【Japanese Horror】The Hundred Horror Tales — Episode 50: Beyond the Light | Haunted Kaidan Tales
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Episode 50 – “Beyond the Light| Haunted Kaidan Tales” (Full Text)
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Episode 50 — Beyond the Light
The last wisp of white smoke drifted slowly toward the ceiling.
The story Miwa had just told still seemed to linger in the room,
settling into the silence like something that refused to leave.
No one spoke right away.
They simply stared at the spot where the candle had gone out.
For a while,
only the faint sound of insects outside could be heard.
“…Hey.”
The first to break the silence was Shūji.
“We’ve been doing ghost stories this whole time, right?”
He gave a small shrug.
“Maybe it’s time to change things up a little.”
His tone sounded casual.
But something about it caught everyone’s attention.
Sōma glanced toward him.
“Change it how?”
“Nothing that serious.”
Shūji let out a small laugh.
Then he slowly looked around at the others.
“You guys believe in UFOs?”
For a moment,
the room went still.
“Huh?”
Sōma frowned.
“Where’d that come from?”
“I dunno.”
Shūji leaned back slightly.
“Just figured it’d be nice to talk about something different for once.”
Aoi immediately leaned forward.
“You mean like the glowing things in the sky?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Shūji nodded.
“Aliens and all that too.”
“Hmmm…”
Aoi tilted her head.
“You think they’re real?”
“Who knows.”
Shūji shrugged again.
“I mean… it wouldn’t be weird if something was out there.”
“But people who actually see them?”
“Probably not many.”
Miwa gave a small laugh.
“This suddenly got a lot lighter.”
“What happened to all the creepy ghost stuff?”
“Well…”
Shūji smiled faintly.
“Too much of the same thing gets exhausting.”
That eased the mood a little.
Just a little.
But then—
“…Still.”
Shūji’s voice lowered slightly.
“This one’s kinda strange.”
The atmosphere changed again.
Quietly.
He looked down at the candlelight.
“This isn’t my story.”
Aoi blinked.
“Wait, not yours?”
Shūji shook his head.
“No.”
“It happened to a friend of mine.”
He paused briefly.
“And honestly?”
“I didn’t believe him at first.”
A dry laugh escaped him.
“I thought he was completely full of it.”
Then his expression faded.
“But the more he talked…”
“The less funny it sounded.”
No one interrupted him.
“Back then,” Shūji continued,
“there was this huge UFO craze.”
“TV shows, magazines… all of it.”
“People kept saying they’d seen lights somewhere.”
“Or that something landed in the mountains.”
“Stuff like that.”
Aoi leaned forward again.
“Did anyone actually see one?”
“Plenty of people said they did.”
Shūji smirked slightly.
“But most of it was probably just rumors.”
Then his expression shifted again.
“But this guy…”
“He was obsessed with that stuff.”
“He bought every magazine he could find.”
“Marked maps.”
“Talked about ‘hot spots’ and sightings.”
“He was completely into it.”
Shūji gave a small shrug.
“I wasn’t really interested,
so I didn’t hang around with him much.”
“But one day…”
His gaze lifted slightly.
“Some guy from their class said he’d seen a weird light out near the mountains.”
The room grew quiet again.
“At first,
nobody took it seriously.”
“But my friend immediately latched onto it.”
“He kept saying,
‘No, this is real.’”
“‘This is definitely something weird.’”
Shūji paused.
“And eventually…”
“He and two other guys decided to go check the place out.”
The atmosphere in the room tightened.
“It was out in the mountains.”
“No streetlights.”
“Pitch black.”
“They only had flashlights.”
“And they kept heading deeper in,
trying to find the spot where the light had supposedly appeared.”
At first,
nothing happened.
They walked around for a while,
but there was nothing there.
Eventually,
they started thinking it was all fake.
And just as they were about to head back—
“…it flashed.”
No one moved.
“It was only for a second.”
“Like a camera flash.”
Shūji stared quietly at the candle flame.
“But apparently…”
“It didn’t feel far away.”
The moment the light disappeared,
the air itself seemed to freeze.
“W… did you guys see that?”
The first one to speak
was the friend obsessed with UFOs.
The beam of his flashlight trembled slightly.
Apparently,
his hand was shaking.
“Yeah.”
One of the others answered immediately.
“It looked like a camera flash…”
His voice trailed off.
“Where did it come from?”
