Close Encounters of The Spooky Kind ...

This isn't a set from the latest Oriental horror flick or the location of a particularly spooky Live Action Role-Playing game, but an image from a wonderful website of derelict Japanese buildings.

The hauntingly beautiful, yet poignant and inspirational, pictures range from abandoned train stations, hospitals and homes to tower blocks, fairgrounds and factories.

Being in Japanese, the website isn't immediately user-friendly to us non-Japanese readers, but there are three or four main files (listed at the top of the page) of various sites - mainly in rural Japan - and then clicking on one of the main images opens a second page with about half a dozen pictures. In most cases the buttons at the bottom of the page either take you back to the main page or to additional pictures of the location you are looking at.

And speaking of the mysterious East, reminds me of my own Chinese ghost story I recounted on an old blog last Halloween:

Several years ago I went to visit Paul when he was working for an English-language newspaper in Beijing, China. He was staying in a big, one-bedroom flat in a tall tower block, so I was sleeping on a makeshift (but comfortable) bed in his lounge.

Alcohol usually played a large part in making sure I had a good night's sleep ... but one night I awoke with an "invisible person" sitting on my chest; pinning me down. I couldn't move!

I have no recollection of what happened later but talking to Paul the next day I discovered I wasn't the first person this had happened to and there was the usual urban myth circulating about someone jumping to their death from one of the flats ... but no-one could ever say which one.

Later I read about the phenomenon of 'sleep paralysis', which (basically) means your mind has woken up, but your body is still asleep so you can see and think - but not move; but at the time I was as convinced as I've ever been that I had come face-to-invisible-face with a ghost!!!

From Wikipedia:
In Chinese folk culture, sleep paralysis is referred as "gui yà chúang" (鬼压床), literally: "Ghost press bed": 鬼: ghost, 压: press, 床: bed. The belief is that a spirit or ghost is sitting or lying on top of the individual while they were sleeping, causing the sleep paralysis. This is thought to be a minor body possession by the forces from the dead, and usually doesn't cause any harm to the victim.