Stories Fables Ghostly Tales Podcast

On the morning of April 23, 1994, a park cleaner in Inokashira Park opened a utility trash container expecting ordinary market waste, only to find a severed human foot inside a translucent blue plastic bag. Within hours, police recovered twenty-seven separate body parts distributed across twenty-seven public trash bins—each piece meticulously cut to an exact length of twenty centimetres, drained completely of blood, and scrubbed clean.
Despite deploying over 110,000 police officers, investigating countless leads, and uncovering forensic perfection that defied normal criminal behaviour, two-thirds of the victim's body—including his head and internal organs—were never found. The case eventually hit the statute of limitations, leaving investigators staring into an absolute void.
In this episode, we explore the chilling Inokashira Park dismemberment and pair it with the ancient Japanese myth of the Noppera-bō (The Faceless Phantom)—examining how a human predator wiped away a man's face, identity, and record from history, leaving behind a blank, featureless slate.
Unique Facts About This Case

The killer cut every single body part to an exact length of 20 centimeters specifically because that was the precise width of the trash can slots in the park.

The remains were so thoroughly drained of blood and treated that investigators found no bloodstains inside the plastic bags or the bins where they were left.

To this day, two-thirds of the victim's body—including his face, skull, and internal organs—have never been recovered.

Thank you for listening legends...
Stay curious...
Stay a little scared...
And whatever you do... if you pass a stranger in the dark tonight... don't look too closely at their face.
Have a great week ahead legends! 💀

⚠ CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains extensive, highly detailed accounts of real-world serial murder, financial exploitation, the complete thermal destruction of human remains, and themes of animal cruelty. Listener discretion is absolutely mandatory.
Welcome back to Stories Fables Ghostly Tales. Tonight, we present The Art of Transparency: The Saitama Dog Lover Murders — Japan, 1993.
Deep within the mountain passes of Saitama Prefecture, a remote wooden hut once hid a factory of absolute non-existence. We pull back the friendly, commercial facade of a luxury pet breeding kennel to dissect a terrifying pattern of cold-blooded, economically driven slaughter.
🎧 The Case: Making Men Invisible
In 1993, the charismatic operator of the Africa Kennel, Gen Sekine and his cold, analytical partner, Hiroko Kazama , found themselves drowning in millions of yen of bubble-era debt. Their solution was chillingly simple: make their creditors and business rivals completely "transparent." Utilizing a lethal veterinary compound mixed into polite health tonics, they killed their victims in minutes, dismembered the remains, incinerated the tissue to powder, and hammered the bones to dust before casting them into mountain rivers. They believed that without a body, there was no crime—until forensic teams literally began sifting the riverbeds for tooth shards.
🐕 The Myth: The Volatile Fury of the Hound
The cold, predatory architecture of this modern kennel crime perfectly mirrors a forbidden, ancient folk sorcery from Japan's rural past: the invocation of the Inugami . Born from an act of unspeakable human cruelty—starving a hound and severing its head at the absolute peak of its fury—this invisible dog-spirit was bound to households to destroy competitors and generate immense, illicit wealth. But the folklore carries a terrifying trap. The Inugami obeys only out of constraint, and if the master's willpower slips or their greed becomes too bloated, the curse turns entirely inward, consuming the family until they descend into madness.
Did Gen Sekine truly master the art of non-existence, or did the ancient malice of the kennel jar simply turn around to bite back?
Hit play, sit back, and get comfortable.
And remember... if you see a ripple of heat moving through a freezing fog... don't assume you're walking alone.
Stay curious.
Stay a little scared.
Goodnight. 💀

⚠ CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains detailed descriptions of a real-world serial crime involving children, systemic judicial failure, and heavy themes of unresolved communal grief. It also contains an extended discussion of traditional Japanese supernatural folklore. Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Welcome back to Stories Fables Ghostly Tales. Tonight, we present The Reeds of Twilight: The North Kanto Serial Child Murders — Japan, 1979–1996.
Along the gravel bars and misty lowlands of the Watarase River valley, there is a weight that standard criminology cannot seem to lift. We step into the dense river fog of the North Kanto plain to dissect a harrowing cross-prefectural mystery, a devastating failure of justice, and the ancient folklore that steps in when the living choose silence.
🎧 The Case: The Wolf in the Valley
Between 1979 and 1996, within a tiny, suffocating radius of just twenty kilometres along this river valley, five young girls vanished. Hunted from the neon distraction of local pachinko parlours and quiet neighbourhood parks, their stories were ultimately buried under the paperwork of a false conviction. For seventeen years, the state kept an innocent man behind bars to protect institutional face—leaving the real predator to walk the river roads completely free.
🌾 The Myth: The Unyielding Weight of the Mother
When a catastrophic loss is systematically ignored by the world of the living, the old stories say that energy curdles. It pools in the low boundaries where land meets water. Enter the Ubume—the mourning mother spirit of Japanese folklore. She stands in the high reeds at twilight, begging passers-by to hold her swaddled bundle. But what feels like a child quickly turns to solid iron. It is the literal, crushing mass of unresolved grief, anchoring the unprotected to the mud.
From modern logistics truck drivers experiencing sudden, atmospheric engine stalls on the Route 51 bridge to elderly fishermen encountering white silhouettes in the pre-dawn mist, we ask: Has the Watarase River valley generated its own manifestation of forgotten justice?
Hit play, sit back, and get comfortable.
And remember... if the air near the river turns to stone... don't assume you're walking alone.
Stay curious.
Stay a little scared.
Goodnight. 💀

