The Crying Room

Seven years ago, I was teaching English in Japan. The school where I taught was an older building, about eighty years old. It was a smaller school with only two-hundred students. It had ten classrooms an office and a small cafeteria that also served as a gym. There was another classroom(room four)that was used as a storage room. It was a nice school and served its purpose for the village town.

My first week there was uneventful but on my second week, I was there late one-night prepping assignments for the next day. There was only the janitor and me in the building. As I was making copies in the office, I heard what sounded like sobbing. I called out to the janitor, but got no answer(he spoke English). Maybe a student got locked in, I thought. I decided to go check it out and when I stepped into the hallway, I noticed that the crying seemed to be getting louder and was coming from the direction of room four.

“Hello?” I called out, but nobody answered. I slowly approached room four and opened the door. Just as I opened it, the crying stopped. I reached for the light switch and turned it on, I quickly scanned the room and realized it was empty. I was badly shaken at this point, so I quickly gathered my things and ran out of the school, not even telling the janitor I was leaving.

The crying continued throughout my yearlong tenure. Eventually, I grew immune to the disembodied cries. But on my last week teaching, something changed. I was there late one-night and I had to use the ladies room. After I was done using the toilet, I opened the stall door and was startled to see a young Japanese woman standing there with her face to the mirror. I called out to her, but got no response. I decided to look into the mirror to see if I recognized her and what I saw still haunts me to this day…When I looked into the mirror, I saw that the woman had no face. I quickly ran out of the bathroom screaming.

A year later, I was talking to another English teacher from the school. Somehow we got on the subject of ghosts, then I told her about my experience. Then, she told me a story: About fifteen years ago, there was a young female teacher who fell in love with a male teacher. He was married and had no intentions of leaving his wife. Distraught, the young teacher locked herself in room four and hung herself. So the story goes, even in death, the young teacher still cries for the man she never had…