Suicide Forest
By: Jeremy Bates
I just want to give a quick word of caution that this book and the attached review contain mature context that involves serious subjects such as suicide and depression.
When a group of friends are forced by predicted weather to cancel their plans of climbing Mt. Fuji, they change their destination to make the most of their trip. How can you pass off the chance to spend the night in a haunted forest? Aokigahara Forest aka Sea of Trees aka Suicide Forest... (The answer is that you always should pass the chance, BUT that’s just my humble opinion!) Just a few hours into their hike, they realize they might have made a mistake going off the trail. Night comes and they hold down their base, but when one of them goes missing in the morning, the group begin to wonder if they aren’t alone out there. Things start to go missing and strange voices are heard. T
Turned around and filled with panic, seven went in, how many will come out?
Ethan tells his story as he explores the Suicide Forest. He has struggled with thoughts of suicide himself after the accidental death of his older brother a few years back. To escape his past, he moved to Tokyo from the States, to teach English to Japanese businessmen. During his time in Toyko, he met and fell in love with another American, Mel, who had her own dark past she wanted to escape from. During their time in the forest, they have to come to terms with their current situation and what their plans would be in the near future, that is if they make it out of the forest alive.
I really enjoyed how the actual history and culture of the Aokigahara Forest were used to influence the tone and mood of this horror story. Although the tale itself is fiction, many have experienced similar encounters during their time in the forest. What started off as a horror story with a paranormal twist, I was pleasantly surprised by how the story developed and kept a logical hold on reality. Even with the personalities of the characters, you had the believer, the skeptic, the one that converts, and the one in the middle that neither believes nor denies the possibility of the supernatural being at play in the horrible events that befall them.
The adventure takes place over the course of three days, and in that short period of time, you can see character development and how something like death can impact a person’s perspective on life. Even at the very end of the book, in the epilogue, the survivors show the side effects of making it out alive and having to keep living after such a horrible event. Death haunts people, and no matter what you do or how you live your life, one day it will come and collect what it is due. Death is not prodigious or plays favoritism. All it takes to die, is to be alive.
This might be the first horror book I’ve ever read. Being a huge wuss hasn’t really allowed me to explore the genre very much. Especially when watching films, I can almost survive gore but suspense gives me a heart attack every time. I was hoping that reading horror would be less stressful but I was very wrong. Personally, I felt one of the challenges for me was the fact that I had to force myself to keep reading. While watching a movie, it plays on whether you are watching or not, so if things ever got too much to handle I could just hide behind a pillow until the moment passes.
Another challenge that I had while reading this book might be the small tiny itty bitty fact that it is based on a real-life location with a real history of such horrors occurring. Aokigahara Forest is considered a forbidden place by the locals. In the older days, families that were struggling to keep food on the table would bring their elderly or sickly to the forest and leave them there to die. This act was called Ubasute, and because of these horrible acts, many there believe the forest to be haunted by the angry souls of those left to die.
It wasn’t until more modern times that suicide became part of this naturally eerie forest’s reputation. Social and financial pressures have replaced starvation as the cause that lured the desperate to its trees. With Japan having one of the highest suicide percentages in the world, it is insane to learn that forest rangers discover and remove about 70 – 100 bodies a year from the Aokigahara Forest.
[In the pictures taken above, you can see it wouldn't take much off the path to get lost in the tangled trees that grow over the volcanic landscape that rests at the feet of Mt. Fuji.]
The trees are so densely packed that wind doesn’t penetrate them, causing a silence that has been described as deafening and nerve wrecking. Wildlife is almost non-existent. Volunteers and hikers alike use ribbons to mark their path so they don’t get fatally lost. Most go in with the intention of not coming back out. If you do decide to go hiking there one day, don’t stay in the forest after dark, and for your own safety and sanity, stay on the path. If you choose to break either rule, know you will see something you might never be able to forget for as long as you live.
Because of the realism of human behavior and the instinct I felt these characters showed during the story, I have to admire the use of facts and historical sites woven inside of it which brought it to life. It made me question if this could actually be a true story. 3.8 out of 5 stars for me. (Mostly because I couldn’t sleep after I finished the book!)
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