History NightmareFuel / JunjiIto

** The ending. The mother now lives in seclusion, cutting herself off from the rest of the world with bandages wrapped around her head and face. The younger sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the protagonist, [[https://i.imgur.com/wYDcafU_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium the horrible peeling gave her a new base, and she isn't growing back the same way. And she still seems be of her two-year-old mind, thus indicating that her old self, her entire personhood, has been completely destroyed.]]

* "Thousands Alone":

* "Army Of One":

** The ending. The mother now lives in seclusion, cutting herself off from the rest of the world with bandages wrapped around her head. The younger sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the protagonist, [[https://i.imgur.com/wYDcafU_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium the horrible peeling gave her a new base, and she isn't growing back the same way. And she still seems be of her two-year-old mind, thus indicating that her old self, her entire personhood, has been completely destroyed.]]

** Then there the FridgeHorror: Since the size of affected groups keeps increasing, who's to say that eventually entire cities and countries won't be targeted? We may very well be looking at an apocalypse, but unlike the apocalypse in another Junji Ito's story, this one happens ''very'' slowly and gives the survivors a lot of time to contemplate their imminent demise.

** Then there the FridgeHorror: As the number of target crowds starts increasing, who's to say that entire cities and even countries won't be targeted next? We may very well be looking at a Junji Ito story where the apocalypse is imminent.

* "Army Of One" is about people that are apparently murdered (without a single evidence of the perpetrator) and then sewed. From only two people being sewed, it went to six, twelve, around fifty, then around one hundred, and then the record was topped gloriously with ''FIVE FREAKING HUNDRED CORPSES SEWN TOGETHER''. Just imagine waking up one morning, waiting to enjoy the holiday, only to find parts of the city furnished with hundreds of naked corpses sewn together to look like different kinds of Christmas decorations. There are even a few of them sewn on the Christmas trees.

* "Army Of One" is about people that are apparently murdered (without a single evidence of the perpetrator) and then sewed. From only two people being sewed, it went to six, twelve, around fifty, then around one hundred, and then the record was topped gloriously with ''FIVE FREAKING HUNDRED CORPSES SEWN TOGETHER''.
* Just imagine waking up one morning, waiting to enjoy the holiday, only to find parts of the city furnished with hundreds of naked corpses sewn together to look like different kinds of Christmas decorations. There are even a few of them sewn on the Christmas trees.

** Just imagine waking up one morning, waiting to enjoy the holiday, only to find [[spoiler: parts of the city furnished with hundreds of naked corpses sewn together to look like different kinds of Christmas decorations. There are even a few of them sewn on the Christmas trees, damnit!]]

* If you were to look at the chained monstrosity in "Mystery Pavillion", you would think it was the hideous offspring between a bird and an EldritchAbomination. The reality will make you wish this was the case. It's actually a hideous genetically modified now-extinct pelican in the future.
** If that's not bad enough, the monster [[spoiler: eats two onlookers. The man running the pavilion orders the beast to spit them out, which it does, but it's too late for the victims; as soon as they hit the ground, they start MELTING. And they're still alive.]]

* "Layers of Fear". Thanks to a curse, a young woman is revealed to have layers of her previous skin under her normal skin, structured in layers like a nesting doll. This appeals to her creepy mother, obsessed with babying her daughter and yearning for the old days of parenting a helpess child. [[spoiler: Hoping she can peel off the layers and get her baby daughter back after calling her out of the past layers' consciousnesses, she begins to cut away. Sure enough, her two-year-old face is there... [[https://i.imgur.com/ddVJPyD_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium but due to the alterations of natural growth, not her two-year-old body.]]]]
** The protagonist is also affected by this curse, [[spoiler: [[https://i.imgur.com/uF1sBAV_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium having several layers of teeth.]]]]
** The mother also [[spoiler:is in belief that she too is afflicted by the curse, and thinks she can return to a younger age and rebirth her daughter. She is not cursed, and ends up just ''cutting off her face''.]]
** The accident towards the beginning of the story. We see part of the sister’s [[spoiler:face hanging off the side of the sign that cut her. Brrrrr...]]
** The ending. [[spoiler:The mother now lives in seclusion, cutting herself off from the rest of the world with bandages wrapped around her head. The younger sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the protagonist, [[https://i.imgur.com/wYDcafU_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium the horrible peeling gave her a new base, and she isn't growing back the same way. And she still seems be of her two-year-old mind, thus indicating that her old self, her entire personhood, has been completely destroyed.]]]]

* "The Bully". A girl who bullies a kid marries him as an adult, but then the man leaves her alone with their child as a form of revenge. However, her son is a splitting image of the man when he was a kid and it triggers some...happy memories. [[spoiler: In the end, the woman, wearing clothes she wore as a kid, is implied to do what she did to her husband to her son.]] It's even more terrifying when you realize that this could happen in real life.
* "The Long Hair in the Attic". A young woman's boyfriend breaks up with her, deciding that even though she tried her best for him they just don't belong together. Depressed, she falls asleep, only to wake up and find a ''dead mouse entangled in her hair.'' She washes it out and decides to cut it all off, especially since her ex is the one who convinced her to grow it out. [[spoiler: After her sister runs to grab her some scissors, she returns to find ''her headless body'' in the bathroom. The neighbors are concerned about a killer on the loose, but the truth is even worse. Her hair had decapitated her and crawled up to the attic, where it sits and waits until it's disturbed by her sister and their father looking for more mice. The hair, still with the woman's head attached, slithers out of the house and through the streets toward the ex's house. The story ends with him screaming in horror as the hair begins forcing its way through cracks in the walls.]]
** The ex is awoken by a phone call in the middle of the night, but all that comes through on the other end is a weird grinding noise. He thinks it's a dumb way for to get back at him and hangs up, [[spoiler: only to remember that it can't be her, since [[WhamLine she died a week ago.]] He wonders why he thought it was her...and remembers that the noise was one always she made when grinding her teeth.]]

