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Pandora（禁后）
This is a hometown legend about something written with the kanji 「禁后」—a spelling no one ever managed to read aloud. Among us kids it was simply nicknamed *“Pandora.”1
I grew up in a slow, peaceful farm town. There were no arcades or malls—just rice paddies and silence. Still, one thing always caught your eye:
A lone, abandoned house standing beside a dirt road that ran through endless fields.
No one had lived there for years. The place was half-rotted, looking older than anything else in our already time-worn village.
If that were all, it would be just another empty farmhouse—but there was a reason everyone noticed it.
Two things made that ruin unforgettable.
First, the adults’ over-the-top reaction.
Just bringing the place up was enough to get you scolded—sometimes even slapped. Every parent in town was the same; mine included.
Second, the house had no front door.
There were windows and a few sliding glass panels, but no actual entrance. If someone really lived there once, how did they get in and out—climb through the windows every day?
Those mysteries, plus the spooky nickname “Pandora,” turned the house into the hottest topic on every kid’s lips.
(At this point none of us had heard the term 「禁后」 yet.)
Most of us—including me—swore we’d investigate “Pandora” someday, determined to see what was inside.
But we all remembered how violently our parents reacted even when we merely talked about the place, so no one quite dared to act on the plan.
The location itself wasn’t a problem: kids could reach it easily and there were no neighbors to spot us. I’m pretty sure every one of us had at least walked up to the façade once, soaking in the creepy vibe before hurrying home.
A few months after I started junior high, a boy—let’s call him A—got hooked on the Pandora rumor and announced he had to see the inside for himself.
A’s mother had grown up in our town but moved to another prefecture when she married. After her divorce she and A moved back to her childhood home—his grandmother’s house—so the place was completely new to him, and he’d never heard a thing about Pandora.
At the time my closest friends were B, C, and D (D’s a girl). B and C hit it off with A right away, so he naturally slid into our little group.
One afternoon the five of us were hanging out, chatting about nothing in particular. Because the rest of us treated the word “Pandora” like common knowledge, A’s ears perked up and he jumped on the topic.
“My mom and grandma were born here too,” A said. “If I ask them about this, think they’ll blow up at me as well?”
“Blow up? They’ll do more than that,” B snorted. “My folks would straight-up hit me if I even mention the place!”
“Same at my house,” C groaned. “Makes no sense, right?”
While we filled A in on Pandora, the conversation devolved into a gripe session about our parents.
Once the basics were covered, we circled back to the big question: what’s actually inside that abandoned house?
“Nobody really knows?” A pressed.
“Nope,” I said. “None of us has ever been inside, and the second you ask, the grown-ups freak. Feels like the parents are the only ones in on it.”
“In that case,” A grinned, fired up, “let’s find out what they’re hiding—ourselves!”
At first the rest of us—D, C, B, and I—hesitated; nobody wanted another parental beat-down.
But A’s enthusiasm was contagious, and we were itching to vent years of “look but don’t touch” frustration. In the end we all agreed.
During the planning session D’s kid sister begged to tag along, so the Pandora raid was set for Sunday at noon: six kids in all.
I can still picture us that day—buzzing with excitement, standing in front of the ruin, each wearing a backpack stuffed with chips and soda like it was a picnic.
As mentioned, the house sat alone in a sea of rice paddies, and—crucially—had no genkan (front entry). It was two stories high, but the upper windows were out of reach, so the only way inside was to smash one of the first-floor sliding glass doors and climb through.
“A broken pane’s nothing—easy to pay for,” A said, then swung a rock straight through the glass.
He clambered inside. The rest of us exchanged “we’re so dead” looks—then followed.
We’d entered what should have been the living room. To the left: a kitchen; straight ahead: a hallway that turned left to a bath and, at the end, a toilet; to the right: stairs up to the second floor and—oddly—a recessed space that should have been the front entrance, but with no door. 1
Because it was midday the room felt bright enough, yet the hall leading to the “non-genkan” was noticeably dim.
