3 JAPANESE SPOOKY URBAN LEGENDS part one

Japanese ghost stories (Kaidan 怪談) are not just a genre of old stories from Edo period: many Japanese modern "urban legends" (Toshi Densetsu 都市伝説) are horror stories with vengeful spirits (Onryō 怨霊) and angry ghosts (Yūrei 幽霊) that threat the living. 

The spookiest Japanese urban legends are:

The doll Okiku (Okiku Ningyou お菊人形)

Japanese crafts has a long tradition of doll production and they are usually offered to girls and boys for important days. In 1918, in the northern land of Hokkaido, a young man, Eichi Suzuki, bought a doll wearing a red kimono and with an "okappa" hair style, with the hair cropped at around jawline and with a short fringe. He gave it to his three-year-old sister, Kikuko who immediately loved so much the doll that she played with it every day and even slept with it in at night.

However, one year later, Kikuko suddenly died because of a cold. The whole family was devastated and decided to keep the doll at the local shrine for remembrance and called it Okiku (from Kikuko, their child's name). After the village knew the tragedy, many people accord to the shrine to pray for Kikuko in front of her beloved doll.

People didn't stop to visit the doll and little by little they noticed something very strange: Okiku's hair were growing, the angry sprit of the little girl had possessed the doll. It is said that even a scientific examination of the doll has confirmed that her hair belong to a human child and the priest of the temple says to cut her hair after the doll asked him to do that in a dream.

Today, Okiku's hair reaches its knees and it continuous to grow periodically. we can still see Okiku doll at the Mannenji temple in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido 

The slit-mothered woman (Kuchisake Onna口裂け女)

If you walk alone at night in Tokyo and you meet an ordinary woman wearing a surgical mask asking you "Am I beautiful?", it must not be your lucky day: you have met Kuchisake Onna and you should be careful at what you answer.

a) Answer NO:  Kuchisake Onna will get very angry and kill you with her pair of scissors 

b) Answer YES:  she takes her mask off, show you her terrifying smile, with a mouth that has been slit from year to year but her jealous husband as a munition for her betrayal. The, she will ask you "How about now?" If you say "no" she will get angry and kill you; if you say "yes" she will let you believe that you can go safely back home, but once you go to bed she will cut your mouth like hers and disfigure you forever.

c) Answer MAYBE: According to the legend, the only way to survive is give her a confusing question as "You are so-so, average". You can also offer her candies or money. She will get confused and you will have the time to run away. 

Red Cape (Aka Manto 赤マント)

Many spooky urban legends in Japan talks about haunted public/school rooms, especially women's toilets. Aka Manto is the angry spirit of a man wearing a red cloak and a mask because when he was alive he became so fed up with women desiring him only for his beauty. He waits for women in the last stall of the bathroom to ask them "Do you want red paper or blue paper?"
a) Answer RED: you will be immediately killed, the red in fact is your blood that will make dirty the toilet paper.
b) Answer BLUE: Aka Manto will suffocate you until your face turn blue and you die.
c) Answer WHITE: His ghosty white hands will drag down you to hell.
d) Answer YELLOW: Aka Manto will push you head in the toilet
e) Answer NO THANKS: the only way to escape from Aka Manto is to politely decline anything he asks