【Japanese Horror】The Hundred Horror Tales — Episode 27: The Thread That Shouldn’t Have Existed | Haunted Kaidan Tales
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Episode 27 – “The Thread That Shouldn’t Have Existed| Haunted Kaidan Tales” (Full Text)
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Episode 27: The Thread That Shouldn’t Have Existed
The sound of the door closing lingered quietly in the tatami room.
Sakichi’s footsteps faded away.
A bit of humid summer night air slipped inside, making the four candle flames tremble.
No one spoke.
Sōma had been staring at the black wick of the candle that had gone out.
After a moment, he slowly lifted his gaze.
“…I’ll tell the next story.”
The flames swayed together.
“This happened last autumn.”
Late one night, I was browsing an online message board to pass the time.
It was the occult board.
The usual place—
threads about haunted locations, strange experiences, and the occasional prediction.
Among them, one thread was gaining unusual momentum.
The title was:
“Write the Future You Can See.”
The idea was simple.
You just posted a future you thought you could “see.”
Tomorrow’s weather.
A delayed train.
An accident.
Anything.
At first it was nothing but jokes.
“I’ll forget my wallet tomorrow.”
“The guy next door is going to make noise again.”
Things like that.
But then a few of them started coming true.
The next day, someone would return and report that it had actually happened.
You could call it coincidence.
But considering the number of posts, the hit rate felt strangely high.
The thread exploded in popularity.
There were trolls, of course, but mixed in with them was an oddly serious atmosphere.
I read it with mild amusement.
It wasn’t prophecy.
Just probability playing tricks on people.
That was what I believed.
That night, however, one particular post caught my attention.
It was short.
Just a few lines.
But it listed a specific time and place.
More detailed than the others.
No one replied to it.
No jokes.
No reactions.
For a moment, the flow of the thread slowed.
I chuckled to myself.
There was no way something like that could come true.
Someone on the other side of the screen was simply making up a future.
And yet—
that thread refused to disappear.
It was picked up by aggregation sites.
The view count kept rising.
The momentum never slowed.
Even after two in the morning, new posts kept appearing.
I found myself unable to close the page.
The candle flame swayed quietly.
The thread didn’t slow down, even deep into the night.
Someone would write a future.
The next day, something similar would happen.
A report would appear.
Then someone else would post another prediction.
And somewhere, somehow, it would almost come true again.
Too many for pure coincidence.
But never a perfect match.
The time would be different.
The place slightly off.
The scale of the incident not quite the same.
That was what made it unsettling.
Sōma watched the screen with a faint smile.
It wasn’t prophecy.
Just probability leaning in strange directions.
That was what I wanted to believe.
Around that time, another thread caught my eye.
Someone was planning an exploration of an abandoned building in Tokyo.
A so-called “urban exploration post.”
The person wrote that they would go there that weekend.
They even mentioned the date.
They planned to post updates while they were there.
People in the thread were already talking about the place.
Someone said the third floor was dangerous.
Another mentioned broken windows.
The usual creepy rumors.
Watching that thread, I opened the future thread again.
Without thinking much about it, I typed something.
It wasn’t serious.
I was just going along with the mood.
— Maybe someone’s going to fall from the third floor.
I hit send.
The post disappeared into the stream of comments almost immediately.
No one reacted in any particular way.
It was buried like any other joke.
I didn’t think about it again.
A few days later,
a news report appeared.
Someone had fallen at an abandoned building in Tokyo.
From the third floor.
Not from a window, but from scaffolding outside the building.
The time was different.
The person survived.
I stared at the words on the screen.
You could say it was close.
But you could just as easily call it coincidence.
I returned to the thread.
My post was still there.
A few replies had appeared.
“Is it this one?”
“This is starting to feel creepy.”
“Probably just coincidence.”
The atmosphere had shifted—just slightly.
I gave a small, uneasy laugh.
It was just a game.
Even so,
I didn’t close the page.
And that night,
the thread kept growing.
Even after my post, the thread kept growing.
Some predictions seemed to come true.
Others clearly didn’t.
Every time a small accident happened somewhere, someone would post a link.
“Is this the one?”
“No, the time’s off.”