Strangest of all, the interior was cleaner than the decrepit exterior suggested—because there was nothing here: no furniture, no clutter, not a single trace that anyone had ever lived in the house. The living room and kitchen were large, but otherwise utterly ordinary.
“Nothing here at all.”
“Totally normal. I figured there’d be at least some junk lying around.”
Finding only emptiness, the three boys shrugged and started crunching through the snacks they’d brought.
“So I guess the secret must be upstairs.”
D and I each took one of her little sister’s hands and stepped into the hallway toward the second-floor stairs—then both of us nearly had heart attacks.
The hallway ran left past the bathroom to a toilet at the dead end. Midway along, someone had placed an old dressing table…and directly in front of its mirror a tension rod stood upright. 1
Hanging from that rod—was a fist-thick bundle of human hair. 2
*2 Hair as an omen: In Japanese folklore, human hair—especially when displayed in an abandoned space—often signals suicide, vengeful spirits, or a ritual object, amplifying the creep factor for native readers.
I’m not sure how to describe it—the thing wasn’t a loose wig so much as an intact hairstyle: imagine the full back portion of a woman’s long hair, perfectly shaped, dangling there intact. 1
The tension rod had been adjusted to exactly the height where an average person’s head would sit if she were seated at the vanity, as if someone had staged a scene of “a woman sitting in front of her mirror.”
Goose-bumps shot up my arms.
“Wh-what is that? What the hell?” D and I half-panicked.
The three boys stepped into the hall and froze at the sight, dumbstruck. Only D’s little sister blinked and asked, “What’s that?”
“Is that real hair?” B muttered.
“No idea… want to touch it?” C offered.
A and B talked big, but C, D, and I practically tackled them.
“Don’t you dare—that’s seriously bad news! It’s disgusting; there’s got to be something behind it!”
“Yeah, knock it off!” D begged.
Even glancing toward the hallway made our skin crawl, so we retreated to the living room where the dangled “hair” was out of sight.
“But how do we get upstairs? We have to use that hallway,” B muttered.
“I’m not going,” D said flatly. “That thing’s way too creepy.”
“Yeah,” C agreed. “Feels… dangerous.”
The three of us had zero desire to explore anymore after seeing something so far beyond what we’d imagined.
A, though, wouldn’t let it drop. “Just don’t look at it. Besides, if anything weird shows up upstairs we can bolt right back down— the exit’s ten steps away, and it’s still daylight!”
Both A and B were determined to see the second floor; they kept nudging us to move.
“We can’t just—” I began, trading anxious looks with C and D, when suddenly it hit me—
“Wait—D, where’s your sister?”
“Huh?”
All of us froze. D’s kid sister was gone.
We were standing right by the only exit—the broken glass door—so she couldn’t have slipped outside. The living room and kitchen were wide-open spaces; you could see everything at a glance, yet she wasn’t there.
“○○! Where are you? Answer me!”
D shouted, voice cracking. No reply.
“Guys … what if she went upstairs?” B whispered.
All eyes snapped to the hallway—the passage with the dangling hair.
“Why? Why would she do that?” D was on the verge of tears.
“Get it together,” A said. “We’re going up. Now!”
With panic overriding fear, we burst into the hallway and charged up the stairs.
“Hey—○○, where are you?”
“○○! Quit fooling around and come out!”
We called as we ran, but no answer.
At the top stood two doors, both shut.
We tried the one directly in front first—the room whose window we’d seen from outside. Nothing inside, and no sign of D’s sister.
“Must be the other one,” A muttered.
We edged over to the second door and slowly pushed it open…
D’s little sister was there.
But the moment we saw her, every word caught in our throats.
In the center of the room stood the exact same tableau we’d left downstairs—a dressing table, the upright tension rod positioned before its mirror, and a curtain of long, black hair draped over the rod.
The scene radiated such wrongness that we froze, unable to move.
