Missing Elderly Lady

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After graduating from university, I returned to my hometown and joined a local fire brigade.

For some reason, I seem to have an uncanny knack for finding bodies. For instance, I’ve already been the first person to find a corpse twice during searches for missing people — once a drowned body, and once someone who had hanged themselves. I also found a child and an elderly woman who had died in a house fire, suffocated by smoke…

Even during my student years, I was the one who discovered a Kōhai (NOTE: a student younger than oneself) hanging from the balcony of their apartment. I wonder how many people come across a hanged body twice in their lives…

Anyway, here’s a story from my time in the fire brigade — one that’s more bizarre than scary. 

That day, we began our search early in the morning for a missing elderly woman, A-san (around 70 years old), who had disappeared early the previous morning.

When her eldest son’s family, who lived on the same property, visited her house, they found the rice cooker full of freshly cooked rice and the miso soup still warm.

They assumed, “She’s  probably just gone to the local shop,” and didn’t think much of it at the time.

But as the afternoon passed with no sign of her returning, and the breakfast still untouched, they began to worry. By evening, when she still hadn’t come home, they contacted the police.

That night, the fire department and police searched for her, but they couldn’t find her. The next morning, our local fire brigade—about 120 members—was mobilised for a full-scale search.

According to her family, A-san had weak legs and regularly went to the hospital. She always used a walker—like a small pushcart — to get around, so she couldn’t have gone far. Usually, she only walked as far as the neighborhood store.

Her walker wasn’t in the house, and one pair of her shoes was missing—not the ones she normally wore, but a pair she reserved for more formal outings.

Her family guessed that she was dressed in her usual shirt and trousers.

We figured that, since she couldn’t have gone far, it would be a matter of time before we found her — whether she’d had an accident or something else had happened. 

But after four hours of searching—no clues. 

Our hometown is fairly rural, so we even searched in the mountains, the coastline, and wild, pathless areas around A-san’s house.

We also considered the possibility that she hadn’t left on foot, but by some other means, so we contacted all the local taxi companies and transportation services. But we still found nothing.

One theory that gained traction was that she might have been involved in a traffic accident, and the driver had subsequently hidden her body. But the police could find no trace of such an incident.

In the end, despite two days of searching, we never found A san. 

Since then over a year passed, and people had mostly forgotten about the case.

The police flyers with her photo had faded significantly, and the handwritten posters—presumably made by her grandchild, saying “We’re looking for Grandma”—were so weathered you could barely read them.

But then, suddenly, the reports of A-san being seen began to pour in. 

“She looked just like A-san—same height, same face, same clothes. And she was walking with a walker,” one phone call reported to the police. 

But those sightings came from various locations, scattered across a wide area—some as far as several kilometers away from her home. The police resumed the search based on these tips, but again, she was nowhere to be found.

One thing, however, was consistent.

At every sighting location, one of those handwritten posters made by her grandchild was always posted nearby. And on every single one, in the blank space at the bottom, someone had written in pencil:

“I am here. (Japanese: おります/ orimasu).”

To this day, A san still hasn’t been found, and it seems both her family and the police have given up hope.

By the way, even the poster displayed inside a locked glass case at a community centre had that same message written on it.

Since the keys are kept by the community centre staff, there is no way anyone could have opened the case to write that.

What I like to believe—though it’s just my personal interpretation— is that the word “I am here” was A-san’s way of telling her grandchild:

“I’m always here, watching over you.”

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“Turbo Granny” — a yokai from Japanese Urban Legend

(Only 3 mins, but don’t watch it if you hate wasting your time🤣)