Story 76
I Keep Repeating the Typical Haunted Photo
A common haunted-photo trope:
The kind where a hand or a foot disappears.
And then, later on, the missing body part in the photo ends up getting injured in real life.
It’s a staple in ghost photo shows, and honestly, photos where hands or feet vanish are pretty common.
But for me, it’s a little different.
I’ve experienced it repeatedly.
I think it started when I was in the second grade.
It was during a school trip, and the principal—who was supervising that day—took photos to display at school.
In those photos, there was one of me alone. It was taken from a slightly distant angle, and I was smiling broadly at the camera, flashing a peace sign.
But despite my cheerful expression, my left foot had completely disappeared, and you could see the scenery behind me through it.
When the photo was developed, everyone got scared. I was scared too.
And, just one week after seeing that photo for the first time, I broke my foot—my left foot—falling down a set of stairs.
From that point on, every couple of years, similar haunted photos appeared.
Each time, my left foot vanished. And every single time, between one week and a month later, I would seriously injure that foot.
Sometimes I fell. Sometimes I injured ligaments in club activities and had surgery. Once I was even hit by a car.
We tried all kinds of rituals and exorcisms.
My mother even almost got caught up in some strange religious cult.
But strangely enough, when I was thirty, a suspicious-looking psychic my mother introduced me to performed an exorcism, and it stopped.
According to that psychic, a female yokai had been attached to my foot.
Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.
But from thirty to forty, no more haunted photos. No more injuries.
Case closed—or at least, I hope it is.