* ''The Bully''. A girl who bullies a kid marries him as an adult, but then the man leaves her alone with their child as a form of revenge. However, her son is a splitting image of the man when he was a kid and it triggers some...happy memories. [[spoiler: In the end, the woman, wearing clothes she wore as a kid, is implied to do what she did to her husband to her son.]] It's even more terrifying when you realize that this could happen in real life.

** The ending. [[spoiler:The younger sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the protagonist, [[https://i.imgur.com/wYDcafU_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium the horrible peeling gave her a new base, and she isn't growing back the same way. And she still seems be of her two-year-old mind, thus indicating that her old self, her entire personhood, has been completely destroyed.]]]]

[[quoteright:293:[[Manga/{{Uzumaki}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Uzumaki_Mosquitos_4726.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:293:These women know the [[IncrediblyLamePun ''drill'']].]]

** "NightmareFuel/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault"

** The protagonist is also affected by this curse, [[spoiler: [[https://i.imgur.com/uF1sBAV_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium having ''several'' layers of teeth.]]]]

** The ending. [[spoiler:The younger sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the protagonist, [[https://i.imgur.com/wYDcafU_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium the horrible peeling gave her a new base, and she isn't growing back the same way. And she still seems be of her two-year-old mind, thus indicating that her old self, her ''personhood'', has been completely destroyed.]]]]

* "Layers of Fear". Thanks to a curse, a young woman is revealed to have layers of her previous skin under her normal skin, structured in layers like a nesting doll. This appeals to her creepy mother, obsessed with babying her daughter and yearning for the old days of parenting a helpess child. [[spoiler: Hoping she can peel off the layers and get her baby daughter back after calling her out of the past layers' consciousnesses, she begins to cut away. Sure enough, her two-yesr-old face is there... [[https://i.imgur.com/ddVJPyD_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium but due to the alterations of natural growth, not her two-year-old body.]]]]

** The ending. [[spoiler:The sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the sister, [[https://i.imgur.com/wYDcafU_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium the horrible peeling gave her a new base, and she isn't growing back the same way. And she still seems be of her two-year-old mind, thus indicating that her old self, her ''personhood'', has been completely destroyed.]]]]

Creator/JunjiIto's so very ''good'' at this he warrants a page for all of his works and even needs this one for the miscellany.

Creator/JunjiIto's so very ''good'' at this he warrants a page all his own.

* NightmareFuel/BlackParadox
* NightmareFuel/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault
* NightmareFuel/{{Gyo}}
* NightmareFuel/LovesickDead
* NightmareFuel/HellstarRemina
* NightmareFuel/MimisGhostStories
* NightmareFuel/{{Tomie}}
* NightmareFuel/{{Uzumaki}}

* "The Bully" starts with a sweet woman telling about how, when she was much younger, she [[KidsAreCruel bullied a younger boy]] his mom trusted her to play with. She hurt him physically and psychologically, but he stuck around because he remembered how nice she once was to him and seemed to think she'd go back to being that way around him. As adults, the girl and the boy meet, fall in love, and get married. After having a son though, the guy goes off to work and never comes home. The woman does her best to be a single mom, but the stress makes her start to build up anger towards her son. She then notices that the son is the spitting image of the guy as a child, prompting her to dress up like she did as a child and begin subjecting him to the same horrific bullying. It's one long [[AdultFear child abuse]] story. What may be the worst part is that there's nothing supernatural at all. With things like ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'', you can rest easier in the knowledge that that could never happen in real life. But with The Bully? That actually COULD happen.
** Even more chilling is the woman's theory on why her husband left her alone with the child; [[TheChessmaster he was never actually in love with her and this was his plan for revenge all along.]]

