Keller - Unexplained Book 4: 16 Chilling Unsolved Mysteries

At 2:46 on the afternoon of March 11, 2011, the seabed below the surface of the ocean, 45 miles east of the Tohoku region of Japan, shifted. The disturbance happened at a depth of 15 miles and shook the ground for a full six minutes, an earthquake that would later be measured at 9.1 on the Richter Scale. Back on the mainland, in the city of Ishinomaki, officials knew exactly what the quake meant. The city had suffered such events in its past. The tremor would shortly be followed by an even greater disaster tsunami.

Emergency measures were immediately triggered. Sirens blared and messages were broadcast, warning citizens to immediately head inland to higher ground. These warnings undoubtedly saved thousands of lives. But what no one could have anticipated was the height of the waves. At their maximum elevation, they would reach over 100 feet. By the time they crashed into the coastline less than 30 minutes later, they were traveling at over 30 m.p.h. Those who failed to heed the warning or had been slow to react were doomed. The wall of water destroyed everything in its path. Schools, businesses, homes, hospitals, highways, and railroads, all were swept away in its wake. The waves would reach far inland, flooding 217 square miles. At the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, seawalls were overcome, a cooling system was damaged, causing the biggest meltdown since Chernobyl, and leaving 10% of the country without electricity. The cost of reconstruction would later be estimated at nearly $200 billion. It was the worst disaster to hit the country since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

And of course, there was the human cost. Nearly 20,000 lost their lives in the disaster, thousands more were missing. For those who remained, there was a hellscape of destroyed buildings and misshapen rubble, cars and trucks and buses cast aside like the toys of a petulant giant, entire buildings carried away by the floodwaters. Then there were the corpses, broken and twisted. For those searching for loved ones, the worst still lay ahead. There were bodies to be recovered. One man had been separated from his wife and daughters and went looking for them. He found the older girls corpse entangled in the branches of a tree. The younger, just a baby, was lying in a pile of rubble. No monetary value can ever be placed on losses such as these.

The rescue and cleanup efforts, as youd expect from a country such as Japan, were swift and coordinated. As aftershocks continued to rock the area, the defense force moved in, facilitating a mass evacuation. The city of Ishinomaki was one of the hardest hit, with nearly half of its area flooded and as many as 29,000 homes destroyed. It had suffered 3,097 deaths, while 2,770 were missing, most of them swept away by the flood waters. Perhaps the greatest loss of all was at the Ishinomaki Okawa Elementary School where 70 of 108 students had been killed, along with nine of the 13 teachers. The staff had wasted time debating whether it was necessary to evacuate. They had paid a terrible price for dithering.

It was also from Ishinomaki that the first whisperings came, whisperings of paranormal encounters, of the ghosts of tsunami victims wandering the streets of the ruined city. Soon it would become evident that these encounters were not limited to one place but were occurring across the region, in places devastated by the monster wave.

In the summer of 2011, three months after the disaster, an Ishinomaki cab driver spotted a young woman standing at the roadside, backdropped by destroyed buildings. She was dressed in a heavy coat despite the humidity of the day and her clothes appeared drenched, even though it hadnt rained. Holding up a hand, she hailed the cabbie who stopped and waited for her to slip into the back seat. She asked to be taken to Minamihama, an area largely destroyed in the disaster. When the cabbie explained this to her, the woman appeared confused. Have I died? she asked. In the next moment, she vanished, right in front of the terrified driver.

It would be easy to dismiss such a fanciful tale were it not such a repeated theme among taxi drivers throughout the region. Several told of remarkably similar encounters with ghostly riders. Another cabbie told of a perplexed-looking young man who got into his car. Asked where he wanted to go, he simply pointed. When the cabbie insisted that he vocalize his destination, the man said simply, Hiyoriyama. This is a mountain park on the outskirts of the city. The cabbie drove him to the area, careening up the narrow mountain road and dropping him on a plateau at the summit. He then brought his car to a stop and turned to receive his fee. The back seat was empty.

What made these encounters all the more remarkable is that there was physical confirmation of them. In each case, the cabbie had turned on his meter and kept it running for the duration of the journey. This could be verified by checking the trip record. And it would not have been faked because the driver ended up having to pay the fare out of his own pocket.