Okamuro

Okamuro is a scary Japanese urban legend about a ghost that appears outside your door one week after you hear about him. Warning: This is a cursed story. If you don’t want to be visited by Okamuro, do not read this story.

Okamuro is a Japanese ghost, but no one knows for sure what he looks like. They say the reason for this is that if you see Okamuro, you will die.

Okamuro appears to any person who hears his name. There is a possibility that he will come about a week or so after you hear about him, especially if you have forgotten about him in the meantime.

He will suddenly appear outside your room and start pounding on the doors and windows with a “don don don” sound. No one else can hear the knocking except the person who heard the story.

When that happens, you need to keep your eyes tightly shut and keep chanting, “Okamuro, Okamuro, Okamuro…” until he disappears.

He might disappear after a few minutes, but sometimes it could take as much as a few hours. Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes until he has disappeared.

It is said that once you know about him, Okamuro will appear to you within a week. Once you have survived an encounter with Okamuro, he will not appear to you again.

If you are a nervous person, please pay attention to the sound of knocking on your doors and windows over the next week.

Note: There is one ancient Japanese book that contains an illustration of a ghost called “Okamuro” (大かむろ). It says that late at night, if you hear a noise outside your house and you open the front door, you will see a gigantic hideous disembodied head sitting there on your doorstep.

Here is an account of one Japanese person who encountered Okamuro:

“When I was a junior high school student, my friends and I were very interested in the supernatural. We would often buy magazines with ghost photos and scary stories. We would spend hours reading them and scaring ourselves out of our wits. My friends often got so scared that they didn’t want to bring the magazines home. They would give them to me instead. After a while, I had a big stack of scary magazines on my bedside table and I would often read them at night before going to sleep.

One night, I came across an interesting story in one of the magazines. It was supposed to be true. It’s not the sort of story that could scare you to death, but you might die if you’re not careful…

It was a very short story, barely more than a paragraph, about a ghost. It said that if you read this story, the ghost would come and knock on your window or your door and if you didn’t recite his name three times, he would come into your room and cut off your head.

I continued reading the magazine as usual and gradually dozed off. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard what sounded like a faint knock on the window. At first, I thought it was just a bird pecking at the window frame, but then I realized it was the middle of the night and there were no birds around. I looked at the window, but the curtains were shut and I couldn’t see anything. I started thinking about the story I had read in the magazine… Could it really be true?

I was trying to tell myself it was just my imagination, when I heard the knock again. This time it was louder. “Don Don Don!”

I got scared and recited the name of the ghost over and over. Even though it was decades ago, I can still remember it. “Okamuro… Okamuro… Okamuro…”

Then, nothing happened. The knocking stopped and everything was quiet. After a while, I got up and went over to the window to open the curtains. There was nothing outside.

I still don’t know what it was, but after that, I was always wary about reading these “cursed stories”. I feel like sometimes they can come true.”