In the chilling Japanese ghost story, She Crawls at Midnight: The Teke Teke Legend, a terrifying Japanese urban legend comes to life. The Teke-Teke, a vengeful spirit born from a tragic accident, haunts the shadowy corners of Hoshikawa Station, her eerie teke-teke sound signaling doom. This horror story delves into the dark heart of a Japanese urban legend, weaving a tale of guilt, revenge, and supernatural terror. As the ghostly figure stalks her prey, the line between past sins and present fears blurs, delivering a spine-chilling experience steeped in Japanese folklore. Perfect for fans of Japanese ghost stories and horror stories that linger long after the final page.
Prologue
Hoshikawa Station was a gray smear in the fading light, its platform slick with the day’s drizzle. The air hung heavy, laced with diesel and the faint rot of leaves clogging the gutters.
Kana Hayashi, sixteen, stood alone, her schoolbag sagging off one shoulder, her fingers clutching the strap like a lifeline. She was small, her navy sailor uniform too big for her frame, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail that frayed at the ends.
Her eyes—wide, wary—darted toward the platform’s edge, where the yellow tactile paving gleamed under the station’s flickering lights. Kana wasn’t a fighter, wasn’t a star. She was the girl who sketched sparrows in her notebook, who dreamed of a world where no one noticed her. But they always did.
Her tormentors were closing in.
Rika Sato, seventeen, led the pack, her bleached hair glowing under the sodium lamps, her smirk sharp as a switchblade. Yuto Tanaka, her boyfriend, loomed behind her, his broad shoulders filling the space, his laugh a low, cruel rumble. Miki Nakamura, the quiet one, trailed them, her giggles a jagged edge that cut deeper than Rika’s taunts.
They’d been at Kana all semester—stealing her bento, shoving her in the halls, whispering “freak” as she passed. Today, though, was worse. They’d followed her from school, their voices chasing her through the streets like hounds.
“Kana, don’t be such a baby!” Rika called, her voice dripping with mock concern. “We just wanna hang out!”
Kana’s pulse hammered. The platform clock read 6:47 p.m. Three minutes until the next train. The station was nearly empty, the evening rush reduced to a lone salaryman at the far end, his face buried in his phone. No help there. She backed toward the platform’s edge, her sneakers scuffing the concrete. The air smelled of rust and rain, and the distant growl of an approaching train vibrated through her bones.
“Leave me alone,” Kana whispered, her voice swallowed by the wind.
Yuto stepped closer, his grin wide and predatory. “What’s that, weirdo? Gotta speak up.”
Miki’s giggle pierced the air, her hand clutching Rika’s arm. Rika’s eyes glinted, dark and hungry, as she reached into her bag. She pulled out a cicada, its wings buzzing weakly, its bulbous eyes glinting in the light.
Kana’s breath hitched—cicadas were her nightmare, their drone a sound that clawed at her nerves. Rika had learned that weeks ago and turned it into a weapon.
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“Look, Kana! Your new pet!” Rika tossed the cicada, and it landed on Kana’s blouse, its legs scrabbling at the fabric. Kana screamed, swatting at it, her arms flailing.
She stumbled backward, the platform’s edge too close, the train’s roar deafening. Her foot slipped, and for a frozen moment, she hung in the air, her eyes locked on Rika’s, wide with shock.
The train’s headlights flooded the platform. Metal screamed, drowning Kana’s cry. Rika’s smirk vanished, her face paling. Yuto swore, grabbing Miki’s arm. The salaryman looked up, too late. Kana hit the tracks, and the train didn’t stop.
Blood sprayed, a hot arc that splattered the platform. The cicada, crushed underfoot, lay still. Kana’s upper half twitched once, her fingers curling, then stilled. Rika gagged, her hands over her mouth. Yuto dragged her back, his face ashen. Miki sobbed, her giggles replaced by choking gasps.
They ran, their footsteps fading into the night. The salaryman shouted for help, but by the time the police arrived, the platform was empty save for Kana’s remains and a single, crumpled sketch of a sparrow, fluttering in the wind.
Chapter 1
The Hayashi house was a small, sagging thing on the edge of Hoshikawa, its wooden walls weathered by years of neglect. Inside, the air was thick with incense and sorrow.
Emi Hayashi, Kana’s mother, knelt before a butsudan, the family altar, her hands trembling as she lit a fresh stick of incense. The altar was crowded with photos: Kana at five, gap-toothed and grinning; Kana at twelve, shyly holding a school award; Kana at sixteen, her eyes downcast, her smile forced. A year had passed since the train took her, and the wound hadn’t scabbed over—it festered.
