Aokigahara Jyukai, also known as the sea of trees or more notoriously as the suicide woods of Mt. A place with so much mystery and intrigue that if this forest could talk it would weave a tale that would fill volumes and make your hair stand on end.
Aokigahara Forest has always haunted the poetic imagination. Long ago, it was said to be the home of yūrei, Japanese ghosts. Now it's the final resting place of as many as 100 suicide victims every year.
At the foot of Mount Fuji, the highest mountain peak in Japan, sprawls a 30-square-kilometer forest called Aokigahara. For many years, the shadowy woodland was known as the Sea of Trees. But in recent decades it has taken on a new name: Suicide Forest.
Aokigahara, A Forest As Beautiful As It Is Eerie
For some visitors, Aokigahara is a place of unbridled beauty and serenity. Hikers looking for a challenge can wade through dense thickets of trees, knotted roots, and rocky ground to access amazing views of Mount Fuji. School children sometimes visit on field trips to explore the region’s famous ice caves.
It is also, however, a little eerie — the trees have grown so closely together that visitors will spend much of their time in semi-darkness. The gloom is relieved only by the occasional stream of sunlight from gaps in the treetops.
What most people who come to Japan’s Suicide Forest say they remember is the silence. Beneath fallen branches and decaying leaves, the forest floor is made of volcanic rock, cooled lava from Mount Fuji’s massive 864 eruption. The stone is hard and porous, full of tiny holes that eat the noise.
In the stillness, visitors say every breath sounds like a roar.
![Aokigahara Aokigahara](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125852556/428213222.jpg)
It’s a quiet, solemn place, and it has seen its share of quiet, solemn people. Though reports have been deliberately obfuscated in recent years, it is estimated that as many as 100 people take their own life in Suicide Forest every year.
The Rumors, Myths, And Legends Of Suicide Forest
Aokigahara has always been dogged with morbid myths. The oldest are unconfirmed stories of an ancient Japanese custom called ubasute.
Legend has it that in feudal times, when food was scarce and the situation grew desperate, a family might take a dependent elderly relative — typically a woman — to a remote location and leave her to die.
The practice itself may be more fiction than fact; many scholars dispute the idea that senicide was ever common in Japanese culture. But accounts of ubasute have made their way into Japan’s folklore and poetry — and from there attached themselves to the silent, eerie Suicide Forest.
At first, the yūrei, or ghosts, visitors claimed they saw in Aokigahara were presumed to be the vengeful spirits of the old who had been abandoned to starvation and the mercy of the elements.
But that all began to change in the 1960s, when the forest’s long, tangled history with suicide began. Today, the forest’s phantoms are said to belong to the sad and miserable — the thousands who came to the forest to take their life.
Many believe a book is to blame for the resurgence in the forest’s macabre popularity. In 1960, Seicho Matsumoto published his famous novel Kuroi Jukai, often translated as The Black Sea of Trees, in which the story’s lovers commit suicide in Aokigahara Forest.
Yet as early as the 1950s, tourists were reporting encountering decomposing bodies in Aokigahara. What brought the brokenhearted to the forest in the first place may remain a mystery, but its reputation in the present as Japan’s Suicide Forest is both deserved and undeniable.
The Black Sea Of Trees And Its Body Count
Since the early 1970s, a small army of police, volunteers, and journalists has annually scoured the area in search of bodies. They almost never leave empty-handed.
The body count has significantly increased in recent years, reaching a peak in 2004 when 108 bodies in varying states of decay were recovered from the forest. And that only accounts for the bodies searchers managed to find. Many more have disappeared under the trees’ winding, gnarled roots, and others have been carried away and consumed by animals.
Aokigahara sees more suicides than any other location in the world; the only exception is the Golden Gate Bridge. That the forest has become the final resting place of so many is no secret: authorities have placed signs emblazoned with warnings, like “please reconsider” and “think carefully about your children, your family,” at the entrance.
Vice travels through Aokigahara, Japan’s Suicide Forest.
Patrols regularly scout the area, hoping to gently redirect visitors who look like they might not be planning a return journey.
In 2010, 247 people attempted suicide in the forest; 54 completed. In general, hanging is the most common cause of death, with drug overdose a close second. Numbers for recent years are unavailable; the Japanese government, fearing that the totals were encouraging others to follow in the footsteps of the deceased, stopped releasing the numbers.
The Logan Paul Controversy
Not all visitors to Japan’s Suicide Forest are planning their own death; many are simply tourists. But even tourists may not be able to escape the forest’s reputation.
Those who stray from the trail sometimes encounter disquieting reminders of past tragedies: scattered personal belongings. Moss-covered shoes, photographs, briefcases, notes, and ripped clothing have all been discovered strewn across the forest floor.