“Big Sis, what’s this?”
D’s sister piped up—and in the very next heartbeat did something unthinkable: she toddled over to the vanity and slid open the top of its three drawers.
“Look—what’s this?”
She held up a sheet of thin calligraphy paper. Brushed across it in bold ink were two kanji:
「禁后」1
None of us could do anything but stare at D’s little sister; the kanji meant nothing to us, yet a paralyzing dread pinned our feet. Even now I don’t understand why we couldn’t move right away.
Oblivious, she tucked the paper back, shut the drawer, and opened the second one.
Inside was the exact same thing—another sheet marked 「禁后」.
My whole body shook; I couldn’t make sense of any of it. At last D snapped out of the trance, rushed over, and grabbed her sister. Tears were already welling in her eyes.
D grabbed her sister and snapped, “What on earth are you doing?”
She yanked the paper away, opened the drawer to put it back—and made a crucial mistake.
In her panic she pulled out not the second drawer but the third, bottom drawer.
The moment it slid open with a rough scrape, D froze, staring inside. She didn’t blink, didn’t breathe—just stared.
“H-hey—what is it? What’s in there?”
We finally managed to move, rushing toward them—
—when D slammed the drawer shut with a deafening bang!
Then, without a word, she lifted her shoulder-length hair to her mouth and began to chew on it, gnawing and sucking as if it were food. 1
“H-hey, what’s wrong with you?”
“D, snap out of it!”
No response. She just kept gnawing on her own hair, strands sticking to her lips. Terrified by her sister’s behavior, the little girl burst into tears. The tension in that room felt like a live wire.
“What the hell is going on?” B shouted.
“I don’t know—this is insane!” C yelled back.
“Forget this—let’s get out of here and go home. I’m not staying another second.”
We hauled D down the stairs—three of us supporting her limp body—while I clutched her little sister’s hand. D kept slurping and chewing her hair the whole way, but none of us knew what else to do except reach an adult—fast.
My house was the closest. We sprinted across the paddies and burst inside, shouting for my mom.
There we were: D’s kid sister and I bawling, the three boys drenched in sweat and shell-shocked, and D still gnawing on her own hair. My head spun; how could I even explain this?
Mom rushed in, alarmed by the commotion.
“Mom!”
I started to blurt out what had happened—still sobbing—when she suddenly slapped me and the three boys, one after another, and yelled:
“You kids went to that house, didn’t you? You went to the abandoned house!”
My mother’s face was twisted in an anger I’d never seen before. All we could do was nod frantically—no one could get a proper word out.
“Stay in the back room—all of you,” she snapped. “I’m calling your parents right now.”
With that, Mom scooped D into her arms and carried her upstairs.
We did as we were told, slumping in my family’s living-room and staring into space. I don’t think anyone spoke for nearly an hour.
During that time Mom and D stayed upstairs; they never came back down until all the parents had arrived. When the last adult rushed in, my mother appeared at the doorway and said just one sentence:
“These children went to that house.”
A ripple of panic spread through the room; the adults started whispering, some outright losing their composure.
“Tell us—what did you see? What’s inside that place?”
Six furious parents fired questions at their own kids all at once. Our minds were blank, words jammed in our throats, but A and B managed to stammer through the whole story as best they could.
“We saw a dressing table and some weird… hair hanging from a bar. And we broke the glass door, too…”
“What else? Was that all you saw?” the adults pressed.
“A-and… there was some paper with writing on it—letters we couldn’t read.”
The room fell dead silent.
At that exact moment a piercing scream erupted upstairs.
My mom dashed up the stairs; a few minutes later she returned, half-carrying D’s mother. The woman’s face was crumpled with tears—she could barely stand, let alone speak.
“Did she look inside—did D open the drawer?”
D’s mother lurched toward us, eyes wild.
“Answer us!” another parent barked. “Did any of you open the vanity’s drawers and look inside?”
