, we don't, really. They could be all around us, for all we know. But our best bet is to go to locations where ghost activity has been reported.

Many ghost hunting groups like to hang out in cemeteries with their cameras and recorders. Although I've heard some very good EVP from cemeteries, I haven't seen many convincing photos or video taken there. Just because people are buried there, why should ghosts linger in cemeteries any more than in other locations? (I think the ghost hunting groups just like the spooky atmosphere.)

A better bet would be houses, buildings and other locations where people have actually experienced ghost activity – better yet, where ghostly apparitions have actually been seen.

EQUIPMENT

The type and quality of the photo equipment you use can be important. Most people are using digital cameras these days, and although you don’t need an expensive model, the higher the resolution the better. Cameras of low resolution can produce images with a lot of digital artifacts, especially in low light situations. This artifacting can produce elements in photos that might look paranormal, but aren’t. (Even if they are paranormal, the blocky resolution makes them more difficult to confirm.)

Use cameras of at least 5 megapixels of resolution.

WHAT TO SHOOT

Fortunately, large-capacity memory cards for digital cameras have become quite affordable, allowing us to take lots and lots of photographs, even with high-resolution cameras, before they have to be emptied. So take lots and lots of photos, especially in the areas where ghost activity and apparitions have been reported.

HOW TO SHOOT

Set up your camcorder on a tripod and let them run unattended. You can also try this method with still cameras equipped with a function of snapping a picture on its own every few seconds. Make sure your fellow ghost hunters aren't creeping around this area very much.

WATCH WHAT YOU SHOOT

Avoid shooting into mirrors or other reflective surfaces, especially with a flash. Flash reflections can result in too many questionable images that can be caused by smudges and dust on the reflective surface.

Some researchers believe that ghost images are more readily caught in a reflective medium like a mirror. (In fact, the ghost research group I belong to got one of its best images this way.) But if you do want to shoot into a mirror, do not use a flash. If there's not enough light available, put the camera on a tripod or other stable surface to avoid blurring.

DAY OR NIGHT?

Here's something that occurred to me as I was considering this article. Should we use flashes at all? (It's the flash that produces those questionable orbs and ecto.)

Should we even be doing this research at night in the dark? This is when most ghost hunting groups conduct their research, but why? Watch any episode of Ghost Hunters and they not only conduct their research at night, but also switch off all the lights. Again, why? Because it's spookier? Is there any evidence or research to show that we are more likely to capture ghost photos, video or EVP in the dark than in the middle of the day?

In fact, the opposite might be true. Take a look through this site's gallery of The Best Ghost Photographs Ever Taken. What's one thing they most have in common? Most were taken during the day or in normal light conditions.

So, ghost hunters, why don't we try that as well?

BE LUCKY

The one other thing the photographs in that gallery have in common is this: they happened by chance (with only one or two exceptions, I think). The photographers were not out trying to photograph ghosts. They were just taking pictures for some other purpose, and the ghosts happened to show up in the photos. In fact, that's how most great ghost experiences occur – when we least expect them and on their terms.

Ghost phenomena are fleeting and mercurial. We cannot control when they will happen or how. By definition, we cannot control our luck in capturing a ghost on camera or video. The best we can do is go where the ghosts are, be patient and be persistent. We may never get a photo of an apparition, but if we do, the effort will have been worthwhile. (above taken from the Paranormal About.com website )

Thanks

We here at Prairie Specters just wanted to send out a big Thank-you to Jo-Anne Christensen for taking the time to speak with us this weekend. It was great to meet you and we are looking forward to reading your new Saskatchewan ghost book.