Emi was forty-two, her face etched with lines that hadn’t been there a year ago. Her hair, once glossy black, was streaked with gray, pulled back in a careless bun.
She worked nights at a konbini, her days spent at Kana’s grave, a small stone marker in the local cemetery. The police had called it an accident, a tragic slip, but Emi didn’t believe it. Kana was careful, always watching her step. Someone had been there—someone who ran and left her daughter to die.
The house was silent, save for the faint hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the floorboards. Kana’s father had left years ago, and her older brother, Taro, was in Tokyo, chasing a job that kept him too busy to call. Emi was alone with her grief, her days a blur of prayers and memories. She’d found Kana’s sketchbook in the station’s lost-and-found, its pages filled with birds and delicate landscapes.
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The last page was unfinished: a girl, legless, her eyes hollow. Emi couldn’t bear to look at it, but she couldn’t throw it away.
Every day, she visited Kana’s grave, kneeling in the damp grass, whispering apologies.
“I should’ve protected you,” she’d say, her voice breaking.
“I should’ve known.”
The other mourners kept their distance, their eyes averted. Emi didn’t care. She brought fresh flowers, cleaned the stone, and prayed to any kami who might listen. But no answers came, no closure. Just the weight of questions: Why Kana? Who was there? Why didn’t they help?
The day before the one-year anniversary, Emi’s desperation reached a breaking point. She’d heard whispers of a ritual, an old Shinto practice called kuchiyose, used to summon spirits for guidance.
It was dangerous, forbidden by most priests, but Emi was past caring. She needed to hear Kana’s voice, to know what happened. She visited a local miko, a shrine maiden named Hana, who warned her against it.
“The dead don’t always come as you expect,” Hana said, her eyes sharp. “An onryō—a vengeful spirit—can’t be controlled.”
Emi didn’t listen. That night, under a moonless sky, she set up a makeshift altar in the cemetery, Kana’s grave at its center. She placed offerings: rice, salt, a lock of Kana’s hair from her childhood.
She lit candles, their flames flickering in the wind, and chanted words Hana had reluctantly taught her, words to pierce the veil between worlds. The air grew heavy, the temperature dropping until Emi’s breath fogged. She clutched Kana’s sketchbook, her fingers tracing the legless girl.
“Kana,” she whispered. “Come back to 告诉我真相。”
Something answered. The candles flared, then guttered out. The ground trembled, a low rumble like a distant train. Emi’s heart pounded, her hands shaking as she clutched the sketchbook. A sound came, faint at first, then louder: teke-teke, teke-teke.
It wasn’t Kana’s voice—it was something else, something raw and furious. Emi screamed, dropping the sketchbook as the air thickened with the smell of blood and rust.
She ran, her slippers sinking into the mud, the teke-teke fading behind her. She didn’t look back, didn’t see the shadow dragging itself from the grave, its arms impossibly long, its eyes burning with rage.
Emi had wanted answers. She’d gotten something else.
Chapter 2
Miki Nakamura was drowning in guilt, though she’d never admit it. At seventeen, she was a shadow of Rika’s brilliance, her laughter a reflex to mask her fear. She hadn’t thrown the cicada, hadn’t pushed Kana, but she’d been there, giggling as Kana screamed.
That was enough. The nightmares started a month after the accident: Kana’s face, half-gone, her hands clawing at Miki’s throat. She’d wake gasping, her sheets soaked with sweat.
It was November 3, a year and a day since Kana’s death. Miki was staggering home from a party, her school skirt wrinkled, her breath reeking of vodka and regret. The streets near Hoshikawa Station were quiet, the sodium lamps casting long, jagged shadows.
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Her heels clicked on the pavement, each step a reminder of her cowardice. She cut through an alley, a shortcut she knew was stupid but took anyway. The air was cold, the smell of damp concrete and rotting garbage thick in her nose.
Tek-teke. Tek-teke.
The sound was soft, like a pebble skittering across pavement. Miki froze, her heart lurching.
“Hello?” she called, her voice trembling.
The alley was empty, the shadows pooling like ink. She laughed, a nervous hiccup—probably a rat, right? She started walking again, faster, her phone clutched in one hand, its screen cracked from too many drunken drops.
Tek-teke. Tek-teke.
