Daiba Haunted School, Odaiba, Japan
Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, started out as a defensive position in the late 19th century but has since become a focal point of the commercial and leisure industries in Tokyo. It is home to TV studios, several large shopping malls, and even a 1:1 scale Gundam replica. Among its entertainment facilities are a Ferris wheel, arcades, and the Daiba Haunted School – an obake yashiki (お化け屋敷 ) or “ghost house” located in the DECKS Building – the largest of the island's malls.
The School is a year-round attraction in the building's top floor – and is, despite a few advertisements dotted around, very easy to miss; nestled as it is among the bright lights and sounds of carnival-style amusement stalls and games machines. Fortunately, the mall's staff are very helpful should a fear-seeker be lost and require directions to this haunt. When we do find it, though, we find a corner booth on a decrepit-looking schoolhouse, dotted with proudly displayed reviews and media appearances along with ample severed heads and a wasting, crucified corpse.
Those who wish to enter are guided to the side of the attraction to a queuing area and both the rules and the story are explained to us – note that the staff, on this occasion at least, spoke excellent English and everything we need to know is available to us in English if we need it. We are informed that this school, now closed and forgotten, has played host to great tragedies; after committing suicide, the spirit of a young girl returns and compels her schoolmates to follow suit. Death after death mount up, eventually prompting the suicide of the principal and the permanent closing of the site. It is our job to explore the site and put the many disturbed spirits to rest by offering a blessing at a Bon fire located deep inside the school.
Groups are small – with this visit even being a solo effort – and, besides the usual no running, touching and photos-type rules anyone familiar with scare attractions is used to, we are provided with a hand-held torch, attached to which is a rope. The leader of the group is to keep this torch close whilst those behind keep a grip of the rope to keep the group together. We are, when ready, deposited into what appears to be the principal's offfice to watch a short video-message from the man before his taking of his own life. Joining us is the hanging and decaying corpse of the unfortunate principal in the darkness as he begs the visitor to do what he could not and save the souls of his students. It is of special note that this video was presented in English, introducing either the possibility of the attraction providing multiple videos appropriate for non-Japanese speakers or the feed being live to a cast member who was informed of this visitor's nationality.
The scares begin early with the sound of movement, voices and the always sinister child's laughter seemingly in the room with us, directly behind us and always – as best we can tell – live or at least from a recording of superior quality. We journey into the school proper and find that, though it is not difficult to find the correct path, it is full of winding corridors, pathways with windows, alcoves or gaps on both sides and many curtains and other obstructions blocking our already meagre line of sight. As expected of Japanese horror, we are not overwhelmed with loud sounds or a clear threat. We are never truly sure what to expect, leading our imagination to run wild – which any lover of horror will know is always more chilling. Even an experienced scarer begins to question whether or not those footsteps are really as close as they seem...
The more we travel in, the closer and more intense the scares become. Better (or worse) still, the attraction and the cast show us yet another trick they have in their repertoire; though we start with unexpectedly moving bodies or – disturbingly – even a hanging child that sweeps out of the darkness towards us and expertly done sound-based scares behind the walls or in the room with us, they soon add to that when the grim realisation sets in that – despite there being no clear hatches, curtains or trapdoors along the way – the cast are now somehow behind us as well as in front. We come across curtains that we must navigate, windows into classrooms on either side so that we cannot feel safer against either wall, even a smoke machine that is perfectly used to give us only a vague shape of movement ahead of us. When we finally find the Bon fire, making our offering in the form of a written blessing given to us by staff, a meak “arigato...” comes from the pitch black behind us. And, just when we think we have completed our task, we are chased from the attraction by an unseen entity.
Unseen. And therein lies the genuine brilliance of the Haunted School. It is hard to do justice to the level of atmosphere delivered by this attraction – it may soon occur to the visitor that the experience truly does feel like an exploration of the creepiest of all abandoned urban sites. The ability the cast have to sound right by us, or just a step ahead or behind, makes this writer wonder just how intricate this attraction is behind the scenes – it is easy to imagine a maze of passages behind the walls and hidden doors for the actors to go where they please. Several times, movement or voices were heard just out of sight or right behind and, when we turn, there is no-one to be found. In fact, on this visit, members of the cast themselves were only visible on 2 occasions; one, when a screaming face appeared briefly through one of many holes in the scenery and, two, when an actor was able to dart so quickly from the path of the provided torch that only a pair of trainers were visible under a curtain.
