Japanese high school’s chime rings in middle of the night, freaks out countryside town【Video】

It’s like something out of a J-horror movie.

Summer has long been the time for spooky tales in Japan, when a chill running down one’s spine can be considered a momentary relief from the summer heat. Another quirk of Japanese ghost stories is that they’re far more likely to take place in an empty school than an abandoned house, perhaps because all those classrooms and hallways provide much more space for unnatural entities and unspeakable deeds than a compact Japanese home.

And so, right as summer was winding down, something both scholastic and incredibly creepy happened in the town of Oshima, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Oshima isn’t a very big town, and it gets very quiet once the sun goes down. On Monday night, though, the silence was shattered by this.

深夜に学校のチャイム2時間鳴り響く「孫も怖がった」https://t.co/qX3GphwgBC

山口県周防大島町の大島商船高専で29日深夜、授業の開始や終了を知らせるチャイムが約2時間、鳴り続けました。周囲には住宅があり、驚く住民も pic.twitter.com/zp8mkkGtsE

— 中国新聞 (@ChugokuShimbun) August 30, 2022

At about 10 o’clock, a school chime began booming. This is, of course, well after classes have ended and students have gone home. What’s more, the sound, which was coming from Oshima Shosen High School, could be heard up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) away, which seems a lot louder than it would ordinarily need to be set to.

The chime didn’t ring once and stop, either, but continued to sound, even though it hadn’t been scheduled to do so. An on-duty school employee managed to shut down the power to the chime’s broadcasting equipment…only for it to start ringing on its own once again.

安倍ぴょん、、、寂しいからって夜中に学校のチャイムならしてんじゃねーぞ pic.twitter.com/mj51EjlYPK

— 野良ケンモメン☆☆☆ (@kenmo_abe666) August 30, 2022

The chime continued to ring until around midnight, when the school staff eventually yanked out the power cord for the equipment, which finally put a stop to it.

The chime heard in the videos is the same tone and melody used by hundreds of other schools in Japan, and under just about any other circumstances it evokes a sense of nostalgia in most Japanese people. Given the timing, though, it instead seriously creeped people out, with Twitter comments including:

“Geez that’s scary.”
“Caution: Horror story here.”
“That’s freaky that it started up again even after they shut down the power.”
“It’s like something out of [J-horror movie] School Ghost Stories.”

近所の高校、チャイムがひたすら鳴り続けてて怖い

かれこれ50分ぐらいは鳴り続いてる pic.twitter.com/FExaWOoMuH

— ゅぅゃ (@tente____) August 29, 2022

The school says the whole thing was the result of a malfunction within the equipment, and repairs were performed the following day. No late-night chimes have been heard since, so maybe it was all just a glitch, or maybe it’s just that summer is over and the ghosts are lying low until next year.

Source: Chugoku Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan News via Jin
Top image: Pakutaso (edited by SoraNews24)
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