Hanako-san

One, two, three.

And then you've got to say in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, Hanako-san, would you like to play? And so my friend Aiko and two of her friends, they went up to that third floor on the last Thursday before the summer holiday.

Aiko's friend Rin, she was the brave one.

She was the one who would have gone straight to the bottom of the school field in the dark.

But when she checked the little round lock, it showed the word vacant.

She lifted her hand and knocked, and knocked, and knocked.

Hanako-san, said Rin.

Her voice came out smaller, more of a whisper than she had intended.

All right.

Next up, Mary's international counterpart, Hanako-san, patron saint of hiding in the bathroom.

Ooh, cosmopolitan.

So, Hanako-san is Japan's most famous schoolgirl ghost.

Her full name, when translated, is a little unfortunate.

Oh? Hanako of the toilet.

Well, at least you can say it out loud without getting pulled into the mirror, right?

Hopefully, no.

Um, but I would say I do think that Japanese children still have ghosts, and they have, like, new ghosts.

Like, um, anybody that's worked in a school in Japan has probably heard about little Hanako in the toilet-

[laughs] Yeah

... who, like, gets you and stuff.

... and negotiated through the supernatural.

Mm-hmm.

But outside of that, it's like I'm, like, thinking about what... 'Cause Hanako is also old.

Yeah.

... and that kind of a thing.

There's a lot of very common elements to it, but because the name, like Hanako-san, or, like, the separation-

Mm-hmm

... of it is enough to totally break it apart, so.

[laughs]

... you guys are just so nice.

[laughs] This, this was one that it was sort of on the back of my mind that I knew was there, so I had to actually go looking for it, was Hanako-san.

Japan's most famous bathroom ghost haunts the third stall of the third floor girls' washroom.

So sometimes it's Hail Mary or Mary Worth, which are popular examples.

And there's also a modern legend that I'll talk about in a little bit called Hanako-san from Japan, which really strongly parallels this mythology.

Cool.

So who is Bloody Mary? Well, as with a lot of urban legends, the truth is impossible to find.

Yes, exactly.

We see a similar example of Bloody Mary from Japan.

So according to this legend, Hanako-san is the ghost of a young girl who haunts school toilets and can be described as sort of, you know, maybe a yorai or a yokai.

The details of her physical appearance vary, as they often do, across different sources.

There's a Ja- toilet ghost?

Hanako-san.

Oh, like, uh, like, uh, that one anime.

Uh-

Toire no Hanako-san

...

the To- Toilet Boy.

Yeah.