“The bottom drawer on the second-floor dressing table,” a father added. “Tell us now—what did you see?”
“We—we opened the first and second drawers,” B stammered. “Only D looked in the third…”
The moment he said it, D’s mother seized us with shocking strength.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” she screamed. “You’re her friends—why didn’t you stop her!”
D’s father and the other adults pried her off us, holding her shoulders.
“Calm down!”
“Easy—please, get hold of yourself.”
After a long minute she regained enough composure to take her younger daughter upstairs again.
The adults decided to break things up. They sent A, C, D’s little sister, and me over to B’s house, where B’s parents finally told us the truth.
“That house you kids went into? No one has ever lived there.
It was built solely to hold that dressing table and those locks of hair.
It’s been there since we were children.
The vanity was used by a real person, and the hair is genuine.
And the word you said you saw—this one, right?”
He showed us the brush-written characters: 禁后.
Building a structure specifically to contain a ritual object (mirror, hair, coffin, etc.)—and forbidding anyone to enter—is a trope in Japanese folk beliefs, often meant to seal a curse or vengeful spirit in place.
B’s dad grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen, wrote the two kanji 「禁后」, and held it up.
“That’s the word we saw,” we confirmed.
He crushed the paper into a ball, tossed it in the trash, and went on.
“Those characters are the owner’s name—the woman whose hair that was. The reading is so obscure no one would guess it unless they already knew.
That’s all you kids need to know. From now on you never talk about that house, and you never go near it. Understand?
For tonight, you’ll all stay here and get some rest.”
As B’s father started to leave, B blurted out the question we were all too scared to ask:
“Wait—what about D? What happened to her? Why was she acting like—”
B’s dad cut him off.
“Forget about that girl,” he said quietly. “She’ll never be the same, and you’ll never see her again. And…” —his face tightened with something like sorrow— “for her sake, it’s better if you don’t try.”
“From this day on D’s mother will resent you—probably for the rest of her life. No one’s looking to assign blame, but after what you saw downstairs you must understand: you can’t have anything to do with D anymore.”
With that, B’s father left the room.
The four of us just sat there, numb.
I barely remember how we passed the rest of that evening—only that it felt like the longest day of our lives.
For a while afterward life returned to something like normal.
From the very next day our parents never spoke of the incident again, and we were told nothing about D. Officially she was “absent for personal reasons,” and about a month later her family moved away.
Word spread that every other household in town had received a warning call that night. Talk of the abandoned house dwindled, and I heard the sliding door was reinforced so no one could get inside again.
None of us—A, B, C, or I—ever went near the place after that. Maybe because of what happened to D, the four of us gradually drifted apart. We ended up at different high schools, and eventually each of us left town. It’s been more than ten years now.
I’m sorry this long, clumsy story gives you no real answers; in the end, we never learned the truth about that house, the hair, or the word 「禁后」.
All I can say is this:
If you ever stumble on an empty house built for something that shouldn’t be disturbed, leave it closed. Some boxes earn the name “Pandora” for a reason.
When I graduated from university, my mother received a letter from D’s mother.
Mom never revealed what it said, but the comment she made afterward still haunts me:
“A mother always keeps one last option hidden for her child.
If it had been you instead of D, I would’ve chosen it too—
even if it was the wrong answer.”
Prologue to the Next Part
What follows is the story of a bloodline in which three secret rituals have been passed from mother to daughter for generations.
First, let me explain that family’s lineage.
In that bloodline a daughter was regarded as the “property” of her mother, and a certain ritual treated one girl as its raw material.
The mother was expected to bear two or three girls and choose one of them as the “material.”
(What happened if she gave birth to boys is unknown.)
The chosen daughter was given two names. One was the ordinary name everyone used; the other—her true name—was known only to the mother and kept secret for life.
To prevent anyone from guessing it, the characters of the true name were assigned a reading completely unrelated to their normal pronunciation. Even if someone saw the kanji, only the mother would know how to say it.