** Just imagine waking up one morning, waiting to enjoy the holiday, only to find [[spoiler: parts of the city furnished with hundreds of naked corpses sewn together to look like different kinds of Christmas decorations. There are even a few of them sewn on the Christmas Trees, damnit!]]
* In "Splatter Film", the protagonists get addicted to eating honey that their friend brought back from South America. You can eat normal food after you try the honey, but everything else tastes "like shit" compared to it. You're either never satisfied with food again, or you risk being splattered to death at any arbitrary moment you're eating the honey. You'd think people being splattered flat like a pancake would be funny, but... it's not. It's revealed at the end that the honey isn't actually honey but [[spoiler: sap from an enormous, moving tree in the Amazon. The tree has huge, flytrap-like branches that move around like tentacles, and can somehow ''sense'' when anyone, ANYWHERE, is eating its sap and teleports its limbs to squash whoever's doing it. It's impossible to hide from it.]]
* From ''Voices in the Dark'', "The Dark Drinks Blood". A body that is torn to shreds, and the parts scattered all around, should guarantee death, right? Well, not if you have a [[BatOutOfHell swarm of bats]] to act as your circulatory system.
** "Ghosts of Golden Time": They'll kill you... with tickles! If you're very ticklish, this story can indeed be horrifying. Especially since it's actually ''true'' that you can die from laughing too hard (basically, if you don't get enough breath between laughs, you suffocate) or too long (you can't rest, eat, or drink properly while laughing. Death by exhaustion is most likely in this case). Being tickled to death might sound like {{Narm}}, but it ''is'' possible.
* From ''New Voices in the Dark'', "Anything But a Ghost". Being possessed by ghosts really can suck...but you start to feel sorry for them when [[spoiler: your [[ImAHumanitarian girlfriend eats them]].]] Worse yet, [[spoiler: they bleed. [[{{Gorn}} A lot]]. And she very obviously plans on eating ''your'' ghost when you die, and is so eager to eat you that she sits there, watching you with wide eyes, just waiting for you to stop breathing...]]
* In "Hell 'o Dollies", a disease that [[CreepyDoll turns children into dolls]] starts spreading, which is bad enough. The [[BodyHorror worst part]] comes when you don't dispose of their body. [[http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/38200000/Hell-O-Dollies-riku114-38230127-351-500.jpg You can see it here if you have a strong enough stomach.]] Both a case of horror and TearJerker in regards to the parents' reaction to their daughter contracting the disease. Imagine a loved one suffering from an illness that first causes paralysis and then [[spoiler:causes horrible growths to form all over the body]]. Now imagine there's nothing that can be done to ease their suffering except for death.
* If you're afraid of the sea or deep-sea creatures, "The Thing That Drifted Ashore" will surely make you shiver. Now, consider what they found inside the creature. Now, [[FridgeHorror consider that the thing, whatever it was, probably isn't the only one in the ocean.]] The chapter also alludes to the possibility of even creepier creatures. Now, as creepy as the sea creature is, it's not even the real horror of the story. [[spoiler:The main horror is what's inside the creature - the still-living survivors of a shipwreck who have been living for years INSIDE THE CREATURE LIKE HUMAN PARASITES, feeding off the creature itself and being driven mad both by their horrifying situation and the things they see through the creatures translucent skin. By the time they're released when the creature dies and washing up on shore, they're raving, screaming madmen.]]
* "Flesh Colored Horror" starts off creepily enough by introducing a [[CreepyChild little kindergartner]] named Chikara with a bad skin condition who attacks his school mates out of resentment. But then we get the [[BodyHorror real reasons]] behind his skin condition, and it just gets worse from there. [[spoiler: Turns out the kid's mama and auntie have been experimenting on themselves and their own skins, and they've reached a point where they could successfully jump in and out of 'em like clothing. And now they've been researching for ways to do the same to junior, explaining his scars. Why? Because the mother believes that the human body, sans skin, is the most beautiful thing in the world, so she wants to spread her twisted sense of beauty to her child.]] One of the more unsettling scenes is [[spoiler: after Chikara destroys his mother's skin. Realizing how screwed she is without it, she decides to "borrow" her sister's. By basically ripping her face off. And then Chikara defends his aunt. How? By grabbing his mother's leg muscles and ripping them apart. Ugh.]]
* "Den of the Sleep Demon". Here's a riddle: what's worse than a body turning inside out? The answer: [[spoiler:a body turning inside out and swallowing another body in the process.]]
* "The City Without Streets":
** First off, there's dream the protagonist has of a Jack the Ripper-type guy who breaks into her room and kills a boy who has a crush on her.
** Second off, there's the absurd escalation of the main character's fear of losing her privacy and how her family goes to enormous lengths to spy on her and lie about it.
** Things get much worse once she enters the runs away to the titular town, There's the ''strange ones''[[note]]who are people with deformed oblong heads with lots of eyes. Too many of them.[[/note]], who are, of course, depicted in good ol' Junji Ito levels of detail. Then there's the way everyone in the city just sort of accepted the absurd situation with the buildings taking over an entire section of the city, because there was nothing they could do, since anything that was torn down was just rebuilt again. It borders on Kafka-esque. Finally, [[spoiler:a kind man in a mask who had helped guide her through the city turns out to be the same man who appeared in her dream and killed the boy in her room. And he had gone into her room to kill ''her'' while she slept, and only was kept from doing so because he was there, leading him to kill the guy out of frustration.]] Even worse, there's really ''no'' reason for this guy to be in the story. [[spoiler:He's around in both the girl's old life and the strange city, so it's hard to know ''what'' is going on with him!]]
