Retelling A Spooky Ghost Story.

So, as part of my obsession fascination with Japan, I went ahead and decided to look up Japanese horror stories to see what passes in Japan as "scary." I stumbled upon this one short story, titled "Copy Machine," which I thought was pretty creepy. Unfortunately, I lost the original link to the story, so I'm going to do a quick retelling here to try and spook some viewers. All credit goes to the original author.

The story starts at a Japanese middle school, centering around two unnamed teenage girls and their absent friend, Shiiko. The two unnamed girls, hanging out in an empty classroom, wonder why Shiiko is absent, as she is a very smart, responsible student, and decide she must have been sick. The two laugh for a bit, then decide to take a look at various pictures they had printed from the photocopier earlier—pictures of them and Shiiko hanging out. Upon inspection, however, they see, to their dismay, all four pictures have had Shiiko's face blurred out. Deciding to run it again, they head back to the photocopying room. However, one of the girls leaves her flip-phone open and activated on top of her desk. While they are gone, her phone rings, and it is a call from Shiiko. However, a picture accompanies the call.

It is a picture of Shiiko, with her face blurred out.

Once in the photocopy room, the two girls print up a second copy of the pictures, only to have the same result as the first set. Frustrated, the girl who left her phone in the class opens the photocopier to see what is wrong. She discovers a small, blank piece of paper, and upon pulling it out, the copier slams shut, scaring her. The photocopier then begins to quickly print out a series of black-and-white photos of the same scene, taken one second in front of the other, so that that scene in the photos appear to be moving, like a video. The photos depict a small alleyway, which is then entered by a girl. The two friends see the girl's face and realize it is Shiiko. It is seems as if she unwittingly walked in, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. But slowly, a tall man with a loose, white coat enters the alleyway, and approaches Shiiko.

Then the unthinkable happens.

To the girls' horror, the copier begins to print out a series of pictures depicting the strange man beating Shiiko to death with a 9-iron. Every last gruesome detail is depicted in, quite literally, black and white. Every last swing the man took, every time he struck Shiiko, is spelled out for her horrified friends. Eventually, Shiiko crumples to the ground, dead, and the man walks away. For the next thirty seconds, the same photo of Shiiko's dead body ejects from the copy machine.

Then, as the girls finally recover from the shock seeing their best friend brutally murdered, the photos change to show a transparent body resembling Shiiko rise from the girl's corpse and walk out of frame. Then, the copy machine turns off.

Unbeknownst to the girls, Shiiko's faceless ghost is standing directly behind the copy machine, watching them.

Pretty spooky, huh?

Of course, let's not forget the final, infamous kicker: "Copy Machine" is based on a true story.