Post by Mystic Wanderer on Dec 24, 2014 8:06:56 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/12/the-haunted-doll-of-hokkaido/
The story of the so-called Okiku doll starts in 1918, when a 17 year old boy by the name of Eikichi Suzuki purchased a doll for his 2 year old sister, Okiku, as a souvenir while visiting Saporro, on the Japanese island of Hokkaido for a marine exhibition. The doll itself was around 40cm (16 inches) tall and clad in a traditional Japanese kimono. Its eyes are black beads set within the life-like porcelain white face, and the black hair is in a traditional style cut shoulder length. Eikichi immediately knew his sister would love it and bought it right away. The overjoyed little girl was smitten with the doll, and played with it every day, even going so far as to name it after herself, Okiku. The two were reportedly inseparable and went everywhere together until tragedy struck the following year and Okiku fell gravely ill. The girl soon died from complications of severe influenza and fever, and the mourning family placed her beloved doll in a family altar in memory of their daughter.
Before long, the hair had grown all the way down to the doll’s knees. This caused the family to conclude that Okiku’s spirit had somehow inhabited the doll.
In 1938, the Suzuki family moved to Sakhalin but was wary of taking the mysterious doll with them. Since they believed that their daughter’s spirit resided within the doll, they were unwilling to discard it and so they instead brought it to Mannenji temple, in the town of Iwamizawa, Hokkaido, Japan. The family explained the doll’s unusual qualities to the priest of the temple, yet he accepted it anyway and soon was able to see for himself that indeed the doll’s hair continued to grow. Trimming the hair became a regular chore at the temple, and soon pictures of the doll with hair of various lengths were adorning the shrine where it was kept.
The haunted Okiku doll has become quite famous throughout Japan.
Samples of the doll's hair have been taken and analyzed in the past and it was concluded it actually was human.