Louder now, closer, a rhythmic scrape that crawled up her spine. Miki’s breath hitched. She turned, and there was Kana—or what Kana had become. Her torso dragged along the ground, her arms unnaturally long, her nails sparking against the pavement. Her face was a nightmare: one eye dangled, held by a thread of sinew; her mouth twisted into a grin that showed too many teeth.
The teke-teke came from her elbows, slamming the ground with inhuman speed.
Miki screamed, her phone clattering to the pavement. She ran, her heels slipping, her lungs burning. The alley stretched, the station’s lights a cruel mirage. Kana was faster, her arms a blur, her teke-teke a drumbeat of doom. Miki tripped, her knee cracking against the pavement, blood seeping through her tights. She scrambled up, sobbing, but Kana’s hands seized her ankles, cold as iron, strong as death.
“Where are my legs?” Kana’s voice was a rasp, like wind through shattered glass.
“I don’t know!” Miki wailed, kicking wildly. “I didn’t do anything! I’m sorry!”
Kana’s grin widened, her teeth glinting. She dragged Miki backward, her nails slicing into flesh, blood trailing like a painter’s stroke. Miki’s screams echoed as Kana pulled her toward a storm drain, its rusted grate gaping like a mouth.
The opening was too small, impossibly small, but Kana didn’t care. She forced Miki through, her body bending, snapping, her ribs splintering like dry wood. Miki’s screams turned wet, choking, as her torso was crushed, her spine folding inward. Her legs, severed by the grate’s jagged edge, lay splayed on the pavement, a grotesque mirror of Kana’s own fate.
The alley fell silent, the teke-teke gone. Miki’s phone buzzed, a text from Rika: Where r u? It went unanswered, its screen flickering in the blood-soaked dark.
Chapter 3
Yuto Tanaka was built like a linebacker, his bulk a shield against the world. At eighteen, he was a senior, Rika’s muscle, the guy who made smaller kids scatter. He didn’t talk about Kana, didn’t let himself think about her. Miki’s disappearance was a fluke—runaway, probably.
But the dreams were relentless: Kana’s hands, cold and unyielding, dragging him into a void. He’d wake with his heart pounding, his fists clenched, the taste of copper in his mouth.
It was November 17, two weeks after Miki vanished. Yuto was at the gym near Hoshikawa Station, the one open until 2 a.m. for night owls like him. The place was a concrete box, its air heavy with sweat and metal, the fluorescent lights buzzing like angry bees.
Yuto racked the barbell, his arms trembling from a 200-kilo lift, his tank top soaked. He checked his phone—1:15 a.m. Time to hit the showers.
Tek-teke. Tek-teke.
The sound came from the locker room, a deliberate scrape that raised the hairs on Yuto’s neck. He grabbed his bag, his sneakers squeaking on the polished floor.
“Who’s there?” he barked, his voice echoing off the mirrors.
No answer, just that sound, steady as a heartbeat.
He pushed open the locker room door, the air inside damp and sour, like an old basement. The lights flickered, casting shadows that twisted like living things. Yuto’s pulse quickened, his bravado crumbling. He saw her in the mirror first—Kana, her torso propped against a bench, her arms twitching like a spider’s legs.
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Her hair hung in wet clumps, her skin gray and mottled, like something dredged from a swamp. Her remaining eye burned, fixed on him.
“Yuto,” she hissed, her voice curling around his name like smoke. “Where are my legs?”
He bolted, slamming into a locker, the metal denting under his weight. The gym was a labyrinth of equipment, the mirrors reflecting Kana’s approach from every angle.
She was everywhere, her teke-teke a relentless pulse.
Yuto tripped over a dumbbell, crashing to the floor, his ankle twisting. Kana was on him in an instant, her nails raking his back, tearing through muscle, blood welling hot and fast.
He screamed, thrashing, but she was a force of nature, her rage unstoppable. She dragged him toward the weight rack, her hands clamping his wrists like vices.
“You laughed,” she whispered, her breath cold against his ear. “You ran.”
She yanked his arms, and the barbell—still loaded with 200 kilos—fell. It crushed his chest, his ribs snapping like twigs, blood spurting from his mouth.
But Kana wasn’t done.
She seized his legs, twisting them until the joints popped, the tendons tore. She didn’t sever him—she broke him, piece by piece, her nails carving runes of pain into his flesh. His femur snapped, the sound like a gunshot; his knees buckled backward, unnatural angles that made his screams incoherent. She crushed his hands under a kettlebell, the bones pulverizing, his fingers splaying like broken twigs.