Sometimes, visitors find worse. That was what happened to Logan Paul, the famous YouTuber who visited the forest to film. Paul knew the forest’s reputation — he meant to showcase the woods in all their eerie, silent glory. But he didn’t bargain on finding a dead body.
He kept the camera rolling, even as he and his companions phoned the police. He published the film, showing graphic, up-close footage of the suicide victim’s face and body. The decision would have been controversial under any circumstances — but his on-camera laughter was what shocked viewers the most.
The backlash was fierce and immediate. Paul took the video down, but not without protest. He both apologized and defended himself, saying he “intended to raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention.”
The man laughing in the Suicide Forest YouTube video certainly doesn’t appear to have that intention, but Paul means to make amends. He has pointed out the irony of his own fate: even as he’s chastised for what he did, some rage-filled commenters have told him to kill himself.
The controversy has been a lesson for us all.
Need more macabre reading after reading about Aokigahara, Japan’s suicide forest? Learn about R. Budd Dwyer, the American politician who killed himself in front of television cameras. Then round things out with some medieval torture devices and creepy GIFs that will make your skin crawl.
The world is full of scary places, and sometimes these real life horror factories are frightening enough to have their own movie made about them. Places like the Amityville Horror house on Long Island, which played host to a family murder and supposed hauntings thereafter; or the Perron home, which had its own series of paranormal activity that inspired The Conjuring. But these mere haunted houses and their ilk pale in comparison to the frights in the new movie The Forest , which takes place at Aokigahara... better known as Japan's suicide forest.
This forest is, without question, one of the scariest places in the world. People often find clothing or body parts while traversing through its so-called sea of trees, the result of the inordinate number of deaths by suicide that occur there every year (over 100 took place between 2013 and 2015, according to CNN). But that's not the only reason the forest is a place you probably don't want to visit. Located at the base of Mount Fuji, Aokigahara also plays a role in Japanese mythology, and is considered to be one of the most haunted places in all of Japan, with believers reporting a very high number of Yūrei — ghosts who suffered a violent and unnatural death — as well as demons. And even those paranormal beings don't cover all of the weird stuff that goes on there. So have a look at these six creepy stories from within the Aokigahara Forest, if you dare.
The Curse
During a VICE documentary that takes a tour of the forest, an extremely creepy curse is found. There's a Jack Skellington-like doll with his face cut off, nailed upside down to a tree as a sort of inverted crucifixion. According to the documentary's guide, Azusa Hayano, 'They nailed this character upside down as a symbol of contempt for society. No, it's more like a curse. The curse is nailed in.' Apparently, it's not that uncommon for visitors to leave a curse on the world they're leaving behind.
The Cut Tape
The forest is very easy to get lost in, with compasses and GPS often not working under its canopy (believed to be due to high iron deposits in the soil). For this reason, people entering the forest will string along tape behind them so they can find their way back. There are stories of people having their tape deliberately cut, leaving them lost in the woods. Could it have been one of the demons who are believed to lead travelers astray?
The Mysterious Scream
People often report hearing bloodcurdling, unnatural screams while wandering the forest, said to be made by the Yūrei. A writer for the Japan Times told of an incident where he heard a terrifying scream in the forest. When he went searching for source of the noise, he came across the dead body of a man at the base of a tree. A quick examination revealed that the corpse had been dead for some time, and could not have been the source of the scream... but maybe his spirit was.
The Apparition
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Another hallmark of the forest is that there have been, supposedly, literal ghost sightings, with visitors sometimes claiming to see white figures drifting between the trees. When the Syfy paranormal investigation show Destination Truth investigated the forest, they may have caught one of these apparitions on camera. Was it a Yūrei, or just a trick of the light?
Tragic Encounters
Some who enter the forest with intent to die by suicide do eventually leave. In an interview with the Japan Times, Hideo Watanabe, who owns a shop at the entrance of the forest, revealed that he's seen numerous people exit the forest after attempting to die by suicide. He described calling for an ambulance for one such visitor.
An Invitation From Beyond
Given its proximity to Mount Fuji, Aokigahara is considered by most Japanese religions to be a very spiritual place — but that's not necessarily a good thing. Buddhist monks have set up altars in the forest to try and combat what they say are the evil spirits haunting the forest and drawing people there to die by suicide. One Buddhist monk named Kyomyo Fukui was visiting the forest to set up an altar when he told the New Zealand Herald, 'The spirits are calling people here to kill themselves — the spirits of the people who have committed suicide before.'
So while there are many frightening stories out there about Aokigahara Forest, it certainly isn't the type of place you want to go camping.
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 911, or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
This post was originally published on Jan. 12, 2016. It was updated on June 19, 2019.
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