The set is supremely well dressed; from the high-quality mannequins used, to proper fixtures of doors and cabinets, even properly dressed ceilings at times (a startling difference to the scare actor all too accustomed to pipes and wooden joists). The practical effects – from snapping open doors to the previously praised smoke machine are slick and the mechanisms hidden and a high point of its design is a particular section where we come across dusty windows into an adjacent classroom; the space behind is thick with small, hanging bodies and the room appears to go back as far as the light will penetrate. Whether an ingenious use of space or simply a scared mind running wild, this – and many, smaller touches like it – drags us so firmly into a feeling of immersion in the setting.
Highlights are hard to pick but would be the above classroom and two major elements in the Haunted School:
The flashlight we are provided. Quite a large and (presumably) powerful torch, we seem to have purposefully been given one in the last moments of its battery life; we have a beam of illumination and not much else. Any lover of survival horror games, or even urban explorers, will attest to the power of being given only the narrowest of scopes to work with – we can't help but try to rely on it and, subsequently, catch only the hints of movement in its fading light. Quite appropriately, the only reason cast members were ever visible and identifiable as such were due to the beam falling directly on them, out of luck more than anything else. It is a brave gamble to give us the seeming ability to cast out the dark, a major element in the attraction, but it only backfires on us as we – in vain – search the upcoming corridor for a threat, focusing our attention on one small spot, leaving everywhere but the smallest patch all the more vulnerable.
The girl. Not mentioned until now is the recurring entity that seems to almost lead us through the attraction – a wonderfully disheveled (think a miniature Sadako) puppet of a little girl that puts its all-too-frightening head around corners, moves just as we catch sight of it, calls to us from the darkness (another great job by the cast who manage to imitate a child's voice rather well) and, in a moment that can freeze us in cold dread, eventually works her way just steps behind us. She shows herself fleetingly several times but, make no mistake, it is not an awkward and obvious guide but instead stops us in our tracks with each and every appearance.
Improvements are hard to find; one could toy with wishing the attraction were even longer so as to further lap up the experience but, in truth, it is with extreme relief that we escape on the other side. Perhaps, having the School be better posted and advertised would be good but only because it deserves are more prominent place and more attention that it seemed to have – though this visit took place early in a weekday. It is worth mentioning, however, that the subject matter is very delicate even for a scare attraction and would likely not be tolerated in the UK; this is a school where children, not even young adults, have taken their lives en masse. For this reason, it is understandable that many would rather not visit or may even oppose the attraction.
Admission is 800JPY to this permanent obake yashiki and the attraction took around 10 minutes to complete – though you may, too, find yourself losing track of time whilst inside, another testament to its ability to draw guests into its world. As previously mentioned, Japanese and English speakers will find it easy to understand everything in the Haunted School and the cast appear to customise on the fly for those who may not understand the country's mother tongue. After taking some time to calm down and add to the School's recommendations pinned on its wall, it became obvious that this is a highlight for anyone who visits Tokyo. It, along with the many other attractions and things to see on Odaiba, makes it well worth the visit from anyone in the Kanto region and able to attend. A true textbook in atmospheric Japanese horror and a jewel in the crown of scare attractions.
The School is a year-round attraction in the building's top floor – and is, despite a few advertisements dotted around, very easy to miss; nestled as it is among the bright lights and sounds of carnival-style amusement stalls and games machines. Fortunately, the mall's staff are very helpful should a fear-seeker be lost and require directions to this haunt. When we do find it, though, we find a corner booth on a decrepit-looking schoolhouse, dotted with proudly displayed reviews and media appearances along with ample severed heads and a wasting, crucified corpse.
