Long after the tsunami that devastated a stretch of Japan’s coast in 2011, a fire station in Tagajo received calls to neighborhoods that had been leveled.
The fire crews went to the ruins to pray and the calls stopped, reported Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia editor of the Times of London, in an article titled “Ghosts of the Tsunami.”
As part of his research for a book on the tsunami, he spoke to a priest who exorcised the spirits of tsunami victims. Parry also spoke to many others who made it clear that ghostly encounters were common following the tsunami.
Taxi drivers reported picking up ghostly passengers. A driver in Sendai picked up a sad-looking man asking to go to a house that had been destroyed. By the time the driver arrived at the site, the passenger had disappeared. He nonetheless opened the door to “let him out.”
Reverend Kaneda, chief priest at a Zen temple in the town of Kurihara (30 miles from the coast), told Parry of many exorcisms he performed. One woman’s case stood out.
Rumiko Takahashi, a 25-year-old nurse from Sendai, was apparently possessed by more than 20 different tsunami victims during the summer of 2013 before she learned to keep the spirits out.
