The Slit Mouth Woman walks the streets of Japan, wearing a surgical mask and hunting for children. If you cross her path, she will stop you and ask you a question. If you give her the wrong answer, there will be horrible consequences.
Picture the scene. You are walking home from school and your path takes you down a deserted city street. Suddenly, you hear a faint noise coming from the shadows. You glance over and see a beautiful woman standing there. She has long black hair and is wearing a beige trenchcoat. A surgical mask covers the lower half of her face. In Japan, wearing a surgical mask is not uncommon during flu season, to prevent spreading germs.
She steps out of the shadows and blocks your path.
“Am I beautiful?” she asks.
Before you can answer, she tears off her mask, revealing a hideously deformed face. Her huge mouth is sliced from ear to ear and gapes open revealing rows of sharp teeth and a big red disgusting tongue twisting and twirling inside.
“Am I beautiful NOW?” she screams.
Terrified, you struggle to answer her. If you say “No”, she pulls out a huge pair of scissors and kills you immediately, chopping off your head. If you say “Yes”, she takes her scissors and slices your mouth from ear to ear, making you look just like her. If you try to run away, she will hunt you down and kill you, by slicing you in two.
The only way to escape from Kuchisake Onna is to give a non-committal answer. If you say “You look average” or you look normal, she will be confused, giving you just enough time to run away.
There are many rumors about how Kuchisake Onna got her horribly disfigured mouth. Some say that her slit mouth is the result of plastic surgery that went horribly wrong. Others say that she was injured in a terrible car crash. Some even believe she is an escaped mental patient who was so demented that she cut her own mouth apart.
According to one legend, years ago, in Japan, there lived a very beautiful woman who was extremely vain and self-absorbed. Her husband was a very jealous and brutal man and he became convinced that she was cheating on him. In a fit of rage, he took a sword and slit her mouth from ear to ear, screaming “Who will think you’re beautiful now?” She became a vengeful spirit, and began wandering the streets of Japan, wearing a surgical mask to hide her terrible scars.
The Slit Mouth Woman’s reign of terror began in the spring and summer of 1979, when rumors began to spread throughout Japan about sightings of the Kuchisake-onna hunting down children. The story spread like wildfire and actually created scares in many towns. Police increased their patrols and schools sent teachers to walk students home in groups.
In 2004, South Korea was plagued by reports of a red-masked woman who was chasing children.
In 2007, a coroner found some old records from the late 1970s about a woman who was chasing little children, but was hit by a car, and died shortly after. Her mouth was ripped from ear to ear.
The USA has its own version of Kuchisake Onna. There were rumors about a clown who appeared in public bathrooms and accosted children, asking “Do you want death or happy smile?” if they chose “happy smile”, he took out a knife and slit their mouths from ear to ear.
Hanako-san:
Hanako San is a Japanese urban legend about the ghost of a young girl that’s supposed to haunt school toilets, opening and closing doors and scaring anyone who enters the bathroom, knocks on her stall, and calls her name.
Hanako, the ghost in the toilet almost achieved the status of a national phenomena in Japanese legend 20 years ago, when a wave of stories of ghost-sightings swept through the nation’s school yards.
Every child had a “Hanako” story to tell. The stories, of course, are many and varied but every schoolchild in Japan, at one time or another, has stood in dread and anticipation as he or she ventured into the school toilet alone.
This is similar to the legend of Kashima Reiko, a female ghost without legs who also lives in school bathrooms. She calls out “Where are my legs?” when people enter the bathroom. The correct way to answer her varies. In one version, you have to say: Kashima Reiko: KA = Kamen (Mask), SHI = Shinin (dead person), MA=Ma (Demon).
Yet another version features Aoi Manto or Aka Manto, a male ghost who waits in the last stall in the girls’ bathroom. Anyone entering the bathroom hears a voice asking, “Which do you prefer, the red paper or the blue paper?”
If they pick “red,” he kills them by slashing their back or neck repeatedly with a blade, to make them look like they’re wearing a red cape. If they pick “blue,” then they’re killed by hanging.
He’s known as Aka Manto, Aoi Manto, Aoi Hanten, Aka Kami, and Aoi Kami.
Red Cloak hides in the last stall of the girls’ toilet and when you enter, he steps out and asks “Which do you prefer, Red Cloak or Blue Cloak?”
If you say Red, he slits your throat or chops off your head and the blood flows down your back, making it look like you’re wearing a red cloak. If you say Blue, he grabs you by the neck and chokes you until your face turns blue and you die of suffocation.