The mother never addressed the girl by that hidden name, not even when they were alone. Much like an imi-na—a taboo name in old Japan—the intent was to emphasize and prove that the daughter was nothing less than her mother’s personal “possession.”
On the day the secret name was bestowed, the mother also set up a personal dressing table for the girl—then forbade her to see that mirror except on her 10th, 13th, and 16th birthdays. 1
It was all groundwork for what the family called “the appointed day.”
From early childhood the mother began “training” the chosen daughter, raising her value as “material” while never once speaking the hidden name.
(Any sisters who were not selected grew up like ordinary children.)
Examples of that training included:
- Carving apart the face of a cat—or a dog—piece by piece.
- Keeping a headless animal: the girl raised a torso with only its tail attached; everyone around her pretended it was alive until she believed it herself.
- Learning a charm that used a cat’s ears and whiskers to kill a rat.
- Dissecting a spider into minute pieces, then re-assembling it into its original form.
- Being forced to eat excrement—her own or someone else’s.
Each task was meant to strip away ordinary sensibilities and prepare the “material” for the ritual to come.
I can’t detail the entire curriculum—it’s too revolting—but even this short list should tell you how grotesque it was. Roughly one-third of the tasks involved animals—especially cats—and there was a reason for that.
Within this bloodline, a man’s only purpose was to father daughters. Once the required number of girls were born, all ties with him were cut. Yet some husbands tried to pry into the family’s sorcery and secrets despite being warned in advance.
From a certain generation onward, the women countered by transferring a familiar-spirit curse onto any man they slept with. Using ritual techniques, they redirected all the grudges of the cats (and other creatures) they had killed into the father. Misfortune then clung to the man’s household like a hereditary curse, discouraging him—and anyone connected to him—from meddling further.
Because those curses relied on animal spirits, cats and other creatures became central tools in the daughter’s “education.”
To shape the girl into suitable “material,” the mother enforced those warped lessons—and the conditioning lasted thirteen full years, passed from mother to daughter.
During that span the first two of three rituals took place.
Ritual 1 — The Offering of Nails (age 10)
At ten, the girl was brought—for the first time—to the vanity she’d never been allowed to see. There the mother ordered her to “offer” nails.
Which nails—and how many—varied by generation, but “offer” meant to tear them off herself and hand them to her mother.
The mother then placed the bloody nails, along with a slip of paper bearing the daughter’s secret name, into the top drawer of the three-drawer vanity.
For the rest of that day she sat motionless before the mirror—keeping vigil over the offering.
Note 2: The secrecy of the daughter’s hidden name (see previous section) ties the ritual directly to her identity, binding the curse to her body.
Ritual 2 — The Offering of Teeth (age 13)
At thirteen the girl was taken to the vanity again and ordered to “offer” teeth—how many depended on the mother’s choice.
She extracted the teeth herself; the mother placed them, together with another slip bearing the secret name, into the second drawer of the vanity.
Once more the mother spent the entire day seated before the mirror, keeping watch.
The Silent Interval (ages 13–16)
After these two rites were completed, the “education” stopped abruptly. From the next day until the girl turned sixteen—three whole years—she was given total freedom with no explanation.
That sudden calm signified that all preparations were finished; the final ritual awaited her sixteenth birthday.
The Final Rite (age 16)
By this point most girls had already become the “living dolls” their mothers desired. Yet a faint echo of real emotion sometimes stirred, and many tried to live like ordinary teenagers during the three-year lull.
On the day the daughter turned sixteen the third and last ritual took place.
- Consumption of Hair
Seated before the vanity, the mother sheared off nearly all of the daughter’s hair—enough to leave her practically bald—and ate it, strand after strand. Swallowing, not merely chewing, was crucial: the hair had to be taken fully into her body. - Revelation of the Secret Name
When the hair was gone, the mother spoke the daughter’s true name aloud. This was the first—and last—time the girl ever heard it.