Those who wish to enter are guided to the side of the attraction to a queuing area and both the rules and the story are explained to us – note that the staff, on this occasion at least, spoke excellent English and everything we need to know is available to us in English if we need it. We are informed that this school, now closed and forgotten, has played host to great tragedies; after committing suicide, the spirit of a young girl returns and compels her schoolmates to follow suit. Death after death mount up, eventually prompting the suicide of the principal and the permanent closing of the site. It is our job to explore the site and put the many disturbed spirits to rest by offering a blessing at a Bon fire located deep inside the school.
Groups are small – with this visit even being a solo effort – and, besides the usual no running, touching and photos-type rules anyone familiar with scare attractions is used to, we are provided with a hand-held torch, attached to which is a rope. The leader of the group is to keep this torch close whilst those behind keep a grip of the rope to keep the group together. We are, when ready, deposited into what appears to be the principal's offfice to watch a short video-message from the man before his taking of his own life. Joining us is the hanging and decaying corpse of the unfortunate principal in the darkness as he begs the visitor to do what he could not and save the souls of his students. It is of special note that this video was presented in English, introducing either the possibility of the attraction providing multiple videos appropriate for non-Japanese speakers or the feed being live to a cast member who was informed of this visitor's nationality.
The scares begin early with the sound of movement, voices and the always sinister child's laughter seemingly in the room with us, directly behind us and always – as best we can tell – live or at least from a recording of superior quality. We journey into the school proper and find that, though it is not difficult to find the correct path, it is full of winding corridors, pathways with windows, alcoves or gaps on both sides and many curtains and other obstructions blocking our already meagre line of sight. As expected of Japanese horror, we are not overwhelmed with loud sounds or a clear threat. We are never truly sure what to expect, leading our imagination to run wild – which any lover of horror will know is always more chilling. Even an experienced scarer begins to question whether or not those footsteps are really as close as they seem...
The more we travel in, the closer and more intense the scares become. Better (or worse) still, the attraction and the cast show us yet another trick they have in their repertoire; though we start with unexpectedly moving bodies or – disturbingly – even a hanging child that sweeps out of the darkness towards us and expertly done sound-based scares behind the walls or in the room with us, they soon add to that when the grim realisation sets in that – despite there being no clear hatches, curtains or trapdoors along the way – the cast are now somehow behind us as well as in front. We come across curtains that we must navigate, windows into classrooms on either side so that we cannot feel safer against either wall, even a smoke machine that is perfectly used to give us only a vague shape of movement ahead of us. When we finally find the Bon fire, making our offering in the form of a written blessing given to us by staff, a meak “arigato...” comes from the pitch black behind us. And, just when we think we have completed our task, we are chased from the attraction by an unseen entity.
Unseen. And therein lies the genuine brilliance of the Haunted School. It is hard to do justice to the level of atmosphere delivered by this attraction – it may soon occur to the visitor that the experience truly does feel like an exploration of the creepiest of all abandoned urban sites. The ability the cast have to sound right by us, or just a step ahead or behind, makes this writer wonder just how intricate this attraction is behind the scenes – it is easy to imagine a maze of passages behind the walls and hidden doors for the actors to go where they please. Several times, movement or voices were heard just out of sight or right behind and, when we turn, there is no-one to be found. In fact, on this visit, members of the cast themselves were only visible on 2 occasions; one, when a screaming face appeared briefly through one of many holes in the scenery and, two, when an actor was able to dart so quickly from the path of the provided torch that only a pair of trainers were visible under a curtain.
The set is supremely well dressed; from the high-quality mannequins used, to proper fixtures of doors and cabinets, even properly dressed ceilings at times (a startling difference to the scare actor all too accustomed to pipes and wooden joists). The practical effects – from snapping open doors to the previously praised smoke machine are slick and the mechanisms hidden and a high point of its design is a particular section where we come across dusty windows into an adjacent classroom; the space behind is thick with small, hanging bodies and the room appears to go back as far as the light will penetrate. Whether an ingenious use of space or simply a scared mind running wild, this – and many, smaller touches like it – drags us so firmly into a feeling of immersion in the setting.
