//------------------------------// // THE JAPAN SPECIAL: Atsugi Keishin Hospital (REWIND TO 2010) // Story: Paranormal Hunters of Equestria // by thisissparta789789 //------------------------------// In 2010, just as we were getting our hooves into paranormal investigations, we took a trip to Japan to both relax and investigate an abandoned hospital in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture. We were the only professional paranormal investigation team to investigate it before it was torn down. Due to some strings pulled by Octavia, who spent time in the area at a private school in her teenage years, we were able to gain permission from the city government. In 1997, 13 years before our investigation, a news crew went inside the hospital, just after it had closed. The footage below is what they captured. Called, "Horror! Terrifying Report! The Perfect Location for Spirit Photography!," it mesmerized and terrified us when Octavia showed us the footage. I can still remember Lyra's reaction. Right as we got to the end, she jumped out of her chair in fright. Additionally, a local man decided to do his own investigation of the report. As it turns out, the reporter was a young woman from a local talent agency. She later committed suicide shortly after the report was taped. The investigator was lead down many dead ends before he was given the full video by a disgruntled former employee of the local news station, shown above, which he uploaded to the internet. While interviewing the injured man from the report above, the man started vomiting after the investigator mentioned what viewers said was "the red thing," as well as the camera he had left behind at the hospital when he fled. A variety show in Japan also received footage of an apparition in the hospital. The "red thing," as it turns out, was actually believed to be the deformed child of a patient who was admitted into the hospital on December 12, 1979, soon after it opened. It was to be her fourth child. Her labor was painful. It is believed she may have had issues with her reproductive system due to the fact that she was born in Hiroshima not too long after the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Her baby lived for an hour before it died, and she cursed the hospital and the doctors that worked there. The head doctor who worked on her was killed in a car accident on New Years' Day in 1980, and the nurse who had given her the news of the baby's death was killed in the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 several years later in 1985. After Octavia did some more digging, we discovered another possible reason behind the hauntings. In World War 2, due to American firebombings, the city of Atsugi buried many of the dead who were burned beyond recognition in a mass unmarked grave on the hospital's location. When the hospital was being built in 1978, the mass grave was rediscovered, and the bodies were cremated. We were allowed to investigate the hospital under the condition that no former employees of the hospital were to contact us. However, several former patients and a firefighter-paramedic did. We have not revealed their names due to privacy concerns. Patient #1 was a 20-year-old male when he was admitted into the hospital on January 7, 1982, following a car accident. He suffered minor injuries late at night, and probably would have mostly forgotten his short time there had it not been for an incident in his room. Around midnight, he was awoken after a frightening nightmare and saw a black shadow standing before his bed. He then saw the shadow open the door, leave, and then close it. When he asked a nurse about it the next day, she told him that there was nothing to be afraid of since many patients and staff had also reported similar occurrences in the same room. Patient #2 was a 15-year-old female when she was admitted into the hospital on July 8, 1988, due to a sickness. While checking out of the hospital, she thought she saw her father standing next to her at an empty receptionist desk. When she turned to talk to him, the figure suddenly disappeared, and her father walked into the room. Patient #3 was a 39-year-old male when he was admitted into the hospital on September 9, 1985, due to having a nail accidentally hammered through his hand while renovating his kitchen. Soon after he came to the ER, he was laying down on a hospital bed awaiting to be seen by a doctor when he saw a horrifying site: a World War 2-era Japanese doctor walking down the hallway wearing tattered and burned clothing with burns on his skin. At first, he wanted to scream, but then the ghost doctor turned to him and reportedly said, "Calm down, (name of patient). You will be attended to. My colleagues will help you." The ghost doctor then disappeared as a real doctor came along. When he asked about the ghost, the doctor told him that he had met a doctor named Keizo Ishido who had been killed in an air raid in 1945 at another hospital who had most likely been buried in the same spot Atsugi Keishin Hospital was built on. A look through city records by Octavia indicated that there indeed was a Doctor Keizo Ishido from one of the prewar city hospitals who was declared missing and presumed dead after an air raid in 1945. The firefighter-paramedic was bringing in a patient on July 9, 1994, just about two and a half years before the hospital closed, and was restocking on medicine for his ambulance in a storage room when the door slammed shut and locked on him. He tried undoing the lock, but an unseen force ripped his hands away from the doorknob. He then slammed on the door and was able to get a nurse's attention to unlock the door from the outside with a key. With this level of activity, we knew we were in for a treat, especially since this would be our first true lock-down investigation. At 8:35 P.M., an Atsugi police officer locked down the fences surrounding the hospital and wished us luck. Octavia would translate for us, as she was the only one who spoke Japanese among us three. At