With that, the rite was complete. Its purpose achieved, the roles reversed:
- From the following day the mother descended into madness, spending every waking moment gnawing on her own hair.
- She was isolated from the household until her death, effectively becoming the “offering” in the daughter’s place.
What remained in our world was no longer a mother, but an emptied shell— a human-shaped balloon.
The true “mother” had departed to a place no one has ever seen or heard of. Everything up to that point—the thirteen years of molding, the three rituals—served one purpose: to qualify her soul (perhaps even divinize it) so she could reach that hidden realm.
According to family lore, that realm is a spotless paradise where all previous mothers who completed the rite now dwell. The final ceremony grants the qualification; the mother’s essence is carried off to that paradise, while her discarded body is left behind, endlessly chewing its own hair. Gaining this new, incorruptible life was the ritual’s ultimate aim.
The daughter—now free of her role as “material”—is raised by her mother’s sisters, and the cycle waits for the next generation to begin.
The reason each mother was expected to bear two or three daughters was exactly this:
after she “left,” one of her ordinary sisters would remain to raise the chosen girl.
Once the daughter’s hair grew back to normal length, she was expected to sleep with a man, give birth to girls, and—when the time came—repeat the entire cycle herself, aiming for the same paradise where her own mother was waiting.
That concludes the outline of this lineage.
There are finer details, but they’d take several more posts to cover. I’ve tried to make it as clear as possible; apologies if the explanation is still difficult to follow.
The real story begins now, so let’s move on.
The dark tradition didn’t last forever. Over time the women of that line began to question it; the doubt grew until they started searching for a healthier way to live as mothers and daughters. As that new attitude took root, the old practice faded and was eventually forbidden.
Still, two elements were preserved—“so we never forget,” they said:
- The hidden name remained as a quiet mark of maternal lineage.
- The dressing-table became a celebratory gift rather than a ritual device.
Gradually the family opened up to the surrounding community; many of the women even married and built ordinary households.
Years passed. Then, in one generation, a woman named Yachiyo married and became a wife.
(Her story marks the next chapter.)
Yachiyo had been born after the old rites were abolished, raised like any ordinary girl by a mother who’d rejected the family’s “bad customs.” She lived an unremarkable, well-loved life, eventually marrying a man she’d dated for years.
She did know the outline of her lineage—her mother had told her a little—but she’d never taken a real interest in it. A few years into her marriage she gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Takako.
Following family tradition (the harmless parts, at least), Yachiyo bestowed a secret name on the child and bought Takako a dressing table identical to her own. Life seemed peaceful—until the day Takako turned ten.
That afternoon Yachiyo was visiting her parents, leaving Takako at home with her husband. She returned after nightfall and walked into a scene beyond comprehension:
Takako lay dead.
Several fingernails had been torn out, and more than one tooth had been pulled.
Yachiyo looked around the room in shock.
The sheet bearing Takako’s secret name—once locked away—lay on the floor, and the torn nails and extracted teeth were scattered across her daughter’s vanity. Her husband was nowhere to be found.
She had no idea what had happened; all she could do was cling to Takako’s body and weep. Neighbors, alerted by the commotion, rushed in, but found Yachiyo kneeling over her daughter, inconsolable.
Since no one could grasp the situation, the neighbors decided to inform Yachiyo’s parents and send others out to look for her husband. In doing so, they left Yachiyo alone.
That same night Yachiyo took her own life beside Takako.
When the neighbors reached her parents and described the scene, the couple reacted with a disturbing calm.
“I can guess,” her father said. “He must have tried to reenact the ritual Yachiyo told him about. She never knew the full details, only fragments, but clearly he waited until Takako turned ten.”
With grim resolve, they headed straight for Yachiyo’s house.
- Secret Name Sheet: In the family’s lore, revealing or mishandling the paper bearing a girl’s hidden name breaks a taboo and can trigger catastrophe.
- Age Ten: The first ritual in the abolished tradition began at the daughter’s tenth birthday—the husband appears to have mimicked it.
