SPOOKY rumours surrounding a century-old Japanese poem have resurfaced as a chilling curse supposedly dooms anyone who dares to read it.
Tomino’s Hell was written just after the end of World War One by Saijō Yaso, who described a man’s journey through hell in eerie and disturbing detail.
The myth surrounding the dangers of the poem only began after Japanese author and poet Yamota Inuhiko wrote about it in his 2004 book “Kokoro wa Korogaru Ishi no you ni” (The Heart is Like a Rolling Stone).
“If you by chance happen to read [the poem Tomino’s Hell] out loud, then you will suffer from a terrible fate which cannot be escaped,” Inuhiko wrote.
Theories surrounding the eerie poem curse have since taken the internet by storm.
Podcasters Carlos Juico and Gavin Rutaa, from Jumpers Jump, explained their theory of how people appear to keep dying not long after reading Tomino’s Hell.
“There’s been so many accidents that people think that once you say it out loud, you either die or your soul will be cursed for the rest of your years,” Gavin said.
“There was this college girl who was dared by her her friends who said ‘we’re going to put you on video, we want you to recite this poem out loud …she says it and a week later she passed away.”
Gavin also claimed that Terayama Shuji, the director of the 1974 film Pastoral, To Die in the Countryside, which was partially inspired on Tomino’s Hell, died a week after its release.
Some think Tomino’s Hell author Saijō Yaso, who originally published the poem in his 1919 book Sakin, was the first victim of its “curse”.
But the poet died in 1970, more than 50 years after releasing the “cursed” poem.
Similarly, Terayama survived for over a decade after his movie hit the cinemas.
And the name of the unfortunate college student appears to have been lost to history, leaving it unclear if she was indeed murdered by the cursed verse.
To those daring to give it a read, here are a few of Saijo’s unsettling verses: “Elder sister vomits blood, younger sister’s breathing fire while sweet little Tomino just spits up the jewels.
“All alone does Tomino go falling into that hell, a hell of utter darkness, without even flowers.”
The legend of Tomino’s Hell was one of many to sweep the internet in the 2000s and 2010s, and was followed by the infamous Slender Man tale.
Since being created on the online forums Something Awful in 2009 by user Victor Surge – real name Eric Knudsen – the Slender Man has inspired a vast internet community obsessed with the terrifying figure.
Slender Man is usually shown as a tall, thin figure, wearing a dark suit with a totally blank white face – sometimes with tentacles emerging from his back that he uses to capture his young prey.
The looming figure has telepathy and mind-control powers, which he uses to talk to children before abducting and slaughtering them.
Slender Man’s chilling notoriety soon reached creepypasta.wikia.com – a site dedicated to spooky stories – where it caught the attention of schoolgirls Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser.
The depraved pair lured 12-year-old Payton Leutner to woods near her home in Wisconsin, US, where they stabbed her 19 times and left her for dead.
They claimed they wanted to prove the existence of the Slender Man and show their loyalty to him by committing a murder.
Peyton amazingly survived the attack and managed to crawl out of the woods where she was found by a cyclist with stab wounds to her chest, abdomen and arms.
Both Weier and Geyser have now been detained in mental health units.
In February, 2019, it emerged that the teenager who raped and murdered six-year-old Alesha MacPhail was obsessed by the Slender Man.
The 16-year-old was a serial killer in the making who got sick thrills from the meme, a source revealed.
A source said: “He’s an utterly warped individual.”
The teenager got sick thrills from playing gory video games and officers found evidence he searched online for Slender Man before abducting and killing Alesha.
A source said: “Slender Man searches were found and it chilled seasoned investigators to the bone.
“Some of the circumstances between what this character does and what happened to Alesha were carbon copies.”