* In "Honored Ancestors", the protagonist Risa loses her memory, but she keeps having a nightmare about being attacked by a giant caterpillar monster. However, it turns out it wasn't a nightmare, and there was no caterpillar. [[spoiler:What really happened was that when she visited her boyfriend Shuichi's ailing father, she saw that his ancestors' scalps were still attached to his head alive and fully capable of thought and feeling.]] After the father dies, [[spoiler:the scalps attach themselves to Shuichi's head and tell him to chase after Risa so she can bear his child and continue the family line. It seems to imply that Shuichi plans on raping Risa while she's [[GoMadFromTheRevelation mentally collapsed to the point of jibbering]] with a blank look on her face. Or at the very least, he plans on having her in a constant cycle of mental breakdowns and amnesia to [[IHaveYouNowMyPretty facilitate their marriage.]]]]
* "The Long Dream". In Mukoda's mind, he's lived for thousands- no, [[WhoWantsToLiveForever MILLIONS]]- of years, every night lasting exponentially longer than the last. After several days, one night of sleep is enough to wipe all his memories of the waking world. And then he ages, or evolves, into [[spoiler: [[BodyHorror something resembling a gray mixed with a harlequin fetus]], which crumbles into dust soon after.]] It then begins happening to the woman with the fear of mortality as well, and it's revealed that the main character found these odd crystals in the remains of Mukoda's skull, presumably the state his brain had evolved into, and used them as medication on the woman.
* "Hanging Blimp" is the surreal story in which giant floating heads of people start hanging them by nooses under the necks. One shocktastic scene is when [[spoiler:Kazuko and her friend Chiharu escape being hung by ducking into an alley. A man who lives in the house next to it sees the giant faces floating and shoots Chiharu's balloon head with a crossbow. The giant face deflates... and so does Chiharu's face, in a gruesome display]]. And no, that's not the end of the story yet.
** It gets more downright horrifying and disturbing on the doppelganger balloons' side. Capable of mimicry and are very devious along with the side of being resourceful. The fact that nobody can actually cause harm to a "balloon" without causing death to another (Or in most cases their own owners since the balloons home in on just the sight of their original victim's that they're based off of) and to be relentlessly hounded by them throughout the duration to the point of exhaustion... It's one of Itou's many stories where you can feel the entrapment and the helplessness of the atmospheric world that he's crafted, where you can't fight back and no matter where you go... they're always looming overhead.
* "The Window Next Door" loses no time by already featuring a creepy opening illustration. Then it gets worse. Wait until the old lady next door actually appears...
* "The Ice Cream Bus". A father and his son just moved to a new apartment complex that is visited by an ice cream truck every Saturday night. The driver of the truck gives the children free ice cream and takes them on a drive around the neighborhood before bringing them back. Sounds charming right? [[spoiler:That is until the father lets his son go on the truck as well. One time he even catches a glimpse of what is going on in the truck and sees the kids licking huge mounds of ice cream. The scary part? The ice cream mounds are really the MELTED BODIES of the kids. Turns out the more ice cream the kids eat, the more their body becomes ice cream. It gets worse! Near the end, the father catches his son licking piles of ice cream-that used to his friends mind you- and is naturally horrified. He tries to stop his son, but ends up knocking off his head in the process!]]
* "Greased" could be Ito's most [[NauseaFuel repulsive]] story, [[SerialEscalation and that says a lot]]. It's full of downright sickening moments, but one scene - that involves horrible acne - takes the cake. Try finishing the story without taking a break or even without swallowing hard once.
* Binzo Tsuji, master of the NightmareFace. It all started when our [[ComedicSociopath nail-biting]] [[ButtMonkey antagonist Souichi]] met his future "[[MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily wife]]", a man-eating nightmare of a woman. The result was Binzo, a [[EnfantTerrible monstrous child]] that [[CerebusRetcon removes all comedic sympathy]] for childish Souichi. The fact that he [[spoiler: [[MoralEventHorizon fed his parents to his own son out of neglect]] and has no remorse whatsoever for the deaths of so many others by the monster child further justifies his [[KarmicDeath demise by his wife's hunger as a statement of poetic justice.]]]] Of course, its all eventually revealed to be a dream by Soichi himself.
* In "Secret of the Haunted Mansion", we get to see Binzo [[spoiler: eating the lost policeman's leg.]]
* The short story "Slug Girl" is about a high school girl's whose close friend, Yuuko, one day develops a SpeechImpediment but refuses to explain why. When she visits her home the second time after Yuuko stops coming to school, she finds out why. [[spoiler: Her tongue transformed into a huge crawling slug. When she desperately tries to cut off the slimy new appendage with scissors, the offending mollusk grows back and continues to return no matter how hard she tries. When her parents try to put salt in her mouth, she spits it out as if she can't stand it. Eventually Yuuko's body slowly begins to wither away, since she can't control the slug so she can't eat anything, and as a last resort, her parents submerge her in a bathtub of salt hoping it would cure her condition. Instead, the rest of her body breaks down, leaving only her head which the parents wash down with water hoping it will grow back. However, the slug STILL DOESN'T DIE and just like a snail, the slug carries her head on its back like a snail and continues to slither around in the backyard while its "shell" will [[AndIMustScream stare at anyone nearby with the saddest gaze.]]]] What's more, it's mentioned that Yuuko was terrified of slugs. [[spoiler:Imagine having something you're phobic about ''inside your mouth'', attached to you!]]

