School Bag

The School bag is a spooky ghost tale about a young girl who always carries a red satchel to school. When she mysteriously stops coming to class, her fellow students begin wondering what has happened to her. This story was inspired by parts of a Japanese manga by Hideshi Hino.

When I was 8 years old, there was a young girl in my class named Haako-chan. She was a happy and cheerful person and always had a smile for everyone. The thing I remember most about her was that she had a red school bag.

One day, Haako didn’t show up for school. Everyone was wondering where she was. When we asked the teachers, they said they didn’t know. A week later, she still hadn’t come to school and we all assumed that her family must have moved away. As time passed, we gradually forgot about her.

Then, one morning, just before the bell rang to signal the start of class, we saw a small figure walking through the school gates. It was Haako-chan. She was walking very slowly and had her red school bag on her back. We called out to her, but she just ignored us.

As she drew closer, I could see her face clearly. There was something different about her. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something wrong. She looked pale and sickly.

Just then, the school bell rang and, not wanting to be late for class, we rushed inside. When the teacher arrived, Haako’s desk was empty. She never came to class. Everyone was confused. We all thought she had come back to school.

At lunch break, we went out to the playground. There was a red school bag lying on the ground. I knew it belonged to Haako. We couldn’t find her anywhere, so we brought it into the classroom and put it on her desk. She never came to collect it.

The next morning, when I arrived at school, the red school bag was still sitting on Haako’s empty desk. My friend, Taro, was curious and decided to take a look inside. He unbuckled the straps and opened the flap.

Suddenly, he screamed in horror and the bag fell from his hands. It dropped to the floor and something rolled out, leaving a red trail on the wooden floor.

It was Haako’s severed head.

Pandemonium broke out in the classroom. Everyone was screaming and crying. A few boys burst into tears and some of the girls were hysterical.

Just then, the teacher came into the class and demanded to know what was wrong. Everyone started shouting at once.

I looked down and saw that the severed head was gone. The blood trail on the floor had vanished.

At first, the teacher refused to believe us, but some of the girls were so insistant about what they had seen that he decided to go and speak to the school principal.

That evening, they called Haako-chan’s mother and asked her some questions. Unable to get any proper answers, the teacher and the school principal contacted the police.

The next day, two detectives visited Haako’s house and spoke to her mother. She tried to tell them she didn’t know where her daughter was, but under questioning, she finally cracked.

It turned out that Haako’s mother and father had divorced. The mother started dating again, but her new boyfriend didn’t like children. So, she killed Haako and chopped up her body. They dredged the lake near haako’s house and found her dismembered remains.

Everyone in the school was shocked and horrified beyond belief. None of us could understand how something so terrible could happen to one of our classmates. For the rest of the school year, we made sure that, every morning, there was a fresh vase of flowers standing on Haako’s empty desk, right next to her red school bag.