Master Series: Episode 5 "The Toyama Hotel"

There is an experience I still remember vividly.

For the simple reason that it was summer, me and other members of the club decided to visit a haunted place.

The place we chose to explore was the Toyama Hotel*1, which was an abandoned building located on Toyama Pass.

We had done some research on the internet and found a lot of reports of ghost sightings in the place:
"There is a fire-ravaged boiler chamber which is really dangerous."
"We heard voices on the third floor."
"Having found nothing we were about to leave when we saw a shadow hovering around a window on the third floor."
I noticed there were more reports about the third floor than anywhere else.

To set the mood for the event, we first played kokkuri-san*2 at my house and went to the hotel at midnight. As we were a large group - five boys and five girls - we were quite cheery at first but the atmosphere changed as soon as we saw the large ominous shadow of the Toyama Hotel looming ahead of us .

We'd heard we could sneak in the backdoor through the graveyard next to the hotel so we'd come fully prepared wearing easy-to-move clothes, but we found no graveyard.
There was a place next to the hotel which came closest to the description of the graveyard but it turned out to be just a large open space.

"I can't see any graveyards here."
A guy in the group said to me; but when we explored the place more with a flashilight we found a tiered platform, on top of which stood a monolith of strange shape.
"Look, there's some writing on it."
I lit up a section of the monolith and it said: "Memorial for Martyrs."
Oh my god.

The monolith had an endless list of names on it, such as "33rd Showa*3, Lieutenant__"
The eerie presence of the monolith plus the ruins next to it made the girls tearful and even the boys started saying straight-faced, "this place isn't good."
I was also scared but it wouldn't be fun if we just left after having come all this way, so I did my best to calm them down.
We then found a little stream at the further end of the field and by crossing over it we finally managed to get to the hotel's backdoor and enter inside.

Inside was full of rubbish; disused telephones, empty cans... The bathroom and toilets were dirty but seemed new. The wallpapers and carpets were decaying in such a way that was appropriate for ruins.

Because we only had two flashlights among us we tried to stay close together as we went around the building taking hundreds of photos.

The kitchen especially was in good condition with all the utensils and other things like account books remaining intact.
The rumour had it that the hotel went bankrupt after its owner went mad.

We were feeling slightly braver after we had completed the search on the first floor.
Soon we found and climbed the stairs leading to the second floor.

Having arrived on the second floor we were talking about going straight on to the third floor, which was where the most rumours about the hotel stemmed from, when suddenly a phone started ringing.

The shrill sound echoed in the silence.
It was coming from the third floor.
The girls started screaming their heads off.
A wave of terror began to spread among us and some of us started dashing downstairs.
"Hey, you guys, calm down! I said, calm down!"

This was my worst nightmare. Panic could lead to an accident.
I hesitated whether to go up or down but the ringing sound was grating my nerves.
"Don't run. Go down slowly."
I said, feeling like their parent, but the two who had flashlights had already gone downstairs.
Darkness suddenly decended on me and I started feeling chilly. I was soon dashing after them.

When I got to the first floor everyone was gathering in an open space that had once probably been a lobby. Just as I arrived the phone abruptly stopped ringing.

"I want to go home."
One girl said, crying. There was an awkward silence.
The boys too were looking pale.

It was then that the oldest guy in the group spoke up.
He was my Master in the Way of Occult.

"Sorry, sorry. I'm really sorry."
He said, casually taking a mobile out of his pocket.
"I never imagined it would scare you guys this much. I'm sorry."
He then started to explain that he wanted to make the whole exploring experience a little more exciting and had come up with an idea of hiding a mobile on the third floor during the day.
He waited until it was the right moment and made a call to the mobile on the third floor by another mobile in his pocket.
Idiot! Talk about going too far.
Everyone sobered up instantly and we decided to quit it there and then.

On the way home my master said to me,
"That place is crazy."
I nearly told him: no, it's you who are crazy. But he continued.

"When we were looking at the monolith, did you notice the people in the hotel window?"
I didn't. It never entered my mind to look in that direction at the time.
"I thought, being summer, they were just a gang of kids. But when I went inside it became obvious that I had been wrong. There were a lot more than ten of them there. I mean on the upper floor."
"Who do you mean by 'them'?"
"Did you think I had money to spend on an extra mobile just for a prank?"
Oh no.
"That was the hotel's phone. You heard it, right? Rriiiiing."
Of course.

After we sent everyone home my master said something unthinkable.
"OK, shall we go back to the hotel now?"
I begged him on my knees not to go and he let me go.

But apparently in the end he went back there on his own.
A few days later I asked him what happened.
With an inscrutable half-smile, he said:
"When I went back inside the phone started ringing again. I picked it up but all I could hear from it was riiiiiiiiing. I yelled, 'you cowards!' And every phone in the hotel started ringing, all at the same time. Then I knew I was in for trouble and I just ran away."


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*1 Toyama Hotel - this used to really exist in Okayama Prefecture but was demolished and turned into a parking space.
*2 Kokkuri-san - the Japapanese version of the ouija board.
*3 Showa Period - the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito), from December 25, 1926 to January 7, 1989.