the time of the investigation, we did not use Static Cameras, so the three of us would have to largely split up to cover the whole hospital. After meeting at the Emergency Room Entrance, I made my way to the maternity section on the first floor, where the news report went awry. I sat in the same room where they had seen the ghosts of several surgeons operate and began doing an EVP session. Using a Japanese phrase book, I asked in both English and Japanese, "What is your name? Why are you here?" After 5 minutes, I played back the recorder and managed to receive a response from a male spirit. It was in Japanese, so I called Octavia by radio and asked her to translate it. I played the recording over the radio, and she replied back that the EVP was, "Don't belong." Was this a spirit telling me I don't belong in the room? After that, I conducted another EVP session solely in English, asking, "Why did you scare off those reporters? Are you hiding something?" I then held up a picture of the woman in the report, taken from a still shot of her outside. What I did not expect was the picture being violently ripped out of my hooves and thrown onto the ground. I screamed several curse words and dropped my camera before picking it up and running, leaving my DVR in the room. In just 10 minutes, I had captured chilling evidence that I was not alone, nor was I welcome in that room. I radioed to Octavia, "OCTAVIA! OCTAVIA! THAT PICTURE I HAD OF THE REPORTER JUST GOT [expletive]ING RIPPED OUT OF MY HOOVES!" She replied back, "Noteworthy, calm down! Are you hurt?" "No," I replied back. "Okay, try exploring elsewhere in the maternity ward then." After that, I took a deep breath and went back in to grab my DVR. I decided to play it back to see if I got anything I couldn't hear. Sure enough, just before the picture was grabbed, my DVR captured a low-pitched growl, followed by a hiss when I ran out of the room. Meanwhile, Octavia was on the third floor in the pediatric area. While I was being attacked, she was conducting an EVP session entirely in Japanese. Her first questions were, "Hello. What is your name? Don't be afraid to answer. I won't hurt you. Were you sick or hurt?" After replying to me the first time, she played back her DVR. Unbeknownst to her, her camera, which she pointed towards her DVR and a doorway, captured a black shadow passing by the room she was in as she played it back. She got two replies from child spirits in Japanese: "Ayako..." and "Fever..." Was this a child spirit named Ayako who died of a fever here? Lyra, at the time, was in the staff break room on the second floor, recording with her camera and using an EMF meter. As she checked the whole room, she got no EMF readings. However, as she held it in the middle of the room, it suddenly spiked to around 3. As it did, she heard footsteps from down the hall. After the footsteps stopped, she asked, "Who's here with me?" After that, her camera's microphone picked up an EVP she did not hear that we later determined was in Japanese saying, "The nurse." For another hour, none of us captured anything. At 10:32 P.M., we met back in the ER entrance and decided to take on the maternity section as a team. As we made our way there, Octavia said as she pointed to the fifth floor from outside, "What the hell is that?" The three of us pointed our cameras up to the fifth floor in shock as we all saw a bright light emanate from the fifth floor. It was as if someone was standing there and radiating a bright light. We all made a run to the stairs to reach the fifth floor as soon as we could. However, by the time we reached it, the light was gone. As we looked around, Octavia and I entered the room where the light came from and noticed a hole in the floor near the window. There was no possible way a living person could have been standing there. We looked around a bit more but found nothing else, so we headed back down to the maternity section. At 10:53, we began an EVP session in the hallway of the maternity section. Octavia asked all the questions while me and Lyra recorded, me with a video camera and Lyra with a DVR. We also used an EM pump to give the ghosts at the hospital more energy to draw upon. At 10:57, we got a frightening reply after Octavia asked, "What happened to your baby?" We all heard a female voice from down the hall say something we could not decipher. We all froze in place as I said to the group, "This [expletive] is getting real way too fast." At 11:00, as Lyra asked me a question about equipment, our blood ran cold when we heard what sounded like a baby laughing from the room where I had been in earlier. Lyra whispered, "What the [expletive]?" Right after, our DVR captured a voice we could not hear, saying in Japanese, "It's done." However, these EVPs would pale in comparison to what was about to happen next. As I aimed the camera into the room, I began to tremble as I saw the shapes of three to four doctors or nurses inside the room through the viewfinder of the camera, all looking down at the operating table. I pointed to the room silently to warn Lyra and Octavia, both of whom looked into the viewfinder as well. Lyra decided, out of curiosity, to shine a flashlight into the room. As soon as she did, all of the ghosts inside became visible to the naked eye, and one of them turned around to look at us. All three of us screamed and booked it out of the maternity section. As we ran, we did not look back. We had just captured multiple full-bodied apparitions, one of whom looked us directly in the eyes, and it was clear from my earlier interactions that the spirits in there were very malevolent. We were just about to get another indication of just how malevolent they could get as the three of us became separated inside the hospital. As me and Lyra got lost on the second floor and first floor respectively, Octavia managed to get lost in the basement, which housed the morgue of the hospital. As she panicked and screamed our names, she looked around for an exit and turned her camera on. She