8 Horror Movies With Creepy Urban Legends
6. Ringu Actually Happened To Someone I Know
When Ringu was first released in 1998, stories flooded the internet (such as it was back then) that the videotape was real. They'd heard of someone who'd watched it, or owned it but wouldnt watch it, or someone who'd received a mysterious call and died. It's completely untrue, of course, and in this day and age the impact of the original, terrifying Japanese flick has been diluted a little.
Based on a novel by horror writer Kouji Suzuki, the events described do have a basis in reality, however. Ringu's premise concerns a famous psychic, Shizuko, who, accused of faking her powers, committed suicide in shame at the slander. Her even more powerful daughter, Sadako, was murdered by her own father but returned as a vengeful spirit, an onry. In real life, a century or so ago a psychic lived in Kumamoto prefecture in Japan, and was said to have the power of ESP (extra-sensory perception).
Just as in Suzuki's story, the similarly-named Chizuko Mifune volunteered to have her abilities tested by a scientist - the real-life Tomokichi Fukurai, from the University of Tokyo. When Fukurai, convinced, organised a public demonstration of her talents, just as Shizuko's husband did in the film, everyone present denounced her as a fraud. Chizuko retired from public life, falling into a deep depression, and killed herself only a short time later. Even closer to the bone, only a year before Chizuko died, another famous Japanese psychic was born. Takahashi Sadako would later be notorious for apparently having the ability to transfer images from her mind to someone elses or to burn them onto film.