Don’t even think about asking for a third color. If you do, the floor will open up beneath you and pale white hands will reach up and drag you down to hell.
One school ghost story tells of a young girl who heard a voice coming from the toilet next to her saying “Shall we put on the red vest?” She got scared and ran away with her jeans around her ankles. She told her teacher what she had heard and the police were called.
A police woman went into the bathroom while her male partner waited outside. She heard the same voice asking “Shall we put on the red vest?” The police man, listening at the door, heard her answer “OK. Put it on!” Suddenly a loud scream was heard, followed by a thump. When the partner opened the bathroom door, he found the police woman lying dead on the floor. Her head had been cut off and the blood on her clothes made it look like she was wearing a red vest.
In Japanese, this murderous ghost is known variously as “Aka manto”, “Ao manto” or “Aka hanten, Ao hanten”. Some people say that, years ago, Red Cloak was a young man who was so handsome that every girl immediately fell in love with him. He was so awesomely beautiful that girls would faint whenever he looked at them. His beauty was so overwhelming that he had to hide his face behind a white mask. At some point, he kidnapped a beautiful young girl and she was never seen again.
In another version of the story, he is called “Red Mantle” or “Red Cape”. He lurks in the toilets and asks you if you want a red cape. If you say yes, he rips off your top and tears the skin off your back.
In yet another version of the legend, he is called “Red Paper, Blue Paper” (Akai Kami, Aoi kami). Girls who go into the bathroom, hear a voice coming from the last stall. It asks “Do you want red paper or blue paper?” To answer red means a bloody death by being skinned alive. To answer blue means to have all the blood drained out of the body.
Still more versions involve a bloody hand emerging from the toilet and trying to pull you in, blood raining down from the ceiling, being drowned in blood and having disembodied white hands grabbing you and choking you to death. In the funniest version, if you answer “Yellow” he will force your head down the toilet and make you smell pee. Yuck!
Tek-Tek:Tek Tek or Teke-Teke is an urban legend from Japan about a girl who fell under a train and was cut in half. She took a long time todie and now her ghost roams through Japan, dragging her top half along using her claw-like hands. Every time she moves, she makes a “teke-teke” sound.
There is a story about a young boy who was leaving his school one evening when he heard a noise behind him. Looking back, he saw a beautiful girl sitting at a window. The girl had her arms propped up on the window sill and was just staring out at him. He wondered why she was there, because it was an all-boys school.
When she saw him looking back at her, the girl smiled and hugged herself so that she was holding her elbows. Then suddenly, she leaped out of the window and landed on the ground outside. The boy realized with horror, that she was missing the lower half of her body.
She made her way towards him, clawing along the ground and running on her elbows making a tek-tek-tek-tek-tek sound. The boy was filled with terror and revulsion. He tried to run, but he was frozen to the spot. Within seconds, she was upon him and she took out a scythe and cut him in half, making him into one of her own.
When kids tell this story, they warn each other about Tek-Tek. They say she carries a sharp saw or a scythe, and if she catches you, she’ll cut you in half and you’ll become just like her. She is said to chase children who play at dusk. She is also known as “bata-bata” (again, the sound of it running on its elbows) or “The Girl That Runs On Her Elbows.”
It is also similar to the story of Kuchisake-Onna (the Slit-Mouth Woman) and the story of Kashima Reiko. The American version is called Click Clack.
This Japanese urban legend is called “No Face” and is about Nopperabou, a creature from Japanese folklore.
Though the No Face is able to appear to others like a normal person, this is just an illusion. The Nopperabou really lacks eyes, a nose or a mouth. Instead of normal human features, nopperabou have only smooth skin. People who encounter nopperabou usually do not immediately realize that they are talking to something that is otherworldly, as the creatures are able to create the illusion that they have a normal human face.
A nopperabou will wait for the right moment before causing their features to disappear, scaring the person they are speaking with. People usually run into nopperabou at night in lonely rural settings, although they can appear anywhere as long as the area is deserted. The nopperabou’s primary purpose is to scare humans, but beyond that they do not seem to have any sort of agenda.
One famous nopperabou story is Lafcadio Hearn’s Mujina. The story is short and deftly describes an encounter with a nopperabou, but it is also the source of much confusion. In the story, Hearn refers to the creatures as mujina, which is actually a different type of creature altogether (a sort of badger). This mistake has caused a lot of Western readers to mix up the names for nopperabou and mujina, and even today you will run across authors and scholars that are using the wrong name. Regardless, the story itself is a very typical tale of nopperabou mischief.
