Previously: The Dullahan.
Type: UL (Unexplained Location); possible UB (Unknowable Building).
Period/location of origin: Subject’s precise period of origin is unknown. It is known that subject — initially introduced to the public as the topic of a 2ch thread titled “Do you want a house in Kita-ku, Kobe City?” (in the original Japanese, “神戸市北区の一軒家いらないか？”) posted on Feb. 4, 2009 — was remodeled circa 1989, and that as of 2014, it was at least 40 years old. However, its original date of construction has not been reported. Given what is known of subject’s timeline, it may have been constructed at least in the early- to mid-1970s, if not earlier.
As the 2009 2ch thread regarding subject suggests, subject’s location of origin is Kita-ku in Kobe, the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture in the Kansai region on Japan’s largest island, Honshū.
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Appearance: Subject, as its name might suggest, appears to be a house in Kita-ku, or Kita Ward — one of the nine wards that make up Kobe City. However, not much is known about subject’s physical appearance, as reports do not elaborate overly much on it.
It is not known, for example, whether the architectural style is Japanese or Western, or whether it is traditional or modern.
It is not known how many bedrooms or bathrooms there are, although it has been described by at least one resident as “spacious,” as well as “beautiful” and “clean.”
It is not known how many floors the house has.
What is known is as follows:
The house does not have a garage or dedicated parking area, although its garden and yard are spacious; it has been suggested that some of this space could be used for vehicle parking.
The garden and yard are part gravel, part earth.
The house is surrounded by a forested, mountainous area.
There is a well in the backyard. The well is enclosed by a fence.
Residents are not to touch the well.
Residents should also be aware of their neighbor. Their neighbor “comes down from the mountain at night.”
Their neighbor is not human.
Modus operandi: Subject passes down from resident to resident — that is, from target to target — always in the same manner: The current resident offers the house at no cost, as long as the next resident is willing to abide by three conditions:
- One, they must accept the house as it is;
- Two, they must not ever be away from the house for more than three days in a row;
- And three, they must live in the house until they die.
If a potential resident agrees to these conditions, and the current resident accepts this potential resident, then ownership of subject passes from the now-previous resident to the next, and thus subject trades hands from one target to the next.
An exception does seem to exist regarding the third condition: If targets are able to pass on ownership of subject in the same manner in which they received it, they may freely vacate the property — that is, they need not stay in until they die. In this way, subject functions similarly to a curse: It may be avoided either by abiding by its terms, or by passing it onto someone else.
Regarding the second condition: It is not known precisely what happens, should the target in residence leave the house, while still in ownership of it, for more than three days in a row. The few extant reports from targets residing in the house have said only that they can’t leave.
An additional requirement not listed in the initial set of three conditions is made of targets who take up residence within the house: The well in the woods behind the house is not to be disturbed.
It is not known why the well is not to be disturbed, although theories abound (see: Additional notes) — only that it must be left alone.
Targets who have lived inside the house have reported that “something comes down from the mountains at night.” This “something” has been described as “scary and sad,” but no other information about the “something” has been reported — only that the target who made this initial description “[doesn’t] want to see it again.”
A further target who lived inside the house did at one point describe a “headless, armless mass of flesh wandering around making a child-like noise” that regularly appeared in the garden at night. Later, this entity was referred by others as a “chunk of flesh” or “chunk of meat.” The resident experiencing this entity’s presence reported that the entity did not cause them any direct physical harm; they did, however state that they experienced sleeplessness due to, in the parlance, being creeped out so much by the entity.
It is not known whether this entity is the “something” that comes down from the mountains, or whether it is something different.
Precisely why residents must agree to all of the terms required to live inside the house, or what the entity or entities surrounding it are, remains unknown.
One possible theory: There must always be someone in residence in order to keep the entities at bay.
However, this idea currently remains only a theory. Further research is required.
Containment: If the theory proposed in the modus operandi section is correct, then the target — the resident — is the containment method.
If not, containment remains unknown.
Additional notes: Virtually all of what is known of subject has been gleaned from posts on the Japanese message board system 2ch (now 5ch).
These posts date back to 2009: On Feb. 4 of that year, an anonymous poster published a post within a “Freebies” thread titled, simply, “Do you want a house in Kita-ku, Kobe City?”
The rest of the message was similarly to the point, stating only that the poster had three conditions, a list of the conditions (see: Modus operandi), and the note that, “If you can abide by these three points, I will give you the land.”
In further comments, the original poster included the details regarding the house’s date of renovation (20 years prior to the post itself, putting the remodel at around 1989), the well, the lack of garage, the size of the garden, and — crucially — the “something” that “comes down from the mountains at night.” They stated that the well belonged to their grandparents, and for that reason, they requested that whoever took them up on the offer to take over residence of the house to leave the well alone.
Of the “something,” they wrote, “It’s so scary and sad. I don’t want to see it again.”
