如月车站（一）

Japan has a very large anonymous forum, and on its paranormal board there is a type of thread called "live-action posts": whoever experiences something strange writes about it as it happens, while others reply below, one comment at a time. On the night of January 8, 2004, at 11:14 PM, in one such thread, someone calling themselves "はすみ" appeared, writing the first line: "Maybe I'm overthinking it, can I say it?"

A few minutes later, she wrote again: "Since a while ago, I've been riding a private railway, but something feels off about the train." This was a private railway in Hamamatsu; she boarded at Shin-Hamamatsu Station, and normally took this line home. She said that normally, once the train departs, it reaches the next station within five minutes, at most seven or eight minutes, but today twenty minutes had passed and it still hadn't stopped.

People below the thread first asked her if she had taken the wrong train, or if she was confusing the express with the local that stops at every station. She replied that maybe she had taken the wrong one, and she'd wait and see. Others told her to ask the driver, while some said not to move around and just stay seated. She wrote again that the other passengers in the carriage were all there, but they were all asleep, no one was speaking, and no one woke up. She shouted once, but no one paid attention.

By the time this series of posts reached that point, no one yet thought something had really happened. Most people reading the thread took it as a joke, thinking that once the train stopped, she would write "Arrived at the station, false alarm." But the next line was: "The train seems to be slowing down."

Around 12:25 AM on January 9, the train stopped. She looked out the window and saw a station she had never seen before; there was no one on the platform, and the station sign had three kana written on it: きさらぎ. Kisaragi is the old lunar calendar name for February in Japan. She posted the station name, and immediately someone below looked it up: among stations across the country, there was none with that name.

She got off the train. The thread didn't say very clearly why she got off—probably because she feared staying on would be worse, probably because the other passengers weren't waking up and she was afraid to be alone in the carriage. She stood on the platform and looked around. There were no station staff, no waiting passengers; outside the station, there was no street, no lights, only a vast expanse of grass and distant, dark mountains.

"There's nothing here," she wrote, "no payphone, no taxi." She tried using her mobile phone and called her family, saying she was at a station called きさらぎ. Her family didn't know where it was and couldn't figure out how to come pick her up. She then tried to use her phone to check her current location, but the screen wouldn't display anything. She dialed 110, and after she finished speaking, the other side took it as a prank and didn't take her seriously.

People below told her to be careful; some said don't stay at the station, some said go check the stationmaster's office to see if anyone was there, and some asked if she wanted to go back onto the train. She said the train had already left, leaving her alone with a stretch of railway track.

At this point, some strange remarks appeared in the thread. A few people urged her, saying the station was too dangerous, not to stay there, and told her to walk toward the tunnel. She asked where the tunnel was, and someone said, walk forward along the tracks, go through it, and the other side is unexpectedly close. Others said that once through the tunnel, she would be safe. She couldn't tell at the time why these people knew so much about a place no one had ever heard of, and no one else below the thread followed up on it.

She wrote another line: "I want to walk back along the tracks." Some advised her not to walk on the tracks; some said just go, it's better than staying put. She said she looked, and the tracks ran along the grass, stretching straight into the darkness.

She hadn't walked far when she wrote: "In the distance, it sounds like there's a noise." Then another line: "Like drums, and bells." That was the kind of accompaniment found only at festivals—the taiko drum beating one thump at a time, with bells interwoven. She said the sound was coming from behind, but also seemed to be coming from ahead. At 1:00 AM, on a patch of grass where no one knew where it was, someone was holding a festival.

#Paranormal #连载 #如月车站