When Yachiyo’s parents reached the house, they found that their daughter—who had been sobbing over Takako only moments before—was now dead as well. The neighbors could do nothing but stare in shock.
Yachiyo’s father, unnervingly composed, said only, “No one is to enter until we come back out.”
The couple disappeared inside and did not re-emerge for several hours.
At last they stepped out and addressed the crowd.
“We will see to the proper rites for mother and child.
Don’t bother searching for the husband—you’ll understand why soon enough.”
Then they dismissed everyone and forced the gathering to disperse.
For several days the man’s whereabouts remained unknown—until his body was discovered in front of Yachiyo’s house. He was dead with a mass of long hair stuffed into his mouth.
When the villagers asked Yachiyo’s parents to explain, the father replied:
“Anyone who sets foot in that house from now on will meet the same fate. We have placed a curse on it.
Those children were the first generation finally freed from our family’s evil customs. It is tragic things ended this way, but the least we can do is let them rest in peace.”
He ordered that the house be left exactly as it was.
Ever since that night, Yachiyo’s house was left untouched—kept as a quiet memorial for the two of them.
No one dared step inside. At her parents’ request, the doors stayed shut, and the rooms grew still, preserving whatever lingered there like an unseen offering.
That, supposedly, is where the story ends.
Except for what hides inside the vanities.
Downstairs stands Yachiyo’s dressing table; upstairs, Takako’s.
In Yachiyo’s vanity, the first drawer holds fingernails.
The second drawer contains teeth—each bundle tied to a slip of paper bearing a hidden name.
Takako’s vanity is different: both the first and second drawers contain only those folded papers.
Yachiyo’s slip reads “紫逅”; Takako’s reads “禁后”.
And then there is the third drawer, the one no one opens.
Inside are the wrist-bones, or so they say.
Yachiyo’s vanity cradles Yachiyo’s right hand entwined with Takako’s left.
Takako’s vanity mirrors it: Takako’s right hand clasped with Yachiyo’s left—their fingers forever interlocked in the dark.
No one really knows what shape the place is in now.
D-ko and E-kun caught a glimpse of it—and afterward they were never the same.
What broke them wasn’t just the sight of the hands. It was seeing those hidden names at the same time.
“紫逅” had been written by Yachiyo’s mother, while “禁后” was penned by Yachiyo herself. On the inside of that third drawer, every spare inch was filled with the characters that spell out their readings, scrawled again and again.
The house is still out there, but today’s kids barely know it exists. With so many other distractions, it just blends into the background. I can’t say much about the location—only that it isn’t in eastern Japan.
About the letter from D-ko’s mother… I’m going to keep that to myself. I’ve been told that both D-ko and her mother have already passed away, so there’s nothing more I can share.
When the place finally had to be torn down—too rotten to stand—the townsfolk got their first real look inside.
And there they were: the twin vanities and that awful bundle of hair, just like we’d seen before.
Because Yachiyo’s house never had a second floor, both vanities were parked right in front of the entryway—exactly where the front door opened. No clue how her parents pulled it off, but the hair still held its shape, almost like a sculpture.
Realizing they were dealing with a curse, the neighbors moved everything as carefully as possible, hauling it to a freshly built empty house on the edge of town. Someone did peek into the drawers by accident, but nothing happened. The best guess? Those people had been offering prayers all along, so the spirits let it slide.
The new house went up a little ways out, no front door because nobody was meant to go in, but plenty of windows and sliding glass panels—“for sunlight and fresh air,” they said, a show of respect for the dead. From then on, it became the house you simply don’t enter, a secret only the adults shared.
That’s the story of the vanities and the hair.
Both belonged to a mother and daughter—Yachiyo and Takako—and the strange words were the secret names they were given.
Postscript
This is the last part of the tale.
Ever since the new vacant house was raised, no one has tried to step inside. A handful of villagers had already peeked into those drawers while moving them, so word of what lay inside spread quickly.