* If you were to look at the chained monstrosity in Mystery Pavilion, you would think it was the hideous offspring between a bird and an EldritchAbomination. The reality will make you wish this was the case. It's actually a hideous genetically modified now-extinct pelican in the future.

* "Mold". The final shot of the protagonist [[spoiler: scratching the skin off his face, sitting alone in the dark, helpless to stop his body disintegrating as he repeats [[MadnessMantra "itchy ... itchy ..."]] With a bonus close-up of his rotting skin! He can't leave, even if his mind weren't under the influence of the mold, because his legs have been completely rooted to the ground by the fungus, and the mold has covered every exit.]] The image of the kids covered in mold is also pretty horrific, especially the girl, since we only see her eyes glinting in the dark and the bottom of her legs. Now, imagine what the rest of her looked like...
* "The Groaning Drain". The drain under the house of a clean-freak and her two daughters gets clogged and nothing will fix it. ''Then'' [[spoiler: the girls' father is killed by their mother when he sneaks into the house to see his daughters, leading to a lie about the mother using self-defense. The blood left by the father's body can't be scrubbed away. Shortly after this, a horrible stench starts to come from the drain, and they can hear it groaning, almost like a human. The younger sister puts her hand down the shower drain to unclog it and declares she's stuck, but the protagonist believes she's playing a trick. Even as the sister screams and begs for help all night, the protagonist thinks she's tricking her... And then she comes into the bathroom the next day to see her sister's leg sticking out of the shower drain, blood on the floor, as her sister has spent the entire night being ''slowly and agonizingly pulled into the drain.'']]
** And then there's the question of [[spoiler:how the guy got into the drain in the first place ...]]
** Even worse, [[spoiler:when the younger sister suspects that someone is hiding down there, her older sister tries to dispel the notion by pointing out that the drain is simply too small, and a human would somehow have to ''break their skull'' to fit inside. Now, consider what must have happened to the younger sister, as she was pulled head-first down the drain. Brrr...]]
* "The Supernatural Transfer Student". Human eyes growing out from flowers is bad enough, and that's before we see [[spoiler: Shibayama return as a gigantic, hideous, bloated, projectile-vomiting zombie.]]
* "The Back Alley". A student takes up a room on a boarding house. At night he's annoyed by the sounds of children playing on the alley next door. He manages to pull himself to the alley's wall to shout at the children, but it turns out the whole alley's sealed. Soon after, he hears the children calling for his landlady's daughter. Next morning, a man talks to him on the street, telling him that he stayed once at that very room, and that on the sealed alley, there's a bunch of bones belonging to a couple of kids and human silhouettes on the alley's wall, and he begs the student to see if he can confirm the story and report it to the police to put the bones to rest. The student finds a hidden window and a rope leading into the alley. Indeed, he finds the bones, but when he tries to go up again, he's knifed... [[spoiler: by the landlady's daughter, a SerialKiller obsessed with ruling over the alley, and who has killed two kids, two classmates and her own father and put them in there. The student falls and breaks his neck. As the girl goes down to toss him with the other corpses, the rope breaks, and it's her, the corpse and the shapes in the wall...]]

* "Dissection Girl". A woman stalks her former childhood friend (who is studying to be a doctor) and begs him to dissect her alive. It becomes clear at the end that there is more wrong with her than just her mental state. [[spoiler:Her "organs" are a still-living mass of flesh and various animal parts.]]
* "Shiver" will give anyone trypophobia. It's about a cursed jade statue that causes holes to appear on your body. And if that wasn't bad enough, you're constantly chilled when the wind blows through the holes and insects even swarm in them. [[spoiler: It's implied your only hope is to pass the curse onto someone else by having them take the statue, and it has to be done before it does enough to your body for its messenger, appearing as an eldery doctor, come to claim the victim.]]
* "Pen Pal". Much like the aforementioned ''The Bully'', what makes it so terrifying is just how utterly realistic the scenario is. In the story, recurring character Oshikiri decides to befriend a introverted girl named Satomi in the hopes that she'll someday be his girlfriend. He soon learns that her only friends are three pen pals from different parts of Japan. Things start to get worse when Satomi starts to get increasingly harsh and insulting letters from her friends. However, [[spoiler:Oshikiri soon learns that Satomi has actually been writing the letters to herself and is under the delusion her imaginary friends are real.]] It then escalates to the point where [[spoiler:Satomi ends up killing herself while screaming for her "friends" to stop killing her.]] [[{{Gyo}} Cyborg fish zombies]] and [[{{Tomie}} murderous lust-personifications]] are safely confined in the realms of fantasy. But, insanity caused by a severely isolated lifestyle? That can actually happen in real life. To make matters worse, Oshikiri is also [[spoiler:starting to hallucinate there's a doppelganger claiming to be the real him...though that's easily explained by the alternate-dimensional activity he frequently gets involved in.]]
* "The Woman Next Door": LighterAndSofter (insofar as there are no deaths that we know of), but it still encounters a young girl named Mimi encountering the titular WomanInBlack, her neighbor, who is ([[OnceAnEpisode of course]]) some kind of HumanoidAbomination. [[spoiler: [[NothingIsScarier The details aren't clear]], but somehow [[RedRightHand her limbs are made of sheet metal]], with the length adjustable with the use of screws. No, these aren't prosthetic either - her (gloved) hands and feet work just fine, and are fully functional with hinges. Nothing (aside from her limbs) is ever shown beneath her AllEncompassingMantle, but we ''do'' know that she has [[TheFaceless no face]]; the glasses, at least, are just for show. [[LeftHanging Who knows what her deal is, or what else she's got under her clothing...]]]] Definitely a case where the horror derives itself from a mixture of UncannyValley and sheer [[MindScrew What The Fuck-ery]].
** When Mimi moves into the apartment next to the woman's, she finds a tiny hole the previous occupant had used to spy on the woman. When Mimi takes a look, [[spoiler:she sees the woman adjusting her arm. Even worse, the woman hears Mimi gasping and ''extends her arm to reach through the hole to try to grab Mimi''! When Mimi uses a bookcase to cover the hole and locks the door to protect herself, the woman goes outside and extends herself so that she can ''climb in the window to get at Mimi''.]] Mimi faints shortly after and fortunately wakes up to find everything back to normal, but it's still terrifying to watch. Not to mention, [[spoiler:while nothing actually does happen, the idea of being unconscious while such a terrifying being can get at you]] is plenty horrifying.
* "Layers of Fear". A more recent work of Junji Ito. Thanks to a curse, a young woman is revealed to have layers of her previous skin under her normal skin, like a baumkuchen, as the mother puts it. Speaking of the mother, [[spoiler: she cuts off the skin of her daughter to hopefully hold her daughter, like when she was two. Surely enough, there is a face of a two year old in the mix... [[https://i.imgur.com/ddVJPyD_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium but not the body of one.]]]]

