Last time I talked about how my Japanese wife didn’t want to visit the Mt. Fuji area in part because she was scared of going near Japan’s “suicide forest,” sure she’d hear the spirits of the dead calling out to her. Japan can seem a very death-oriented place to outsiders — several holidays here started out as Buddhist days of remembrance for the dead — so perhaps it’s not surprising that Japanese have a higher awareness of ghosts and the supernatural than people in other countries. Some individuals are said to be 霊感のある人 reikan no aru hito, that is, people with a greater than average sensitivity of ghosts and apparitions, and in our family my wife and daughter believe themselves to be part of this group. Once after my father passed away, my daughter (who was about five at the time) turned to empty air and shouted, “Stop watching me!” My wife thought I’d gotten out of bed and was standing there looking at my daughter while she ate her breakfast, but I was still asleep, and the general consensus was that she was “sensing” the spirit of my father who had come to visit us. There was another time when my daughter saw a man dressed in a dark suit who nodded politely to her, though no one else could see him. I have no reikan sense at all, and my wife often tells me how lucky I am to be so unaware of spirits all around me.
My wife and daughter seem more aware of ghosts than me.