“Different place.”
That strange gray area—
neither right nor wrong—
kept the thread alive.
Late that night, a new post appeared.
It was short.
No extra words.
Just fragments.
A date.
A time.
A place.
And a few details.
— ○ Month ○ Day
— 2:00 PM
— ○○ Station platform
— red bag
— right-side tracks
— the arm won’t remain
For a few seconds, the thread stopped moving.
No one replied immediately.
Then the responses started appearing.
“This is too much.”
“That’s crossing the line.”
“Don’t write stuff like that, even as a joke.”
But the post wasn’t deleted.
It remained there.
I kept staring at the screen.
It was in bad taste.
That was what I told myself.
And yet,
I couldn’t look away.
A few days later,
a breaking news alert appeared that afternoon.
An accident at ○○ Station.
A woman carrying a red bag had fallen onto the tracks.
The right-side tracks.
Her right arm severed.
The time—
just after 2:00 PM.
I stopped breathing.
It matched.
Almost perfectly.
Detail after detail.
I opened the thread again.
It was already in chaos.
“This is real.”
“This is messed up.”
“Delete it.”
“Someone call the admin.”
The joking replies were gone.
Only fear remained.
The person who wrote that prediction said nothing.
No follow-up posts.
Just that single prediction,
still sitting there.
I didn’t close the page.
My fingertips felt slightly cold.
I told myself it was coincidence.
But somewhere in the back of my mind,
I understood.
This wasn’t like the others.
Those had been slightly off.
This one—
was too close.
The thread’s momentum exploded.
Fewer people posted predictions now.
Most of the posts were just people checking the news,
or expressing fear.
On the other side of the screen,
thousands of people were imagining the same accident.
And somehow,
the air in that thread felt heavy.
The commotion continued for a while.
More and more posts appeared asking for the prediction to be deleted.
Some people said they had reported it.
Even so, that prediction never disappeared.
There was no response from the administrator.
Even past midnight, the thread was still moving.
Then, at some point, the flow suddenly stopped.
No new posts appeared.
Even when I refreshed the page, nothing changed.
There should have been new replies.
But none of them showed up.
A few minutes later, a new thread appeared on another board.
“I can’t post in the future thread.”
Replies started piling up.
“Getting an error.”
“My post isn’t showing.”
“The one I wrote just disappeared.”
I tried it myself.
I typed a random sentence.
Pressed send.
The page refreshed.
But my post didn’t appear.
I refreshed again.
Nothing changed.
That single prediction—
the one about the accident—
remained as the last post.
As if the thread refused to move past it.
The night grew deeper.
The thread hadn’t been deleted.
There was no notice.
It simply stopped moving.
I kept pressing the refresh button.
The screen never changed.
Other threads on the board were still active.
The problem was only with that one thread.
Sometime after two in the morning,
I finally closed my computer.
That night, the thread still existed.
Frozen in place—
with that final prediction left behind.
The next morning, I opened the message board as usual.
From my bookmarks, I selected that thread.
The page displayed a short line.
“The specified thread does not exist.”
I checked the thread list.
The title was gone.
I searched for it.
No results.
There were no related threads either.
A thread that had grown that large had vanished without a trace.
It had probably been deleted by the administrator.
If I thought about it that way,
that was explanation enough.
A few days later,
I noticed a thread with the same title.
“Write the Future You Can See.”
Without thinking, I opened it.
But the content was nothing unusual.
Just casual conversation.
Nothing came true.
There was no strange atmosphere of prediction.
Jokes flowed for a while,
and eventually the posts stopped.
Before long,
that thread disappeared too.
I stopped speaking there.
“I don’t think anything was possessing it.”
The candle flame swayed slightly.
“There were only people gathered there.”
Thousands of people looking at the same screen.
Imagining the same future.
Putting accidents and misfortune into concrete words.
“Maybe, in a place where so many thoughts swirl together…
the future itself drifted a little closer.”
Whether that truly happened,
or whether it was only coincidence—
I still don’t know.
Silence fell over the tatami room.
In that silence,
I quietly extinguished one candle.
The flame twisted,
like a future bent out of shape—
and then,
without a sound,
it went out.
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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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