** The mother also [[spoiler:is in belief that she too is afflicted by curse. She is not, and ends up just ''cutting off her face''.]]

** The ending. [[spoiler:The sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the sister, [[https://i.imgur.com/wYDcafU_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium it didn’t grow in the exact same way.]]]]
** The fact that the older selves are still alive and override Reimi's agency when her mother calls out the baby self to get permission to let her out. She's apparently still back at the mental age of two by the end, and the destruction of her personhood is really unsettling.

* "Hanging Balloons" is the surreal story in which giant floating heads of people start hanging them by nooses under the necks. One shocktastic scene is when [[spoiler:Kazuko and her friend Chiharu escape being hung by ducking into an alley. A man who lives in the house next to it sees the giant faces floating and shoots Chiharu's balloon head with a crossbow. The giant face deflates... and so does Chiharu's face, in a gruesome display]]. And no, that's not the end of the story yet.

* In ''Splatter Film'', the protagonists get addicted to eating honey that their friend brought back from South America. You can eat normal food after you try the honey, but everything else tastes "like shit" compared to it. You're either never satisfied with food again, or you risk being splattered to death at any arbitrary moment you're eating the honey. You'd think people being splattered flat like a pancake would be funny, but... it's not. It's revealed at the end that the honey isn't actually honey but [[spoiler: sap from an enormous, moving tree in the Amazon. The tree has huge, flytrap-like branches that move around like tentacles, and can somehow ''sense'' when anyone, ANYWHERE, is eating its sap and teleports its limbs to squash whoever's doing it. It's impossible to hide from it.]]
* From "Voices in the Dark", "The Dark Drinks Blood". A body that is torn to shreds, and the parts scattered all around, should guarantee death, right? Well, not if you have a [[BatOutOfHell swarm of bats]] to act as your circulatory system.
** ''Ghosts of Golden Time'': they'll kill you... with tickles! If you're very ticklish, this story can indeed be horrifying. Especially since it's actually ''true'' that you can die from laughing too hard (basically, if you don't get enough breath between laughs, you suffocate) or too long (you can't rest, eat, or drink properly while laughing. Death by exhaustion is most likely in this case). Being tickled to death might sound like {{Narm}}, but it ''is'' possible.
* From "New Voices in the Dark", "Anything But a Ghost". Being possessed by ghosts really can suck...but you start to feel sorry for them when [[spoiler: your [[ImAHumanitarian girlfriend eats them]].]] Worse yet, [[spoiler: they bleed. [[{{Gorn}} A lot]]. And she very obviously plans on eating ''your'' ghost when you die, and is so eager to eat you that she sits there, watching you with wide eyes, just waiting for you to stop breathing...]]
* In Hell 'o Dollies, a disease that [[CreepyDoll turns children into dolls]] starts spreading, which is bad enough. The [[BodyHorror worst part]] comes when you don't dispose of their body. [[http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/38200000/Hell-O-Dollies-riku114-38230127-351-500.jpg You can see it here if you have a strong enough stomach.]] Both a case of horror and TearJerker in regards to the parents' reaction to their daughter contracting the disease. Imagine a loved one suffering from an illness that first causes paralysis and then [[spoiler:causes horrible growths to form all over the body]]. Now imagine there's nothing that can be done to ease their suffering except for death.
* If you're afraid of the sea or deep-sea creatures, ''The Thing That Drifted Ashore'' will surely make you shiver. Now, consider what they found inside the creature. Now, [[FridgeHorror consider that the thing, whatever it was, probably isn't the only one in the ocean.]] The chapter also alludes to the possibility of even creepier creatures. Now, as creepy as the sea creature is, it's not even the real horror of the story. [[spoiler:The main horror is what's inside the creature - the still-living survivors of a shipwreck who have been living for years INSIDE THE CREATURE LIKE HUMAN PARASITES, feeding off the creature itself and being driven mad both by their horrifying situation and the things they see through the creatures translucent skin. By the time they're released when the creature dies and washing up on shore, they're raving, screaming madmen.]]
* ''Flesh Colored Horror'' starts off creepily enough by introducing a [[CreepyChild little kindergartner]] named Chikara with a bad skin condition who attacks his school mates out of resentment. But then we get the [[BodyHorror real reasons]] behind his skin condition, and it just gets worse from there. [[spoiler: Turns out the kid's mama and auntie have been experimenting on themselves and their own skins, and they've reached a point where they could successfully jump in and out of 'em like clothing. And now they've been researching for ways to do the same to junior, explaining his scars. Why? Because the mother believes that the human body, sans skin, is the most beautiful thing in the world, so she wants to spread her twisted sense of beauty to her child.]] One of the more unsettling scenes is [[spoiler: after Chikara destroys his mother's skin. Realizing how screwed she is without it, she decides to "borrow" her sister's. By basically ripping her face off. And then Chikara defends his aunt. How? By grabbing his mother's leg muscles and ripping them apart. Ugh.]]
* ''Den of the Sleep Demon''. Here's a riddle: what's worse than a body turning inside out? The answer: [[spoiler:a body turning inside out and swallowing another body in the process.]]
* ''The City Without Streets'':