No one answered right away.
Above them.
Beside them.
Or directly in front of them.
Apparently,
none of them could tell
which direction the light had come from.
But one thing was certain.
All three of them had seen it.
“You think it’s gonna happen again?”
Someone muttered quietly.
Just moments earlier,
they’d been laughing and messing around.
But now,
their voices had become strangely small.
No one moved.
Only the flashlight beams illuminated the ground beneath them.
Even the sounds of insects and wind
felt far away somehow.
“…Should we go?”
Someone finally said it.
The others gave small nods.
No one really understood why.
But none of them wanted to stay there any longer.
That feeling alone
was enough.
They turned around
and started heading back the way they came.
And then—
it flashed again.
Only for a second.
The same camera-flash-like light.
But this time,
apparently,
they understood something immediately.
It was closer.
Much closer than before.
“…Hey.”
Someone spoke.
But the voice sounded delayed somehow.
“Wasn’t that… really close?”
One of them opened his mouth to answer.
But before any words came out,
his vision warped.
Something—
shifted.
For just a moment,
sound,
scenery,
and even the sensation of his own body
stopped matching together.
Then suddenly—
everything snapped back.
As if nothing had happened.
The same mountain path.
The same darkness.
The same smell in the air.
The same place.
At least—
it should have been.
“Hey.”
A voice came from nearby.
The voice of the friend
who had been standing beside him moments earlier.
He turned toward it—
and froze.
Something felt wrong.
At the edge of his vision,
something collapsed.
But he couldn’t immediately understand what it was.
His brain couldn’t process it fast enough.
“…What?”
The words escaped his mouth.
Even his own voice sounded distant.
The friend standing in front of him
was no longer shaped like a human being.
Apparently,
there was no sound at all.
No tearing.
No impact.
Nothing.
Only the shape itself
continued changing
slightly behind reality.
An arm fell.
But the sensation of it touching the ground
came afterward.
A face collapsed.
Yet somehow,
the eyes still seemed to move
a moment too late.
The other friend
was falling apart the same way.
The order of it all
was wrong.
He couldn’t tell
where the destruction was even starting from.
All he knew was—
the things in front of him,
which had once been human,
were losing their shape.
“—Wait!”
Someone screamed.
Apparently,
he couldn’t even tell anymore
whether the voice had been his own.
The moment he screamed,
apparently,
his body moved on its own.
Before he could even think,
his body reacted first.
What he had just seen
couldn’t be processed as reality.
His mind couldn’t catch up.
And yet—
he understood one thing perfectly.
Something about it
was wrong.
In that instant,
his legs nearly gave out beneath him.
He couldn’t put strength into them.
His knees trembled uncontrollably.
But somehow,
he forced himself upright—
and ran down the mountain.
Branches struck against his arms.
He stumbled over rocks beneath his feet.
Still,
he couldn’t stop.
He wouldn’t stop.
His breathing became ragged.
His lungs burned.
Even so,
his legs kept moving.
The image stayed stuck inside his head.
Even the parts he shouldn’t have been able to see
felt horribly clear.
How they collapsed.
What happened afterward.
The order.
The shapes.
Everything.
He didn’t want to understand it—
but the images forced themselves into his mind anyway.
“Stop…”
The words escaped him without thinking.
But it didn’t stop.
The images didn’t fade.
All he could do
was keep running.
He had no idea how long he ran.
By the time he realized it,
apparently,
he had already left the mountain behind.
And from there,
he ran all the way home.
He threw open the front door
and collapsed inside.
He couldn’t catch his breath.
His whole body shook so violently
he could barely stand.
“What happened?”
His parents rushed over,
staring at him in shock.
The moment he saw their faces,
he finally felt
a little bit of reality return.
“…In the mountains…”
He couldn’t get the words out properly.
Even so,
he desperately tried to explain.
“People…”
“They… fell apart…”
Apparently,
he spoke in broken fragments.
But his parents—
laughed.
“What are you talking about?”
“You must’ve had some weird dream.”
They brushed it off lightly.
And hearing that,
some of the tension finally left his body.
The horrifying images from moments ago
suddenly felt distant.
Maybe it hadn’t been real.
Maybe none of it actually happened.
He wanted to believe that.
His breathing slowly steadied.
The trembling in his body gradually faded.
“…Maybe…”
Apparently,
he muttered that quietly to himself.
