The boogy man is going to get cha!....
In japan there is a famous and well known ghost named Hanako. She is a young girl who resides in the 3rd stall of the girl's bathroom. Usually, she is believed to be in almost every girl's bathroom in Junior High School. When I asked a couple of the Japanese Kansai Gaidai students, they told me that in their old school there was a Hanako. When I asked them if they believed it, many stated that they did at the time but now isn't so sure. Fewer said yes and even fewer said no.
So what is the story of Hanako? There are many slightly different interpretations of Hanako throughout Japan but here is one version in a short article about Hanako by Ron Hogan.
"She’s called Toire no Hanako-san, or Hanako of the Toilet, and she’s a Japanese ghost that haunts girls’ bathrooms all over Japan. The third stall on the third floor of any school? That’s her toilet, and don’t you go using it, missy!
Unlike the other Japanese urban legend about Sony’s built-in failure clock, there’s nothing much to support the existence of Hanako. She’s just a girl in a red dress with bobbed hair. If you knock on the third stall door and ask if she’s in there, she’ll say in a meek voice, “Yes, I am here.” If you open the door up after that? Well, she grabs you and pulls you into the toilet, where presumably you die. She’s also been seen as a lizard, a summonable ghost like Bloody Mary, and a giant bloody white hand that will pull you in, depending on where you are when you hear the legend of Hamako. Sounds like classic urban legend stuff to me!"
http://www.popfi.com/2010/04/15/hanako-of-the-toilet-a-bathroom-haunting-ghost/
Another slightly different version of who Hanako is in another article by Billy Hammond. "There is a story about a school ghost named "Hanako-san"(Hanako-chan) that is familiar to most elementary school students in Japan. According to a show I saw on TV about it, variations of it exist throughout the country. In most of the stories, a young girl named Hanako hangs out in school restrooms, mysteriously opening and closing doors of the toilet stalls. If her name is called, she appears and then frightening things occur.
This tale has created so much fear among elementary school students that some students refrain from using the restroom to the point of failure. Japanese elementary school restrooms have a reputation for being poorly lighted and smelly, which may contribute to this as well.
In response, the Asahi Shinbun (May 13, 2002) reports that progress is being made to address the 5 problem points of school restrooms, which are summarized as "dirty, smelly, dark, frightening and being in disrepair".
According to the article, Izumi City in Osaka has recently revamped the facilities for the lower grades. They have put sensors to allow automatic flushing of the boy's bathroom urinals and sound effect devices to muffle noise in the girl's bathroom at the city's Midorigaoka Elementary School. They have also installed Western-style toilets with hot water washlets there. Other improvements include increasing the height of stall walls to the ceiling to prevent peeping as well as stronger lighting.
The cost of all these improvements? Over 20,000,000 yen (about $156,250.00 U.S. at 128 yen to the dollar) for a single school. They have finished improvements at 4 of the city's elementary and intermediate schools.
What about Hanako-san? She needn't worry - there are still lots of other school restrooms left in Japan that haven't been targeted for renovation."
http://www.tanutech.com/japan/hanako.html
In my Death in East Asian Thought class that I am taking this semester, my professor told us that perhaps Hanako is a representation of how stressed students are in taking exams during that age, so maybe a little girl went suicide because she couldn't handle the pressure. Or maybe according to Frued, it represents young women's fears in their upcoming menustration. Who knows? Maybe all of the above or maybe she is real.
So do you believe in Hanako? I am not sure if there is a Hanako in college, but all I know is that when I enter a bathroom in my college in Osaka, I will not call out her name to see if she is real. Thank goodness we have the western styled toilets in our school! Unless....she can still haunt those too...
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