* In ''My Dear Ancestors'', the protagonist Risa loses her memory, but she keeps having a nightmare about being attacked by a giant caterpillar monster. However, it turns out it wasn't a nightmare, and there was no caterpillar. [[spoiler:What really happened was that when she visited her boyfriend Shuichi's ailing father, she saw that his ancestors' scalps were still attached to his head alive and fully capable of thought and feeling.]] After the father dies, [[spoiler:the scalps attach themselves to Shuichi's head and tell him to chase after Risa so she can bear his child and continue the family line. It seems to imply that Shuichi plans on raping Risa while she's [[GoMadFromTheRevelation mentally collapsed to the point of jibbering]] with a blank look on her face. Or at the very least, he plans on having her in a constant cycle of mental breakdowns and amnesia to [[IHaveYouNowMyPretty facilitate their marriage.]]]]
* ''The Long Dream''. In Mukoda's mind, he's lived for thousands- no, [[WhoWantsToLiveForever MILLIONS]]- of years, every night lasting exponentially longer than the last. After several days, one night of sleep is enough to wipe all his memories of the waking world. And then he ages, or evolves, into [[spoiler: [[BodyHorror something resembling a gray mixed with a harlequin fetus]], which crumbles into dust soon after.]] It then begins happening to the woman with the fear of mortality as well, and it's revealed that the main character found these odd crystals in the remains of Mukoda's skull, presumably the state his brain had evolved into, and used them as medication on the woman.
* ''Hanging Balloons'' is the surreal story in which giant floating heads of people start hanging them by nooses under the necks. One shocktastic scene is when [[spoiler:Kazuko and her friend Chiharu escape being hung by ducking into an alley. A man who lives in the house next to it sees the giant faces floating and shoots Chiharu's balloon head with a crossbow. The giant face deflates... and so does Chiharu's face, in a gruesome display]]. And no, that's not the end of the story yet.

* ''The Window Next Door'' loses no time by already featuring a creepy opening illustration. Then it gets worse. Wait until the old lady next door actually appears...
* "The Ice Cream Bus" A father and his son just moved to a new apartment complex that is visited by an Ice Cream Truck every Saturday night. The driver of the truck gives the children free ice cream and takes them on a drive around the neighborhood before bringing them back. Sounds charming right? [[spoiler:That is until the father lets his son go on the truck as well. One time he even catches a glimpse of what is going on in the truck and sees the kids licking huge mounds of ice cream. The scary part? The ice cream mounds are really the MELTED BODIES of the kids. Turns out the more ice cream the kids eat, the more their body becomes ice cream. It gets worse! Near the end, the father catches his son licking piles of ice cream-that used to his friends mind you- and is naturally horrified. He tries to stop his son, but ends up knocking off his head in the process!]]
* Glyceride could be Ito's most [[NauseaFuel repulsive]] story, [[SerialEscalation and that says a lot]]. It's full of downright sickening moments, but one scene - that involves horrible acne - takes the cake. Try finishing the story without taking a break or even without swallowing hard once.

* ''Mold''. The final shot of the protagonist [[spoiler: scratching the skin off his face, sitting alone in the dark, helpless to stop his body disintegrating as he repeats [[MadnessMantra "itchy ... itchy ..."]] With a bonus close-up of his rotting skin! He can't leave, even if his mind weren't under the influence of the mold, because his legs have been completely rooted to the ground by the fungus, and the mold has covered every exit.]] The image of the kids covered in mold is also pretty horrific, especially the girl, since we only see her eyes glinting in the dark and the bottom of her legs. Now, imagine what the rest of her looked like...
* ''The Groaning Drain.'' The drain under the house of a clean-freak and her two daughters gets clogged and nothing will fix it. ''Then'' [[spoiler: the girls' father is killed by their mother when he sneaks into the house to see his daughters, leading to a lie about the mother using self-defense. The blood left by the father's body can't be scrubbed away. Shortly after this, a horrible stench starts to come from the drain, and they can hear it groaning, almost like a human. The younger sister puts her hand down the shower drain to unclog it and declares she's stuck, but the protagonist believes she's playing a trick. Even as the sister screams and begs for help all night, the protagonist thinks she's tricking her... And then she comes into the bathroom the next day to see her sister's leg sticking out of the shower drain, blood on the floor, as her sister has spent the entire night being ''slowly and agonizingly pulled into the drain.'']]

