Spirited away! Spine-tingling footage appears to show mysterious female GHOST following a man into a taxi
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Male passenger strides towards a white cab at a Japanese taxi rank
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But a black shape appears to follow him, like a woman in a black hood
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It glides behind the man into the taxi, the door seemingly shutting on it
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Ghost passengers have been reported by drivers since the 2011 tsunami
By HARRIET MALLINSON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 04:31 EST, 24 July 2016 | UPDATED: 04:31 EST, 24 July 2016
Getting a taxi alone at night just got a lot creepier.
Chilling footage appears to show a ‘spirit’ gliding into a cab after a male passenger in a quiet Japanese town.
The man can be seen striding up to a taxi rank as a white car rolls in.
But as he walks towards the cab a black shape can be seen moving behind him, following him to the vehicle.
As it heads towards the open door it seems to acquire more substance, looking more like a woman in a long robe and a dark hood – yet unmistakably still not human.
It slides along the floor closer to the car as the man clambers in and almost appears to get in after him before the door closes – seemingly sweeping right through the mysterious figure as it shuts.
The taxi drives off as normal and the taxi rank is left deserted.
While many netizens are fascinated with the potentially supernatural apparition others see the funnier side, joking that perhaps the ghost was tired and wanted to sit down or was in love with the man.
But others simply see the spirit as a clever camera trick – the result of careful editing.
However, ghost passenger sightings are not an entirely rare phenomenon in Japan.
Taxi drivers working in one of the areas worst affected by the 2011 earthquake disaster have reported picking up ‘ghost customers,’ it was revealed in January of this year.
Cab drivers in Ishinomaki, where 6,000 people died when a tsunami hit the town after an earthquake, said they have taken fares from people who have then vanished during the ride.
There have been a number of reports of survivors of the March 2011 disaster seeing ‘ghosts’, a known side effect of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 killed more than 19,000 people.
Ishinomaki was hit by a 30ft tsunami wave which wiped out much of the port city, with 29,000 people losing their homes. Some 3,100 people were confirmed dead, but 2,770 have never been found.
A number of taxi drivers working in the now-rebuilt city, which has a population of 145,800, claimed to have had ghosts in their cars.
The drivers have been interviewed as part of a study at Tohoku Gakuin University, Sendai, which has found that all drivers were convinced they were picking up genuine people.
One driver explained how he had picked up a woman who wished to go from Ishinomaki Station to the Minamihama district, The Telegraph reported.
When he told her the area had been wiped out in the disaster, he claims the woman said: ‘Have I died?’
When he turned to speak to her, there was no one in the back seat, according to the paper.