G'day Tale Tellers and fans of Japanese True Crime! 👋
Thank you to my Patreon Supporters! Support me here: https://www.patreon.com/SFGT
New episode is live right now — and this one hit differently while I was writing it.
Tonight we're going to a mountain village in Japan called Kaio [KAH-ee-oh].
On the night of the 20th of May, 1938, a twenty-one-year-old man named Mutsuo Toi [MOOT-soo-oh TOH-ee] walked through that village with a rifle, two shotguns, and a sword...
He had a torch strapped to his head.
So that the people he was coming for could see his face.
In ninety minutes, he killed thirty people. Then he walked to a hillside at the edge of the village, sat down, and cut his own throat.
He left a note.
The note explained everything...
And that — more than anything else — is what makes this case so deeply unsettling. Because Mutsuo Toi wasn't chaotic. He wasn't random. He had a list, and the village that had known him his entire life was on it.
Todays episode of crime and myth covers the following:
🔍 The full true crime story — a tuberculosis diagnosis, social exile, a diary that tracked his descent in chilling detail, and ninety minutes that ended thirty lives
🏚️ What happened to Kaio after that night — the emptying, the silence, the overgrown cemetery that almost nobody visits anymore
👁️ The witness accounts from the mountain roads near the site — the ones that don't have easy explanations
💀 The Gashadokuro [GAH-shah-doh-KOO-roh] — the ancient Japanese creature born specifically from mass death and the silence that follows it — and why this case fits that mythology in a way that genuinely unsettled me while writing it
The first part of the episode is free to listen to below — you'll hear the cold open and Act One, which sets the scene and takes you into the world Mutsuo Toi was born into.
One last thing before you listen...
The old stories say the Gashadokuro is born not just from the dead, but from the silence afterward. From the failure of the living to acknowledge what happened.
Kaio has been silent for a long time.
Stay curious. Stay a little scared.
— THE TALE TELLER
SOURCES & FURTHER READING:
Tsuyama Massacre — Okayama Prefecture historical records (1938).
Toi, M. — Personal diary and farewell note, examined in Japanese criminology literature.
Kwaidan (Hearn, L., 1904) — Classic English-language source on Japanese folklore including Gashadokuro traditions.
Foster, M. — The Book of Yokai (2015) — Comprehensive academic study of Japanese supernatural creatures.
Reider, N. — Japanese Demon Lore (2010) — Gashadokuro origin traditions.
Okayama local history archives — Kaio village records (partial).

G'day everyone! And Happy Weekend! 👋
New episode is UP — and honestly? This one has been sitting with me for weeks.
This episode we're covering the Sada Abe case. If you're not familiar — in May 1936, a woman named Sada Abe walked out of a Tokyo inn, through the city, bought new clothes, ate meals, read the newspaper coverage of her own crime... and didn't run. Not really.
What she left behind in that room, and what she took with her, made her one of the most infamous figures in Japanese history. What happened to her after she was released from prison — where she went, how she lived, whether she's even still alive — nobody knows. She just... stopped existing in any record.
No death certificate. No grave. No confirmed sighting after 1970.
This episode goes deep on:
🔍 The full true crime story — Pre-war Tokyo, the affair, the investigation, the trial!
🗾 Why Japanese society made her into a legend instead of just a criminal!
👁️ The Jorōgumo — the ancient spider spirit of Japanese folklore, and why it fits this case in a way that genuinely unsettled me while writing it
📍 The unexplained sightings. The waterfall. The old woman nobody could account for.
The first part of the episode is free to listen to below — you'll get the cold open and Act One, which covers Sada's background and the world that made her.
As always — stay curious, stay a little scared.
— The Tale Teller
SOURCES & FURTHER READING:
Sato, M. — investigative reporting on Sada Abe post-release (1970, various Japanese publications).
Oshima, N. — In the Realm of the Senses (1976) — cinematic treatment; note: legally restricted in Japan.
Pflugfelder, G. — Cartographies of Desire (1999) — academic context on prewar Japanese sexuality.
Reider, N. — Japanese Demon Lore (2010) — Jorōgumo mythology in depth.
Original police interrogation transcripts (partial) — held at National Diet Library, Tokyo.
#StoriesFablesGhostlyTales #TrueCrime #JapaneseTrueCrime #SadaAbe #JapaneseHistory #TrueCrimePodcast #Horror #JapaneseHorror #Patreon