* ''The Supernatural Transfer Student''. Human eyes growing out from flowers is bad enough, and that's before we see [[spoiler: Shibayama return as a gigantic, hideous, bloated, projectile-vomiting zombie.]]
* ''The Back Alley''. A student takes up a room on a boarding house. At night he's annoyed by the sounds of children playing on the alley next door. He manages to pull himself to the alley's wall to shout at the children, but it turns out the whole alley's sealed. Soon after, he hears the children calling for his landlady's daughter. Next morning, a man talks to him on the street, telling him that he stayed once at that very room, and that on the sealed alley, there's a bunch of bones belonging to a couple of kids and human silhouettes on the alley's wall, and he begs the student to see if he can confirm the story and report it to the police to put the bones to rest. The student finds a hidden window and a rope leading into the alley. Indeed, he finds the bones, but when he tries to go up again, he's knifed... [[spoiler: by the landlady's daughter, a SerialKiller obsessed with ruling over the alley, and who has killed two kids, two classmates and her own father and put them in there. The student falls and breaks his neck. As the girl goes down to toss him with the other corpses, the rope breaks, and it's her, the corpse and the shapes in the wall...]]

* ''Dissection Girl''. A woman stalks her former childhood friend (who is studying to be a doctor) and begs him to dissect her alive. It becomes clear at the end that there is more wrong with her than just her mental state. [[spoiler:Her "organs" are a still-living mass of flesh and various animal parts.]]
* ''Shivers'' will give anyone trypophobia. It's about a cursed jade statue that causes holes to appear on your body. And if that wasn't bad enough, you're constantly chilled when the wind blows through the holes and insects even swarm in them. [[spoiler: It's implied your only hope is to pass the curse onto someone else by having them take the statue, and it has to be done before it does enough to your body for its messenger, appearing as an eldery doctor, come to claim the victim.]]
* ''Pen Pal''. Much like the aforementioned ''The Bully'', what makes it so terrifying is just how utterly realistic the scenario is. In the story, a young boy named "Oshikiri" decides to befriend a introverted girl named "Satomi" in the hopes that she'll someday be his girlfriend. He soon learns that her only friends are three pen pals from different parts of Japan. Things start to get worse when Satomi starts to get increasingly harsh and insulting letters from her friends. However, [[spoiler:Oshikiri soon learns that Satomi has actually been writing the letters to herself and is under the delusion her imaginary friends are real.]] It then escalates to the point where [[spoiler:Satomi ends up killing herself while screaming for her "friends" to stop killing her.]] [[{{Gyo}} Cyborg fish zombies]] and [[{{Tomie}} murderous lust-personifications]] are safely confined in the realms of fantasy. But, insanity caused by a severely isolated lifestyle? That can actually happen in real life. To make matters worse, Oshikiri is also [[spoiler:starting to hallucinate there's a doppelganger claiming to be the real him.]]
* ''The Woman Next Door'': LighterAndSofter (insofar as there are no deaths that we know of), but it still encounters a young girl named Mimi encountering the titular WomanInBlack, her neighbor, who is ([[OnceAnEpisode of course]]) some kind of HumanoidAbomination. [[spoiler: [[NothingIsScarier The details aren't clear]], but somehow [[RedRightHand her limbs are made of sheet metal]], with the length adjustable with the use of screws. No, these aren't prosthetic either - her (gloved) hands and feet work just fine, and are fully functional with hinges. Nothing (aside from her limbs) is ever shown beneath her AllEncompassingMantle, but we ''do'' know that she has [[TheFaceless no face]]; the glasses, at least, are just for show. [[LeftHanging Who knows what her deal is, or what else she's got under her clothing...]]]] Definitely a case where the horror derives itself from a mixture of UncannyValley and sheer [[MindScrew What The Fuck-ery]].

* ''Layers of Fear.'' A more recent work of Junji Ito. Thanks to a curse, a young woman is revealed to have layers of her previous skin under her normal skin, like a baumkuchen, as the mother puts it. Speaking of the mother, [[spoiler: she cuts off the skin of her daughter to hopefully hold her daughter, like when she was two. Surely enough, there is a face of a two year old in the mix... [[https://i.imgur.com/ddVJPyD_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium but not the body of one.]]]]

* ''Layers of Fear.'' A more recent work of Junji Ito. Thanks to a curse, a young woman is revealed to have layers of her previous skin under her normal skin, like a baumkuchen, as the mother puts it. Speaking of the mother, [[spoiler:she cuts off the skin of her daughter to hopefully hold her daughter, like when she was two. Surely enough, there is a face of a two year old in the mix...but not the body of one.]]
** The protagonist is also affected by this curse, [[spoiler: having ''several'' layers of teeth.]]
** The mother also [[spoiler:cuts off her face, in belief that she too is afflicted by curse. She is not, and ends up just ''cutting off her face''.]]

** The ending. [[spoiler:The sister’s skin is regrowing, but according to the sister, it didn’t grow in the exact same way. And we see the shadow of what she looks like, but not her in the light. Imagine what that ''monstrosity'' looks like.]]