To keep history from repeating itself, the elders came down hard on anyone who hadn’t heard the truth—just like they did with us. And yet, in our parents’ generation, there was one slip-up.
You might recall I mentioned A—the friend who snuck into the house with me—and her family. I wrote that A’s grandmother and mother were born in the town, married, and moved to another prefecture.
Turns out, that part wasn’t true.
Back when they were kids, four of them—A’s mom, B’s mom and dad, plus one more boy we’ll call E—slipped out in the middle of the night and headed for that empty house.
They even dragged a ladder along and climbed in through a second-floor window.
The room they landed in was totally bare. All that buildup, and… nothing.
Deflated, they shuffled into the room next door—and froze. There sat the vanity tables, draped in that mass of hair, lit only by moonlight. The sight hit them with a jolt of pure terror.
But A’s mom had nerves of steel. While the other three clung to each other, she pushed past, stepped right up to the nearest vanity, and actually reached for the drawer handle as if to open it.
They managed to wrestle her away, and the room went still—but the next shock came fast.
Creeping down the stairs, they froze again: another vanity, another curtain of hair waiting at the end of the hall.
The three wanted to bolt, yet A’s mom pushed things too far.
Just like D’s little sister in our own mess, she tugged open a drawer and took something out.
What she plucked from the first drawer downstairs was a slip of paper marked “紫逅”, along with several clipped fingernails.
Realizing they’d crossed a line, the others dragged her back, trying to stuff the paper where it belonged—only to knock the rod loose. The hair slid off and pooled on the floor like something alive.
Even A’s mom didn’t dare touch it.
The four of them simply turned and ran, leaving the hair right where it fell.
They let the mess sit for two, maybe three days—pretending it never happened. But the longer they waited, the more they dreaded their parents finding out. So A’s mom and E-kun decided they’d better sneak back and fix it.
(B’s parents couldn’t make it, so it was just the two of them.)
Past midnight they slipped out, dragged the ladder over, and climbed in through the second-floor window again.
Down the stairs they went. Using a pair of chopsticks they’d brought from home, they pinched the fallen hair and somehow managed to hook it back onto the rod.
E-kun whispered, “Let’s get out of here.” But A’s mom, finally feeling safe, got cocky—wanted to spook him a little. She slid open the second drawer.
Inside lay a slip of paper marked “紫逅”, along with several human teeth.
E-kun nearly lost it right there, eyes brimming with tears.
Seeing his reaction, A’s mom thought it was hilarious. She tilted the vanity so only E-kun could see, then pulled open the third drawer.
That was the moment everything went wrong.
E barely looked inside the drawer for a few seconds.
A’s mom leaned in—“So, what did you see?”—but before she could peek, he slammed it shut with a loud bang and just stood there, blank-eyed, not moving.
She figured he was messing with her for payback, yet something in the air felt wrong. Panic hit, and she bolted home alone.
The moment she told her own mother what had happened, her mother’s face drained of color. Calls flew out to E’s parents and the other adults, and they all raced to the vacant house.
Roughly half an hour later, A’s mom glimpsed them returning, all but carrying E. He seemed to be chewing on something—and several long strands of hair were dangling from his mouth.*
B’s parents were summoned next. The adults talked behind closed doors; E’s parents never spoke a word to the three culprits. They just fixed A’s mom with a look no language could capture.
*In Japanese folklore, human hair is believed to hold a person’s essence. Finding it in someone’s mouth is considered a dire omen, often linked to vengeful spirits.
Afterward, the three of them were told the full story behind the vacant house.
What they heard about E matched the warning we’d received, word for word.
For roughly a month—until E’s family finally moved away—his parents came to A’s mother’s house every single day.
The pressure shattered her nerves, and her own mother whisked her off to relatives in another prefecture.
No one knows what became of A’s mother or E after that, but people say she eventually returned to town, driven by a need to atone for what happened to him.
