Aokigahara Suicide Forest

As you may have guessed from my previous posts I am a bit of a documentary fan. The combination of learning something while being entertained is just brilliant to me. You do have to be on the lookout for people twisting facts to suit their agendas; but then that’s a useful life lesson to learn anyway!

I recently found this short doco on the Aokigahara Forest which lies at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan. Aokigahara is commonly known as the suicide forest as it is the second most popular suicide spot in the world. 

In case you’re interested, The Golden Gate Bridge is the number one spot and it also has its own documentary called The Bridge. The film makers set up cameras on the bridge for a full year – disturbing but beautiful film. 

I’d actually read about Aokigahara in some obscure article I’d found in some obscure place a few years ago. While other places I had an interest in faded, it somehow never quite left my mind. The article said that if you ventured off the path you would undoubtedly find human remains. They had some tastefully gruesome pictures of skulls, skeletons, and nooses in trees along with some haunting narratives. I adore ghost stories and love visiting haunted places. On top of that, it is a seldom visited place, particularly by tourists, and most people haven’t even heard of it. I think travel is way more fun and eye-opening if you get outside of the regular tourist spots.

So when my boyfriend and I planned a trip to Japan last year, we worked Aokigahara into our schedule. The above documentary wasn’t out at the time and we had very little information on the place so relied on locals to give us directions. We got the strangest reactions from people. The owner of the Ryokan we were staying in happily gave us directions for everything else we wanted to see but when we asked about the forest his whole demeanour changed. He insisted on knowing why we wanted to go there and kept saying there were much better places to visit. After some polite and gentle persuasion we were able to get a roughly drawn map which directed us to the forest. 

Over the couple of days we spent around Mt Fuji we explored much of the surrounding forests and lakes, went down into the lava caves and up the mountain. Everywhere else there was a sense of lightness...

...but Aokigahara was different. 

 

We have a dozen shots of the weirdest mushrooms

It had a distinctly dark and oppressive feeling. We got there mid-afternoon so we weren’t able to explore as much as we wanted. At the deepest point we ventured in I found some strange ribbons tied to trees, leading off the path and into the depths of the forest. Along one ribbon path we could see something blue in the distant trees. By that time though, it was getting dark and we had to leave or risk missing the last bus out of there.

With 15 minutes to spare we started hurrying back towards the edge of the forest, the darkness growing deeper. Just ahead of us a part of the path had sunken into a deep hole. As we drew nearer, something white emerged from the dark earth. Frowning, I focussed on it. My boyfriend hurried on oblivious but I slowed as I drew closer. It was round, white, half buried… and had two sunken sockets staring blankly back at me. I screamed and leaped backwards, yelling at my boyfriend, “there’s a skull!” We snapped the following shots:

As it turns out, it was just a beautifully shaped rock which only looked like a skull if you approached it from a certain angle – the exact angle I had happened to unwittingly approach it from! While it was only a hoax of Mother Nature, the scare I got was definitely worth the trip.

It was creepy watching this documentary months later as we discovered for the first time the significance of the ribbons we found tied to the trees and the other odd little artefacts we encountered. 

Speaking of which, here is the last strange thing that happened. We’d found this odd little sign with scrawled red writing on it that we’d hoped to have interpreted. We snapped a shot of it with the same digital camera we used for the whole trip. We were in a hurry to get back to the bus so didn’t check the pictures until we were back in our room that night. Every other shot we took during the whole break came out fine accept that shot which came out like this:

Never before or since has that camera blanked out on a photo.