The Suicide Forest – An Interview That Shouldn’t Exist
Setting: A dense, unsettling silence permeates the air. The Interviewer stands at the edge of Aokigahara, Japan’s infamous Suicide Forest, where the trees seem to swallow sound, and the wind carries whispers that may not belong to the living. Across from them stands Dr. Kuroda, a researcher who has spent years studying the psychological and unexplained phenomena of the forest.
The Interviewer adjusts their recorder, the red light blinking. A mistake, perhaps, to step in too deep.
Renji: Dr. Kuroda, people call Aokigahara the most haunted place in Japan. Is this just urban legend, or is there something more?
Dr. Kuroda: You step into this forest, and you feel it immediately. It is not just legend. It is weighted. Some places carry memory—this one absorbs.
Renji : Absorbs? What do you mean by that?
Dr. Kuroda: The trees here don’t just block out sound. They consume it. You will notice it—after just a few steps, the world feels thinner, like something is pressing in, unseen but aware.
A History Drenched in Death
Renji: People say this place has been associated with death for centuries. What’s the truth?
Dr. Kuroda: There is ubasute, the ancient practice where the elderly were left to die in remote places. Some say this forest was used for that, but we lack hard evidence. However, even before modern suicides, Aokigahara was known as a place of spirits. A place the living were meant to avoid.
Renji: And now it has become Japan’s most notorious suicide site.
Dr. Kuroda: Yes. People come here to disappear—sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally before they even die.
The Magnetic Field of the Dead
Renji: I’ve heard reports that compasses don’t work here, that people get lost even when they mark their path. Why is that?
Dr. Kuroda: The ground beneath us is hardened lava from Mount Fuji. It has magnetic anomalies that interfere with navigation.
Renji: So the forest itself disorients people?
Dr. Kuroda: Not just physically. Mentally. Something about this place makes people hesitate, doubt their direction, or feel drawn in deeper. Many who are found deceased were not lost at all—they just stopped walking.
Aokigahara’s Psychological Grip
Renji : Are we talking about a supernatural force or something more psychological?
Dr. Kuroda: Why separate them? The mind is not separate from its environment. Studies show that certain places affect brainwaves, alter emotional states. Aokigahara does this.
The silence isn’t empty—it’s pressurized.
The trees block signals, both electronic and cognitive.
Some people describe an overwhelming pull—not to leave, but to stay.
Renji A pull? You mean, the forest wants them to stay?
Dr. Kuroda:[pauses, unreadable expression] Not the forest. Something within it.
The Yūrei: Are the Dead Still Here?
Renji : The idea of yūrei—Japanese spirits that remain trapped due to unfinished business—is heavily associated with this place. Have you encountered anything… unusual?
Dr. Kuroda: Unusual is a soft word for it. People report:
Whispers with no source.
Shadows moving where there should be none.
A sensation of being watched—then followed.
Renji : Are these just manifestations of fear?
Dr. Kuroda: Not always. Multiple accounts describe seeing the same figures in different years, by different people. Specific locations of “presences” have been mapped based on reports.
Renji: Are these ghosts, or is the forest itself alive?
Dr. Kuroda: Who is to say they are different things?
The Suicide Pattern & the Question No One Asks
Renji People who enter often seem to follow a pattern. Is there something deeper at play?
Dr. Kuroda: Many who come here do not arrive in an impulsive state. They bring tents. They camp first.
Renji: They… wait?
Dr. Kuroda: Yes. They sit in the energy of this place. Some leave. Some don’t. The forest does not kill them. It lets them decide.
The Final Question: Aokigahara’s True Nature
Renji: If you had to define what Aokigahara is—not as a scientist, but as a human—what would you say?
Dr. Kuroda: It is a veil. A place where the boundary between thought and action, between the living and the dead, is thinner.
Renji : Is it just a place of tragedy? Or is it something… more?
Dr. Kuroda:[sips tea, looking toward the trees] Maybe it was always meant to be a threshold. The question is—which side are we standing on?
Renji :[pauses, feeling a strange pressure in their chest. Something unseen shifts in the distance. The recorder light flickers, but the battery is full. A whisper—so faint it could be the wind. Or something else.]
Dr. Kuroda:[softly] We should go now.
Renji :[nods, but cannot shake the feeling that something is following.]