And then—
it flashed.
Only for a second.
His vision turned completely white.
Instinctively,
he shut his eyes.
And when he opened them—
he was back in the mountains.
The same place.
The same darkness.
The same air.
And standing right in front of him—
were the other two boys,
as if nothing had ever happened.
Apparently,
none of them moved for a while.
They simply stood there,
exactly where they had been moments earlier.
The same darkness.
The same air.
The same mountain.
The only difference now—
was that nothing had happened.
“…Just now…”
The first one to speak
was the friend obsessed with UFOs.
Apparently,
his voice was trembling slightly.
“What did you guys see?”
No one answered immediately.
None of them were even sure anymore
whether what had just happened
had been real at all.
“…What do you mean?”
After a pause,
one of them finally spoke.
“You guys were falling apart.”
He said it plainly.
And the moment he did,
the atmosphere changed.
“…What?”
Another one frowned.
“No.”
“You two were the ones collapsing.”
The words overlapped.
They were saying the same thing—
but none of their stories matched.
“…Wait.”
The UFO-obsessed friend spoke slowly.
“I saw both of you falling apart.”
He pointed toward them.
“It started with your arms.”
Then another one spoke.
“…I saw you two collapsing.”
“It started with your faces.”
Finally,
the last one spoke after a brief silence.
“…I saw both of you too.”
“But it started with your torsos.”
Silence fell again.
All three of them
had been standing in the same place,
seen the same light,
and experienced the same moment—
yet what each of them remembered
was completely different.
Only one thing matched.
In every version—
the person remembering it
had remained untouched.
“…What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Someone muttered hoarsely.
No one had an answer.
There couldn’t be an answer.
Apparently,
they simply stared at one another
and stopped talking altogether.
And then—
one of them suddenly touched the back of his neck.
“…Hey.”
He muttered quietly.
“Doesn’t this hurt?”
Another one instinctively reached back as well.
Then winced slightly.
“…What is this?”
At their fingertips
was a tiny irregularity.
Not quite a wound.
Just—
a small opening.
“…Hey.”
The UFO-obsessed friend’s voice grew tense.
“Let me see.”
He raised the flashlight
toward the back of the other’s neck.
And there—
was a tiny hole.
Small enough to resemble a mole.
But unmistakably—
it was a hole.
“…What the hell is this?”
His voice cracked slightly.
“This wasn’t here before.”
No one answered.
No one could.
But one thing alone
was painfully certain.
All three of them
had the exact same mark
in the exact same place.
“…And after that,”
Shūji let out a small breath.
His eyes lowered slightly.
“Apparently,
after that night…”
“He completely stopped talking about stuff like this.”
He gave a small shrug.
“Even though he used to go on about it nonstop.”
A faint bitter smile crossed his face.
“He also started avoiding photos.”
“Guess he just got bad with flashes after that.”
A brief pause.
“…Still.”
He continued quietly.
“Maybe he was scared
something might show up in one.”
No one said anything.
Only those words remained in the room.
Slowly,
Shūji raised his eyes again.
He stared at the candle flame.
“Well…”
“Maybe it was all just in his head.”
He gave a small laugh.
Then quietly—
he blew out the flame.
—fwoosh.
The final candle flickered once—
and went out.
At that moment,
the room was swallowed by complete darkness.
Nothing could be seen.
Only the presence of the others remained.
No one moved.
—Crunch.
Outside,
someone stepped on gravel.
Clearly.
One step.
Then after a pause—
another.
The sound was slow.
Like someone approaching the house.
The atmosphere inside the room tightened instantly.
“…Did you hear that?”
Someone whispered quietly.
Without saying a word,
Sōma stood up.
Carefully,
he searched for the window in the darkness.
His hand found the shōji screen.
Slowly,
he slid it open.
Cold night air drifted into the room.
Outside—
was darkness.
The yard.
The gravel path.
Nothing was there.
Nothing moved.
For a while,
Sōma simply stared outside.
Then quietly,
he closed the shōji again.
“…There’s nobody there.”
That was all he said.
No one answered.
The sound from moments ago
still lingered inside their heads.
It had definitely been there.
They were sure of it.
Somewhere in the darkness,
someone quietly swallowed.
And with nothing visible around them,
only time continued to pass slowly.
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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?
Follow for more:
• Twitter: @KaidanTales
• YouTube: @HK_Tales
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