【Japanese Horror】The Hundred Horror Tales — Episode 25: The Fifth Footprint | Haunted Kaidan Tales
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Episode 25 – “After the Welcoming Fire| Haunted Kaidan Tales” (Full Text)
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Episode 25 — The Fifth Footprint
The remaining candle flames swayed softly.
Only the place where one had been extinguished
looked slightly darker than the rest.
For a moment,
no one moved.
Someone seemed to draw in a quiet breath,
but no one could tell who it was.
Aoi sat hugging her knees in silence.
Sōma glanced once toward the window,
then quietly returned his gaze to the room.
Seikichi said nothing.
He simply watched the candlelight flicker.
The room remained still.
Too still.
And perhaps because the silence lingered a little too long,
Shūji finally spoke.
“…So it’s not about whether you welcome it,” ShūjiI said.
“It’s about whether you answer.”
Shūji was talking about the story we had just heard.
“Yeah…
I guess that makes sense.”
Miwa glanced toward me.
Shūji shrugged lightly.
“Something like that happened to me once.”
Aoi’s fingers tightened slightly around her knees.
No one laughed.
No one tried to lighten the mood.
Shūji kept my eyes on the candle flame as I continued.
“It was years ago.
Back when I used to go camping with some younger guys.”
The mountain wasn’t far from here.
About an hour’s drive.
Nothing special, really.
During the day,
people came hiking.
Local kids even played around the trails.
But at night…
It changed.
The moment the sun went down,
the sounds started disappearing.
You could still hear insects.
You could still hear the wind.
But somehow…
the feeling of people being there
just vanished.
That night should have been normal.
We set up the tents,
lit a campfire,
sat around eating and talking.
Just a regular camping trip.
Three younger guys had come with me.
They were fooling around with flashlights,
talking about doing a little test of courage in the woods.
I was just watching them,
laughing at the whole thing.
Then suddenly…
one of them went quiet.
“…Who’s that?”
His voice wasn’t joking anymore.
Beyond the campfire.
At the edge of the forest where the light couldn’t quite reach.
He said someone was standing there.
At first,
I thought he was messing with us.
“There’s nobody there,” I said,
squinting into the darkness myself.
I couldn’t see anything.
But then—
something in the dark moved.
Slowly…
an arm lifted.
Right at the edge of the firelight—
just barely visible.
And it was clear.
Someone was waving.
Beckoning.
Who it was…
I still don’t know.
At first,
I thought it was just a mistake.
Campfire flames move.
Smoke drifts.
And everything looks different in the dark.
Seeing a shadow move
wouldn’t be strange at all.
“Hey, cut it out.”
One of the younger guys laughed,
trying to sound tough.
But no one laughed out loud.
The loud, joking mood from earlier
had suddenly grown thin.
I stood up
and picked up my flashlight.
“Alright…
let’s go check it out.”
I meant to say it casually.
For a second,
someone tried to stop me.
But another guy spoke first.
“No…
I swear it was looking at us.”
Something about the way he said it
caught my attention.
Looking at us.
Which meant—
from over there,
it could see us too.
With the fire behind us,
we walked toward the edge of the forest.
Dry leaves crunched loudly beneath our feet.
The insects we’d been hearing earlier
now sounded farther away.
The forest was darker
than I expected.
Even when I pointed the light ahead,
the tree trunks and branches
just swallowed it.
The beam never reached very far.
“…Nobody there.”
That’s what I said.
And it was true.
There was no one standing there.
But then—
one of the guys muttered quietly.
“Right there…
a second ago.”
He pointed.
Between two trees.
That space—
for some reason—
looked darker than the rest.
Just darkness.
But somehow…
too defined
to be just shadow.
Wide enough
for a person to stand.
The moment I shined the light at it—
it disappeared.
Or at least,
it looked like it did.
“Should we go?”
Someone asked.
His voice was quieter now.
I thought about it for a moment.
Honestly,
we could’ve just gone back.
Called it a trick of the light
and left it at that.
But then—
I saw it again.
This time
deeper in the woods.
Beyond the trees.
Something pale
floating in the dark.
Not a face.
Not clothes.
Just—
a hand.
Only the fingertips moved.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
Beckoning.
Calling us closer.
The warmth of the fire was still on my back,
but my spine went cold.
And in that moment,
I made the worst assumption possible.
What if it was a person…
and they needed help?
The thought crossed my mind—
and right then—
“Hey!”
One of the younger guys shouted
into the darkness.
He was faster than I was.
Before I could stop him.
His voice disappeared
into the forest.
No answer came back.
But then—
the hand in the darkness
suddenly
stopped moving.
The hand in the darkness
suddenly stopped.
Just a moment ago
it had been swaying slowly.
For an instant,
the forest went silent.
The wind.
The insects.
It was as if everything had paused.