then entered a room that contained the crematorium. She said to herself, "Oh, this is just [expletive]ing great." As she looked around, she suddenly heard footsteps behind her and turned around to the door, only to find nothing. Then, she began to feel a burning sensation on her back as she stood on her hind legs. Noticing a mirror in the room near a sink, she walked over and turned around, brushing her mane to the side with one of her hooves. What she saw were three deep scratches on her back, frightening her as she jumped away back on all-fours minus the hoof holding her camera. She turned her camera around and said to it, "Whoever's down here with me does not want me down here at all." She got further confirmation when her mane was suddenly and violently yanked from behind her by an unseen force, throwing her and her camera to the ground and dragging her out of the room as she screamed and screamed. She was dragged out of the room and then let go of by the unseen force. I ran to her about 3 minutes later. By the time I got to her, she was sobbing, and she hadn't moved at all, terror paralyzing her in place. I immediately asked, "What happened?!" "I... I was scratched and dragged by something," she replied to me. As she showed me the scratch marks, the door to the crematorium slammed shut, causing her to scream loudly again and me to jump. Her camera was still inside, so I flung the door back open and grabbed it before closing the door back up. As I comforted her, I checked the footage from when she was out of the room and got another chilling piece of evidence. About a minute before I arrived, a black mist was seen travelling from the hallway into the room before disappearing, followed by the faint sound of laughter over Octavia's sobbing. It was clear that whoever was in the basement was extremely violent towards the living, possibly even demonic. "Octavia, let's go. We're out of here." We decided that she was to stay at the ER entrance for the rest of the night. At 12:47 A.M., me and Lyra made our way back to the maternity section after I explained to her what had happened. There, we set up a DVR and an EMF meter. After about 5 minutes of only sitting around, we got a response through the DVR after playing it back. Instead of 5 minutes of mostly silence and the occasional chatter of us, we captured a female voice 3 minutes in. Octavia translated over the radio, and we determined it said, "Did they leave?" At 12:54 A.M., the two of us heard footsteps above us on the second floor, even though nobody was up there at the time. At 12:59 A.M., we captured another voice, this time of a male, that was translated as, "Save it." At 1:22 A.M., not getting any more evidence, we left and met up with Octavia. Lyra said to her there, "Do you feel comfortable going with us again?" She nodded her head and affirmed to us, "I am. I won't be afraid anymore." It was settled. We were all to head to the basement together and confront whatever spirit was down there that had assaulted Octavia. At 1:34 A.M., we headed to the crematorium room and began doing an EVP session. Octavia asked in Japanese, "Who attacked me?! Who's the [expletive] that attacked me?!" We decided to be aggressive with our questioning, since this spirit was clearly not going to play nice anyway. Immediately, we got a response from a deep male voice we all heard with our own ears. It said in Japanese, "I did." Octavia was frightened, but continued on. "Do you get off on attacking the living?!" This time, our DVR captured the same voice, but quieter, saying, "I died." At the same time, Lyra's camera captured an orb-shaped anomaly fly past the door to the room in the hallway. "Why are you like this?! You can't spend eternity attacking us!" In response to this, an unseen force ripped the DVR out of my hoof, causing it to fall to the ground. I was startled, but forced myself to stay put as Lyra asked me if I was alright. I sat up and picked the DVR up just as it captured a disembodied voice saying in Japanese, "You know what was done." For the next half hour, we captured nothing else. At 2:20 A.M., we made our way to the fifth floor. At 2:36 A.M., we began taking photographs of the area where we had seen the light before. As we did, our cameras picked up another disembodied voice, that belonging to a female, that said in Japanese, "I cannot..." We took 36 pictures, and in 3 of them, we captured anomalies. In one picture by me, the black silhouette of a man was seen standing in a doorway down the main hallway. In another by me, a white mist was seen forming near the same window where we had seen the light. In one by Lyra, another figure, this time more gray-ish than black, was seen standing near the door to a room. At 3:47 A.M., we split up again after finding no other evidence on the fifth floor. As I made my way back to the maternity section, my video camera died even though it was at a 65% charge just seconds before. I quickly changed the battery, assuming that a spirit had drained it to allow itself to manifest. At 4:06 A.M., I began taking photographs of the room where we had seen the apparitions earlier. Again, I managed to capture an anomaly. After turning the camera around and taking a picture of myself, I noticed that there was another figure in the picture behind me. I could make out that it was a humanoid shape and had glowing eyes. I did feel a cold spot behind me as I took the picture, and this photo confirms that it was a spirit. A few minutes later, in the ER department, Lyra captured a male EVP that said in Japanese, "Welcome back." For the rest of the night, the hospital was quiet. No other evidence was captured. At 7:22 A.M., an Atsugi police officer let us out of the hospital grounds. Little did we know that this investigation would be the start of our ghost hunting careers. The evidence captured here made the rounds on social media in Equestria and in Japan, and led to us exploring this field even further. In 2018, we would return to Japan for our most daring investigations yet.