Yuto’s eyes dimmed, his breath a wet rattle. Kana leaned close, her ruined face inches from his. “You’ll never run again,” she said, and drove her nails into his throat, tearing it open, blood fountaining across the floor.
The gym was silent, the teke-teke gone. Yuto’s body lay under the barbell, a shattered ruin. His phone, cracked on the floor, lit up with a text from Rika: Call me. Now.
Chapter 4
Rika Sato was untouchable, or so she told herself. At eighteen, she was Hoshikawa High’s queen, her beauty a weapon, her cruelty a crown. Miki’s disappearance had shaken her, Yuto’s death—ruled a gym accident—had cracked her armor, but Rika didn’t break.
She saw Kana in her dreams, felt her cold fingers in the dark, but she pushed it down, buried it under makeup and defiance. She carried an omamori from Meiji Shrine, its silk pouch tucked into her bra, and avoided Hoshikawa Station like it was cursed. But fear was a parasite, burrowing deeper each day.
It was Halloween, and Rika was at a club in Shibuya, the bass thumping like a heartbeat, the air thick with smoke and cheap perfume. She was dressed as a vampire, her lips blood-red, her black dress clinging to her curves.
Her friends were there, but she’d ditched them, needing the crowd’s chaos to drown out the teke-teke she’d heard last night, faint but unmistakable. The club was a sea of bodies, but Rika felt exposed, her eyes scanning the shadows.
Tek-teke. Tek-teke.
The sound cut through the music, sharp as a blade. Rika froze, her drink slipping from her hand, shattering on the dance floor. The crowd didn’t notice, but she did—Kana was here.
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She shoved through the dancers, her heels catching on the sticky floor, her breath ragged. The exit was a distant promise, the bathrooms closer. She stumbled into the women’s room, locking the stall door, her hands shaking, her omamori clutched like a talisman.
“Where are my legs?” Kana’s voice was everywhere, seeping through the tiles, the pipes, the air itself.
Rika’s prayers were frantic, half-remembered from childhood. “Meishin Expressway,” she stammered. “Your legs are at the Meishin Expressway!”
Silence.
Then a laugh, low and guttural, that turned her blood to ice. The stall door buckled, splintering inward. Kana was there, her torso balanced on the sink, her arms impossibly long, her nails gleaming like scythes. Her face was a ruin—half bone, half flesh, her remaining eye a furnace of hate.
“You threw the cicada,” Kana said, her voice a blade. “You killed me.”
Rika screamed, kicking at the door, but Kana was faster. She lunged, her nails slicing through Rika’s thighs, blood spraying the walls. Rika fell, her hands scrabbling at the tiles, her dress shredding.
Kana dragged her across the floor, her body leaving a red smear, and pinned her against the mirror. The glass cracked, shards embedding in Rika’s back, each a white-hot needle of pain.
Kana’s hands closed around Rika’s throat, squeezing until her eyes bulged, her tongue lolled. But that was just the start. She reached for a broken pipe jutting from the wall, its rusted edge jagged as a shark’s mouth. She drove it into Rika’s chest, twisting, carving, the metal grinding against bone.
Rika’s screams became gurgles, her blood pooling, her body jerking like a marionette. Kana wasn’t satisfied. She seized Rika’s arms, wrenching them from their sockets, the tendons snapping like rubber bands. She tore into Rika’s abdomen, her nails ripping through muscle, exposing glistening organs. The pipe pinned Rika to the wall, her body a grotesque tableau, her omamori falling to the floor, soaked red.
The teke-teke faded. The club’s music pounded on, oblivious. Rika’s body hung in the bathroom, a final testament to Kana’s vengeance.
Epilogue
Hoshikawa Station is a ghost of itself, its platform empty under the cold glow of fluorescent lights. The air smells of rust and rain, and the wind carries a sound—teke-teke, teke-teke.
The locals don’t speak of Kana, but they know. They avoid the station after dark, their omamori charms clutched tight. The tracks are clean, the blood long gone, but Kana’s sketchbook, still in the station’s lost-and-found, sits unclaimed, its pages filled with sparrows and that single, unfinished drawing: a legless girl, her eyes burning.
Emi Hayashi doesn’t visit the grave anymore. She lives in a haze, her nights haunted by the ritual she can’t undo. The miko, Hana, warned her: an onryō doesn’t rest. Kana’s rage is a fire that burns without end, and Hoshikawa is its kindling. The station’s lights flicker, the platform hums with something alive, something waiting.
If you hear that sound, that relentless teke-teke, don’t look back. Don’t answer.
Run—and pray you’re faster than she is.
