I recently discovered this site and have been reading various stories, but when I read about the "Kunekune," I was genuinely shocked. I had seen something very similar myself.
It was during the summer vacation of my first year in elementary school, around the Obon festival, when I went to my great-grandmother's house. Her house is in the countryside—a national highway runs nearby, but there isn't a single train line around. My father is the eldest of three brothers, and this memorial service was for my great-grandfather.
After the service was over, I was playing around the rice paddies with my father when I saw a white human figure standing in the distance. To be precise, it might not have been human at all. Rather than wiggling or twisting, it looked as if its entire body was fluttering in the wind, and it almost seemed to be dancing, just like in the stories. As I thought that, it suddenly shrank, then went back to normal, making bizarre movements.
My father didn't seem to notice it, so I pointed at it and said, "Dad, what is that?" The moment my father saw it, he scooped me up and ran toward the house at incredible speed. I was so surprised to see my dad, who didn't usually walk very well, running for his life and covered in sweat, that I couldn't say anything along the way.
After a while, once we reached my great-grandmother's house, I asked my father, "What was that?" He told me, "It's something you don't need to know about. You must never talk about it to your friends."
We were supposed to stay at my great-grandmother's house for about three nights starting from that day, but my father suddenly announced, "We're going home," and we ended up leaving. My great-grandmother, who usually never tried to stop us even on the day we were supposed to leave, saying, "Stay a bit longer," didn't try to stop us this time either, which made even my childish heart feel that something was strange.
Shortly after returning home, I came down with a high fever. The hospital diagnosed me, saying, "We don't know what caused it, but it's pneumonia," and I fell into a coma for a while. In the end, the hospital said there was nothing they could do and simply kept me on IV nutrition. After my consciousness suddenly returned, I was able to leave the hospital about two weeks later. However, the doctor kept saying, "We don't know the cause," and made me continue outpatient visits for a while.
And ever since then, I was never taken to my great-grandmother's house again. I couldn't even attend relatives' funerals, and our family stopped going back for Obon or New Year's.
It's a story I heard from my mother: my father has an older sister, and apparently both my father and his sister had witnessed that thing. Then, his sister tried to get closer to look at it, and she went off alone. After a while, she came back, but with a vacant expression the whole time, acting almost like a broken person. It seems that when my father was in the third grade of elementary school, his sister was taken away somewhere.
My mother told me that my father had only ever mentioned this to her once before they got married, but I can't help thinking it must be the exact same thing that all of you have witnessed.
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