Highlights are hard to pick but would be the above classroom and two major elements in the Haunted School:
The flashlight we are provided. Quite a large and (presumably) powerful torch, we seem to have purposefully been given one in the last moments of its battery life; we have a beam of illumination and not much else. Any lover of survival horror games, or even urban explorers, will attest to the power of being given only the narrowest of scopes to work with – we can't help but try to rely on it and, subsequently, catch only the hints of movement in its fading light. Quite appropriately, the only reason cast members were ever visible and identifiable as such were due to the beam falling directly on them, out of luck more than anything else. It is a brave gamble to give us the seeming ability to cast out the dark, a major element in the attraction, but it only backfires on us as we – in vain – search the upcoming corridor for a threat, focusing our attention on one small spot, leaving everywhere but the smallest patch all the more vulnerable.
The girl. Not mentioned until now is the recurring entity that seems to almost lead us through the attraction – a wonderfully disheveled (think a miniature Sadako) puppet of a little girl that puts its all-too-frightening head around corners, moves just as we catch sight of it, calls to us from the darkness (another great job by the cast who manage to imitate a child's voice rather well) and, in a moment that can freeze us in cold dread, eventually works her way just steps behind us. She shows herself fleetingly several times but, make no mistake, it is not an awkward and obvious guide but instead stops us in our tracks with each and every appearance.
Improvements are hard to find; one could toy with wishing the attraction were even longer so as to further lap up the experience but, in truth, it is with extreme relief that we escape on the other side. Perhaps, having the School be better posted and advertised would be good but only because it deserves are more prominent place and more attention that it seemed to have – though this visit took place early in a weekday. It is worth mentioning, however, that the subject matter is very delicate even for a scare attraction and would likely not be tolerated in the UK; this is a school where children, not even young adults, have taken their lives en masse. For this reason, it is understandable that many would rather not visit or may even oppose the attraction.
Admission is 800JPY to this permanent obake yashiki and the attraction took around 10 minutes to complete – though you may, too, find yourself losing track of time whilst inside, another testament to its ability to draw guests into its world. As previously mentioned, Japanese and English speakers will find it easy to understand everything in the Haunted School and the cast appear to customise on the fly for those who may not understand the country's mother tongue. After taking some time to calm down and add to the School's recommendations pinned on its wall, it became obvious that this is a highlight for anyone who visits Tokyo. It, along with the many other attractions and things to see on Odaiba, makes it well worth the visit from anyone in the Kanto region and able to attend. A true textbook in atmospheric Japanese horror and a jewel in the crown of scare attractions.
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Links to our other Japanese reviews
You Review
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Myself and a friend attempted the Daiba Haunted School attraction about six years ago whilst we're on holiday. There were a few additional elements during our visit that made for a wonderfully terrifying experience and were not mentioned in the review here.
The first was that we had to sign our names before entering, which we assumed was for some health and safety thing, however, once we had entered the "school" we began to hear moans and cries only to realise they were calling out our names.
The second was also a comment made before entering from the gentlemen explaining our goal and some dos and donts. He told us we MUST keep moving, that we couldn't stop and that if we couldn't go on and wanted out we had to call out a specific phrase and we'd be lead out.
Of course we keep stopping - too scared to go down hallways with that terrifying puppet lying ahead and to open sliding doors that immediately slam back closed - and each time we stop, this horrifying siren sounds, getting louder and louder, with thuds and screams on the walls around us getting more intense which does nothing to get us moving.
We eventually got to a room with a bunch of hanging either sacks or children (my mind fails me a bit here) but whatever it was was too much and I couldn't go on. So my friend and I start calling out, not remembering the phrase in our sheer terror and the sirens and moaning and banging growing louder and more violent. We call out every phrase we can think of in English and broken Japanese, genuinely terrified and thinking we'd never be able to get out, only get an even bigger fright when the gentleman from the beginning pops out of nowhere to lead us back out.
I was on edge for the rest of the day in Odaiba, actually dropping to the ground when a car horn sounded behind me whilst walking to the train station. One of the best and worst experiences of my life, would absolutely recommend!
Scary - It's definitely intense walking inside. But it seems like when I went there some of the effects that are mentioned in the review such as the flashlight and scares are not present. It's just really dark inside and a lot of loud sound effects. I would really love to visit again if those effects came back.
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