In a Different World with a Smartphone (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter SS4

Summers and Ghost Sightings 

Summer is drawing near. What does that really mean, though? The sea? Fireworks? Watermelons? No, summer is all about ghost sightings. If you unravel my family lineage, you’ll find that we’re a lineage of Shinto priests. Well, at least, it was like that until my great-grandfather’s generation. Now, I don’t know if that has anything to do with what I’m about to say, but I do have a few ghost stories, and this time, I would like to introduce them to you... 
#1: 
It happened on a warm summer night. A friend and I were walking out of a convenience store, and there was a lone woman walking ahead of us. 
Seems like a pretty generic situation, doesn’t it? You can almost imagine her getting scared by our presence and running away. I didn’t want that to happen, so I purposely slowed down, but my friend kept walking at the same pace as before, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he caught up to the woman. 
Read the situation, I thought as I looked forward... and realized that the woman wasn’t there anymore. It was a path without any corners or turns. There were only walls without any openings that fenced off houses. 
I asked the friend where the woman went, and his reply stunned at me... 
“Huh? What’re you talking about? There was no one there.” 
Really, it made a massive chill run down my spine. 
#2: 
This also happened on a warm summer night. I was out for a drive with a friend of mine back then. We stopped at a red light, and when I glanced outside, I saw a cat minding its own business in some dark bushes. 
It wasn’t a normal cat, mind you... It was transparent. Not completely, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen it. It was transparent in the sense that it looked like it was made of glass. I could only really make out its outline and eyes. After noticing my gaze, the cat slowly vanished into the bushes. I remember the traffic signal turning green and the car starting to move while I was still petrified. Just what in the world was that? 

#3: 
This is the scariest one... Yet again, it was a warm summer night, but this time I was having trouble sleeping. Before I knew it, my body became immobile. It was sleep paralysis. My consciousness was clear, but I couldn’t move even a single finger. 
My vision was strange, as well. I was actually looking down at myself as I lied down in a six tatami size room. My hazy mind figured that it might’ve been an out-of-body experience. 
This is bad. Very bad, I thought, but my consciousness suddenly returned to my body. Still, even then, I was immobile. At best, I could only slightly open my eyes. And that’s... when it happened. 
While I was in bed, unable to move, I started hearing footsteps next to my ears. It sounded like the uniform march of an infantry unit. 
The apartment I lived at the time was right next to a road, and there was an old military burial site not too far away. 
Remembering that made a cold sweat run down my brow, but all I heard was the footsteps of many army boots. They seemed to be unaware of me, and they just passed me by while moving at the same pace. 
After a period of time that felt both short and long, the footsteps grew distant and eventually faded. Eventually, I got up and realized that I was soaked in sweat. That was the first and only time I experienced sleep paralysis. 
All three of those events happened when I was between 18 and 22 years old. Since then, as I grew older, such experiences became far less frequent. 
Now that I’ve shared something like this with you, I’ll have you know that I am quite a coward. I absolutely hate ghost stories, and watching horror films is impossible for me. However, even though I’m certainly relieved about the decrease in sightings, a part of me is somewhat sad. 
Well, let’s see what this summer brings...