The Call from Room 207

Tonight, once again, I shall tell you a strange tale from Japan. Relax… but do not turn around too quickly. I am watching just behind you. Heh, heh, heh…

A Japanese businessman once told me of a strange experience during his trip.

He was sent on a business trip to Japan and stayed three nights at a business hotel near a busy entertainment district. The room was ordinary—white walls, thin curtains, the low hum of the air conditioner. A framed landscape painting on the wall softened the otherwise sterile atmosphere.

On his first night, tired from travel, he fell asleep quickly. The following night, after work, he enjoyed dinner and drinks with colleagues and returned to his room around one in the morning. Just as he entered, his smartphone rang. The number was unfamiliar. Thinking it might be someone he had just been with, he answered. But all he heard was static—crackling noise, broken fragments of sound. He hung up, tried to call back, but the line never connected. Convinced it was nothing more than bad reception, he went to bed.

The next morning, he noticed three more missed calls from that same number—while he had been asleep. Puzzled, he showed it to his colleagues. None of them recognized it. It wasn’t a client, nor a company contact. No one knew the number.

That evening, back in his room, something else caught his eye. A small slip of paper was tucked behind the landscape painting. Curious, he pulled it out. It was what the Japanese call an ofuda—a paper talisman with inked characters, old and crumbling with age. He couldn’t read it. To him it looked like nothing more than a worn scrap of paper. Uneasy, but dismissing it as rubbish, he threw it away.

A few minutes later, his phone rang again. The same number.

Hesitating, he answered. This time, a woman’s laughter poured through the speaker. Not cheerful laughter, but something cold and unsettling. He asked, “Who are you? What do you want?” But the voice only laughed harder—until he realized his own words were echoing back, mixed with her laughter, as though his voice had been captured nearby.

He searched the room in panic, drew the curtains open. Nothing unusual inside. Nothing outside.

But in the reflection of the glass, he thought he saw it: Someone… slipping silently out of the room. The door never moved, yet the shadow drifted past, leaving only his own trembling reflection behind.

The laughter grew faint, as if moving farther away, until the call abruptly ended.

He did not sleep the rest of his stay. No more calls came, no more disturbances. But he cut his trip short, checking out a day early and returning home—uneasy, and unwilling to stay another night.

There is something you should know. In Japan, when a hotel room has witnessed misfortune or death, staff will sometimes seal it with an ofuda. Not openly—guests would feel uneasy—but hidden. Behind a mirror, or tucked behind a picture frame, just like in his room.

The painting was a cover. The talisman was the seal. And when he carelessly threw it away, whatever had been trapped there was freed. It laughed in his ear, then slipped quietly out… to somewhere else.

Where is it now? Back in that room? Or perhaps, following the signal to someone new?