This investigative report was completed by I, Kei Amakura, including revisions and corrections according to my own first-hand experiences, based upon the report created by the late Mr. Yuu Asou.
The Urban Legend of "The Manor of Sleep"
Perhaps some customs and traditions passed down in an unbroken line, hidden in the shadows of untold history, may be imbued with a power beyond our understanding.
The other day, I came across a fascinating account in an occult-related article in a magazine I was casually flipping through. It discussed a ghostly encounter - of the sort that feels almost tired these days - involving an urban legend called "The Manor of Sleep", where it is said one can meet with the dead. The tale itself is commonplace, the sort of story that gets retold over and over with certain details changed, and has already reached saturation point. However, the more I read into it, the less it somehow began to seem like a conventional ghost story.
The "Manor of Sleep", where one is said to encounter the dead, bears a close resemblance to the details of a "dreaming sickness" that has become recognised as a rare and peculiar disease in the field of psychiatry in recent years, which is known for its involvement of a person chasing the deceased through a Japanese-style house. The similarities are so striking that I cannot brush it off as mere coincidence.
The Manor of Sleep is an abandoned house in the Tohoku region. It is said that visitors are able to see the forms of their dead loved ones within. As such, it seems to have been known amongst enthusiasts as a "haunted house" for quite some time.
The "dreaming sickness", meanwhile, is a disease which causes a person to gradually slip into a coma following the loss of a family member, close friend, lover or the like, and repeatedly see them in their dreams. The manor inside which these patients claim to have met with the deceased sounds extremely similar in appearance to that of the Manor of Sleep.
It is not uncommon for one to begin pursuing or seeing someone who was close to them in their dreams following their death. This is likely because the deeper your connection is in life, the more intense the desire to see them once more becomes, and you begin to wander your dreams seeking what you have lost in real life. If this desire becomes too strong, it is plausible that one may unconsciously reject the real world due to psychological damage and no longer want to wake up.
What I find to be of great interest, however, is that the scenery witnessed by patients in the early stages of the disease is very similar, and that their descriptions are extremely similar to that of the appearance of the "haunted house" that (supposedly) exists in real life.
It is also possible that, as posited by Jung, humans frequently possess shared awareness and memories which transcend the individual, which he termed the "collective unconscious". This, it is said, is why we feel a sense of nostalgia towards scenery we have never seen with our own eyes. There is even a theory claiming that our fear of fire and water stems from memories etched into our bodies tens of millions of years before man came into being. Perhaps it would not be strange at all for a large number of people to have similar dreams if their latent memories were to be awoken.
Note: The memories of man's soul?
Even without thinking so deeply into it, one could simply dismiss this phenomenon as resulting from its close resemblance to our common idea of the stereotypical "haunted house".
But could people truly have such similar dreams, down to even the most minor details, despite their completely different upbringings and environments?
- Set in an old-fashioned Japanese mansion
- Complex structure with several entrances
- Figures of people, tattooed men & women
- Snowy courtyard, countless stakes/graves
- Entrance w/ high ceiling & round window
...etc...
The contents of the dreams said to afflict those who repeatedly dream of the Manor of Sleep bear a close resemblance to each other, down to even these most intricate details.
Furthermore, the vast majority of patients know nothing about this haunted house, the Manor of Sleep. Even if they did know of it, I believe that the very high number of similarities within their accounts, beyond the usual commonalities seen in such stories, is a bit too extreme for it to be mere coincidence.
It seems to me as though there is some sort of external cause in play here, shared between each of the "Manor of Sleep" patients.
The other day, I managed to obtain some research literature which appears to have been written before the war. It was left by Dr. Kunihiko Asou, a doctor of engineering and psychologist, who was also referred to as a scholar of the occult and researcher into the "Other World".
The case of the Manor of Sleep dreams was first discovered while he was active in his studies, from the late Edo and into the Meiji period. It appears as though patients suddenly began displaying these symptoms at a certain time, and he, too, was attempting to pin down their cause. However, he was a man who drove advancement in a field which today would be labelled a form of occult study, and as part of this approach, frequently utilised terms such as "Other World" and "incorporeal beings".
Nevertheless, through his investigation, Dr. Asou made contact with a subject who appears to potentially have been the origin of the story. The man, named Kaname Ototsuki, took part in multiple interviews. A native of a mountainous part of the Tohoku region, his records mention rituals told of in his home village which bear a close resemblance to the dreams experienced by he and the other patients.
What is the Manor of Sleep said to exist in real life? And what is behind the Manor of Sleep people see in their dreams?
I believe that the key to deciphering this perplexing case lies within the testimony left behind by Kaname Ototsuki in his interviews with Dr. Asou, as well as in the folkloristic perspective of his time.
The matters, events and so forth collated in the following report are based upon the investigations and conjecture of my friend, Mr. Yuu Asou, relating to these documents, supplemented and appended by me, Kei Amakura, as per my own experiences.
Note: Was this taken by the Camera Obscura? Needs confirmation
