The 13th Flight （十三阶级）

There are many ghost stories popular amongst Japanese school children. Like the Chinese, Japanese too are fond of telling ghost stories but with quite a distinct flavour. Normally, a Japanese children’s ghost story comes with a moral. Below is just one of those many stories and the hidden messages are very clear:    

In an old school building and on one of the floors, the staircase has only 12 flights during daytime. But if you return to the same place at night and recounting the number of flights, then you will get 13 flights instead.

Rumour has it that many years ago, a very naughty student used to study in this school. He was extremely bad and it was said that this student has broken all available school regulations there were and he even fought with the disciplinary teacher. He also said to have quarrelled with other teachers who taught him. One night, after having a dispute with his teacher; he returned to the school building at night wanting to burn down the school. However, in the process of setting up fire; the school security discovered him and wanted to arrest this student.

Panicked, the said student ran up the staircase. When he ran up to the staircase of this particular floor, he slipped a flight and fell onto the ground; broke his skull and died on the spot.

From then on, rumours of the school building became haunted started to spread. One braver student was not too superstitious. So, he returned to the school at night to perform ghost hunting. He walked alone one flight at a time ascending the staircase. As he walked, he counted the number of flights he has taken. It was precisely at the end of the 12^th flight, the 13^th flight appeared.

This brave soul still couldn’t believe himself. So, he took another step onto the 13^th flight. As soon as the brave student was on the 13^th flight, a black hole appeared before him. He could see that there were many people inside the hole. The crowd started to walk towards him and he started to feel afraid. As he took a step backwards, someone pushed from his back. Startled, he turned his head and saw a half-head man persuaded him to go into the hole to play. The man said that the black hole is the heaven of bad kids.

After the brave student went into the black hole, he never returned…

Just to add a note here: there are truly only 12 flights during the day, and the 13^th flights can only be seen at night; and by naughty kids only. So, all naughty kids must pay particular attention. It is no benefit to try ghost hunting because if you do try; chances are that you might become their friends.