Beyond the “something,” they said there were “no incidents or downsides” to their proposal.
On July 31, 2012 — more than three years later — the resident of the house at the time created a new thread. This resident was a new resident; they had, according to their post, “recently moved” into it, and that although it was “free” and “spacious,” it was also “scary.” It was “scary,” they wrote, because “at night, something strange comes from the mountain.” However, they also said they seemed to be stuck; wrote the poster, “But the conditions are what they are, so I guess I’ll have to live there after all.”
It is not known who was occupying the house between the 2009 post and the 2012 post — whether the original resident stayed there; whether there were other residents; etc.
Roughly a year later, on June 23, 2013, a new post regarding subject appeared — not on 2ch this time, but on Oshiete!goo (教えてgoo), a community-driven Quora- or Yahoo! Answers-like site geared towards answering user questions about virtually any topic. The user who posted this thread appears to be a different user than the poster of the 2012 2ch thread, as they wrote, they had just moved into the house that month. This poster provided the details of the entity described as “a headless, armless mass of flesh wandering around making a child-like noise.”
As the house’s precise location and address were kept vague both in the original 2009 post and the two subsequent ones, efforts were made by the online community in 2014 to identify where the house actually was. Early in 2014, it was theorized that the mountain nearby was Mount Chigogabaka (稚児ヶ墓山) in the Tanjō mountain range (丹生山系), as well as that the house was located in Tanigami. Plans were attempted to gather together an expedition to the assumed location of the house departing on Feb. 9, 2014, although these plans never came to fruition.
One user did make an independent expedition to a house and posted some photographs of it in the thread on Jan. 12, 2014, but it is believed this house was not the house.
Later that year — in April of 2014 — attempts were made again to identify the precise location of the house in Kita-ku; these attempts, too, however, came up short. Although numerous possibilities were posted via screenshots from Google Street View, none of these locations fit precisely what was known about subject and its geography.
Another user did mount a solo expedition to one possible location and posted photographs of what they discovered on April 6; additionally, others visited nearby temples and shrines, although again, none of these expeditions turned up anything of worth.
One other user recalled visiting family in the area as a child, and described what their family members’ home looked like; however, it is not clear whether this home either was subject, or resembled subject, or indeed was at all related to subject or not.
Nothing further came of the 2ch threads at this time, although in 2022, an episode of the television program What’s This? Mysteries Of The World (世界の何だコレ！？ミステリー) featured a segment centered around a house much like the house in Kita-ku described in the original 2ch thread. This segment was said to have been based on a thread posted in September of 2021.
Commenters in each of the threads regarding subject between the years of 2009 and 2014 offered many theories about what they though the “something” that came down from the mountains was, why the well was not to be touched, and whether the “something” and the well were related at all.
Some, for instance, suggested that the original poster of the 2009 thread had killed their grandparents and thrown their remains in the well, thus explaining why subsequent residents of the house were not to touch the well.
Others theorized that a child had died — possibly by their own parent’s hand — and been buried somewhere on the property, in the woods, or in the mountains. The well, some subscribers to this theory thought, might have contained the parent’s remains — the parent having thrown themself down it out of guilt.
Whether disturbing the well resulted in the appearance of the entity is unknown, although this is certainly one possibility.
However, although there are many theories, none of them have been proven, and subject’s location has never been satisfactorily identified.
But there is also this: On April 15, 2014, a post appeared on 2ch reading as follows (in translation):
“I’m sorry!!!
I’m sorry!!! I’m the one who posted the original story on the Okayama bulletin board!!
I live in a nearby residential area called Tsukushigaoka, and I’m worried that if the story spreads, it might cause trouble for the neighbors.
This is obviously fiction!
I’m so sorry!!
I made it seem like a ghost story with a punchline like ‘Don’t open the well.’
I didn’t expect people to read so much into it, but that area is a normal, quiet town, so of course there aren’t any ghosts!
If any of the neighbors were offended by this story, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize, I am truly sorry…”
This suggests two possibilities: One, that subject does not actually exist.
Or two, that subject is not a house at all, but rather, the 2ch thread about the house.
Further research is required.
Recommendation: Do you want a house in Kita-ku, Kobe City?
No, you don’t.
Trust me.
You don’t.
Resources:
Do you want a house in Kita-ku, Kobe City? (In Japanese.)
Do you want a house in Kita-ku, Kobe City? [Hall of Fame]. (In Japanese.)
Do you want a house in Kita-ku, Kobe City? The truth is revealed. (In Japanese.)
I’m having trouble with a ghost? at Oshiete!goo. (In Japanese.)
I’m thinking of going to a certain place in Kita-ku, Kobe on February 9th. (In Japanese.)
What’s This? Mysteries Of The World episode #181. (In Japanese.)
***
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[Photos via Mass Ave 975 (1, 2), Tak1701d/Wikimedia Commons, available under a CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons license.]
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