【Japanese Horror】The Hundred Horror Tales — Episode 5: She Waits in the Water | Haunted Kaidan Tales
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Episode 05 – “She Waits in the Water| Haunted Kaidan Tales” (Full Text)
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The Hundred Horror Tales — Episode 5: She Waits in the Water
── Flick… One of the candles wavered, its flame swaying lightly.
“Well then… guess it’s my turn.”
Shūji leaned forward with a small cough.
His usual joking tone was subdued, his expression distant, as if recalling something far away.
“Summer, huh? Got plenty of memories there.
But for me… nothing tops that night by the stream.”
The air in the room grew still.
“It wasn’t just any brook. This was a stream deep in the mountains, on the edge of the village.
And ever since I can remember, people warned us— don’t go there at night.
Why? Nobody could ever say for sure. Just scraps of talk—
that a woman’s ghost appeared, or a figure in a white kimono was seen standing there.”
“You always wanted to go to places like that, didn’t you, Shū-chan.”
Miwa sighed in exasperation, and Shūji shrugged with a grin.
“Come on, hearing stuff like that just makes you wanna check it out even more, right?
Back then, we were all punks who thought we were fearless.
At the end of our summer break in middle school, we got hyped up—
‘let’s do one last big thing’—and decided to test our courage at that stream.”
“You really were idiots…” Miwa muttered with a sigh.
“Can’t argue with that.
It was me, Kazuya, Tatsuya, and our leader Ryu.
The four of us, armed with flashlights and a camera, headed into the mountains at night.”
Sōma narrowed his eyes, listening quietly.
Beside him, Aoi shivered and drew her shoulders in.
“At first, it was all just adventure talk.
‘If we see something, we’ll snap a photo.’
‘If it shows up on video, we’ll send it to some magazine.’
We were laughing like idiots the whole way.”
Shūji’s voice dropped a little lower.
“But that night—
I’ve never been able to forget it.
Because it wasn’t the kind of dare you could laugh off afterwards.”
From the very entrance of the trail, the air already felt different.
No wind blew, yet the trees rustled, and the fallen leaves at our feet whispered and shifted.
Even the insects had gone silent, as if only this place belonged to another season altogether.
“…Are we really doing this?”
That was Tatsuya. His voice trembled a little, but nobody stopped.
Stopping would mean being branded a coward.
That was always how we were.
Every dare, every late-night adventure—it was always about proving who could keep their nerve the longest.
We were bound by nothing more than stupid pride… and that night, all four of us would pay for it.
We’d brought along two flashlights, a single disposable camera, and an old Handycam Tatsuya had borrowed from his older brother.
Not much gear, really—but enough to make us cocky, thinking, “If we capture proof, we’ll be legends.”
“If we catch something, we’ll send it to one of those occult magazines,”
Kazuya joked.
“Yeah, they have spirit-photo contests, right? Prize money’s like ten thousand yen…”
“It ain’t about the money,” Ryu scoffed, striding ahead as usual.
“If we actually catch something real, we’ll go down in history.”
The path started gentle but quickly turned slick with mud.
The night dew made it slippery, and one wrong step on the stones hidden under the leaves would send you tumbling.
“Hey—shine the light over here! Quit messin’ around, damn it!”
Tatsuya’s voice wavered near tears. I glanced at him, then stopped.
…The air had changed.
The earthy, grassy smell of the mountain—the natural scent that had been with us all along—vanished.
In its place came a heavy, moldy stench, like damp cloth pressed against your nose.
That was when I knew: the stream was close.
“…We’re here,” Ryu muttered.
The trees opened up, revealing a narrow stream.
The moonlight should have reached it, yet the water looked sunken in shadow—
like a bottomless pool cut out of the earth.
For a while, none of us moved.
Every instinct told us not to go any further.
But no one wanted to be the first to say it.
“…Let’s just take a shot,” Kazuya finally said.
He lifted the disposable camera and snapped one photo.
That sharp click seemed to break the stillness.
“Better roll some video too. Just in case.”
Tatsuya pressed record, the red light flickering on.