“…It stopped, didn’t it?”
One of the younger guys whispered.
His voice was shaking.
I didn’t answer.
Instead,
I tightened my grip on the flashlight.
It hadn’t stopped.
It had stopped itself.
That was the feeling I had.
It reacted to the voice.
It answered the call.
Even if we thought
we were the ones calling out—
for it,
it was already something else.
The moment I took
a single step forward—
something in the darkness
moved.
Softly.
It stepped back.
Not running away.
Leading.
Creating just a little more distance.
“W–wait… hold on.”
One of the guys said from behind me.
But my feet didn’t stop.
Half a step.
Another step.
Into the forest.
The firelight behind my back
faded away.
Darkness pressed in from the front.
The hand I had seen earlier
was gone.
But the presence—
that was still there.
That pressure you feel
when someone is standing nearby.
“…Hey!”
This time
I was the one who called out.
It happened before I could stop myself.
I had said it.
I had given it
something to answer.
And right then—
something in the darkness
felt like it smiled.
No sound.
No voice.
Just that feeling.
The next moment—
to the right,
behind a tree—
something pale appeared again.
Closer.
Much closer than before.
One of the younger guys
gasped.
“There…!”
His voice melted into the forest.
Now the white hand
was clearly visible.
The fingers were bent.
No—
they were twisted.
The joints bent
the wrong way.
And still,
slowly…
very slowly…
it beckoned.
Toward us.
Something inside my chest
started screaming.
That thing
wasn’t asking for help.
It was calling us.
Not
“come here.”
But—
“I’m coming there.”
One of the younger guys
suddenly stepped forward.
“It’s a person!
Look!”
That single step
was the worst possible thing.
The white hand
slipped quietly
back into the darkness.
And the next moment—
a voice came from deep within the forest.
“…Hey!”
My voice.
The same tone.
The same rhythm.
The same way I had called.
All three of the younger guys
turned and looked at me.
But I hadn’t said anything.
From the darkness—
again.
“…Hey.”
This time,
a little closer.
From deep in the darkness,
my voice came back.
“…Hey.”
One of the younger guys almost dropped his flashlight.
“W–was that…”
No one finished the sentence.
For a moment,
we waited.
Maybe it would call again.
But the forest
fell silent.
The presence we had felt moments before
faded away.
Instead,
insects began chirping somewhere far away.
As if
nothing had happened.
“…Let’s go back.”
That’s what I said.
There was no reason to check anymore.
We had already confirmed it.
There was no person
in those woods.
What was there
was something
that answered voices.
When the glow of the campfire finally came back into view,
I felt my breathing settle again.
The tents were still there.
The gear was untouched.
Nothing had changed.
Or at least,
that’s what it looked like.
But then—
in front of the fire,
there were footprints.
They hadn’t been there before.
Not four.
Five.
Neatly arranged
in a circle around the fire.
And one of them
was facing the forest.
As if
it had been waiting
for us to come back.
When we saw the fifth footprint,
no one said a word.
It didn’t feel like a joke.
It didn’t feel like someone playing a prank.
The ground was soft.
If you stepped on it,
the mark stayed clearly.
And those footprints…
they came straight out of the forest
all the way to the campfire.
There were no prints
going back.
We looked at each other.
The numbers still matched.
No one was missing.
But somehow,
there was one more.
That night,
none of us went near the woods again.
We kept the fire burning
and waited for morning.
Nothing happened during the night.
No voice.
No hand.
Nothing appeared again.
But in the morning—
the footprints
were gone.
Not blown away by wind.
Not trampled over.
The ground there
was simply flat,
as if nothing had ever been there.
Later on,
I tried looking into old stories around the area.
No accidents.
No missing people.
Nothing unusual.
So in the end,
I still don’t know why it happened.
But I’ve always had this feeling.
The moment we called out that night—
something started.
We didn’t mean to call it.
We didn’t mean to welcome anything.
But—
we answered.
And maybe that alone
gave it a reason
to come.
“…Well,
that’s the end of my story.”
Shūji said quietly,
looking at the candle in front of him.
The flame trembled,
thin and fragile.
He took a breath,
and gently blew.
Fuh.
The flame went out.
At that instant,
the room sank into darkness.
There was no light left.
No one could see anyone’s face.
Only the afterimage of the flame
lingered behind their eyelids.
Then—
knock.
A small sound
tapped against the window.
Maybe it was the wind.
No one moved.
Someone’s breath caught in the darkness.
Then again.
knock.
This time,
a little closer.
In the dark,
someone slowly stood up.
It was Sōma.
No footsteps.
But the air shifted.
He took a step
toward the window.
And stopped there,
without saying a word.
Outside
was completely black.
But then—
as if something outside
were confirming it—
one more time.
knock.
Something
tapped on the window.
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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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