It's Real!

There is a TV series in Japan called "It's Real!" Each hour-long show is broken up into segments showing real videos of real ghosts.

A woman at the local store told me about it and let me borrow one. She said that most people in Japan find this utterly terrifying.

The first pic here shows a guy in hospital. One sweeping shot reveals a Ju-on type ghost head peeping out from beside the bed to take a look at him. That night, the guy in the bed died ...

The second pic shows a little girl in front of a three panel mirror. Her mother takes video of the girl talking and brushing her hair but one time when the girl turns around, her reflection in one of the mirrors does not ...

I returned the DVD and the woman asked me if I was scared. I said not really and that if she had ever seen Ghostbusters, she would know we like to vacuum up ghosts in the U.S.

She asked about the mirror, as this was the one that scared her most. I told her that obviously it was a faulty mirror, but couldn't see how it was ghost-related. It's an old mirror, she told me, and there are ghosts living inside of it that did that to the reflection. I said that if it was real, it was more likely to be a breach in the time-space continuum and that she should brush up on her quantum physics. I don't think she got it.

We talked about horror movies. She said that Japanese are not scared of American horror movies that rely on things jumping out, or on blood and gore. She said Japanese are scared of ghosts quietly creeping up. I can see this in Ju-on and the Ring. I said we're more scared of psychos and serial killers than ghosts because they are real.

Not so much here, she said. So not scary.

I asked if she'd heard about the guy in Tokyo who killed the British English teacher and dumped her body in a tub full of sand. She nodded, smiled and asked if I wanted to watch another DVD of "It's Real!" So far there are 26 in the series.