And at that exact moment—
“…Heeey.”
A voice drifted from farther upstream.
We froze.
A woman’s voice. Clear as day.
“You heard that… didn’t you?” I whispered.
No one answered.
But their faces said it all—we’d all heard the same thing.
Though no wind blew, the trees rattled.
The moon slid behind a cloud, and our flashlights suddenly felt pitiful.
“…Heeey.”
Again.
Closer this time.
“Who’s there?!” Ryu shouted into the dark.
But no reply came. Only the sound of water—strangely heavy, dragging.
“…The stream sounds wrong,” Kazuya muttered.
And he was right. The flow wasn’t steady anymore.
Instead, there was a wet, slithering undertone, as if something was crawling through it.
Tatsuya slowly adjusted the zoom. And then—
“What… the hell is that?!”
On the camera’s tiny screen appeared a pale figure.
A woman in white.
Her face was hidden, hair wet and hanging.
Her body stood perfectly still.
And her legs—sank beneath the surface, as though she weren’t standing at all, but floating.
“…Run!!”
Ryu’s shout shattered the paralysis, and we bolted.
No one dared look back.
Branches tore at our clothes, mud sucked at our feet, but we didn’t care.
We just ran, and ran, until the path widened and we could breathe again.
“Safe…?” I gasped, glancing behind.
That’s when Kazuya screamed.
“He’s gone!”
“Tatsuya’s gone!!”
Kazuya’s scream made Ryu and me spin around.
Only the three of us were there.
“You’re kidding me—he was right behind us!”
“Maybe he’s hiding, trying to scare us—”
But no one was laughing.
Our breaths were ragged, and the memory of that unnatural silence clung to us, sharper than anything else.
“…Do we go back?”
Ryu’s question hung in the air. We glanced at each other.
“N-no way. I’m not going back there…!”
Kazuya shook his head violently.
Truth was, I didn’t want to either. But we couldn’t just leave him behind.
So the three of us turned our flashlights and retraced our steps toward the stream.
And then—
“…Wait. Was the path… like this before?”
Something was wrong.
The mud was deeper than before.
No—that wasn’t all. The footprints were gone.
Our four sets of tracks, wiped clean halfway down the trail.
“…This is it, right?”
Back at the stream, none of us spoke.
No one was there. That was the only certainty.
No—
“…This is Tatsuya’s, isn’t it?”
Kazuya picked something up.
The Handycam.
Caked with mud, dripping with water.
He pressed the switch. A faint red light blinked, and the video began to play.
“…No way…”
On the screen, the white figure Tatsuya had been filming turned.
Through the strands of wet hair, a face peeked out—
Eyes and mouth, nothing but black pits.
Like holes torn into its head.
“What… is that…?”
The image dissolved into static.
Then—crack!—a sharp snapping sound split the silence.
That was all it took. We bolted.
None of us looked back.
We didn’t stop running until we were halfway down the mountain—
and Tatsuya was still gone.
“…After that, we told the police. We told the adults, too.”
Shūji’s voice rang strangely quiet.
“But in the end, they said Tatsuya had just… come home.
Come morning, he was found collapsed in the entryway, caked in mud.
He didn’t remember a thing.
Not the stream. Not being with us. Nothing at all.”
Miwa drew in a sharp breath.
“What about the footage?” Sōma asked softly.
“…All gone. The tape, the disposable photos—nothing was left.
Except for one picture.
A shot of the stream, empty… except in the far back, a faint, blurred figure.
A white shadow, standing with its back to us. A woman.”
Silence weighed heavy on the room.
Shūji slowly rose and leaned toward the candle.
“Since then, no one’s gone near that stream. …Not me, either.”
With that, he exhaled.
── Fwoosh.
The flame vanished without a sound.
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The Hundred Horror Tales is an original Japanese horror anthology inspired by the tradition of Hyaku Monogatari.
Five storytellers gather around flickering candles to share chilling tales—urban legends, ghost stories, folklore, daily fears, and real encounters.
Can you endure until the last flame goes out?
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• Twitter: @KaidanTales
• YouTube: @HK_Tales
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