Nagoro village — Shikoku, Japan
If you thought the Isla de las Muñecas was creepy, you were right — but this village may soon overtake it in the creepy department.
There are two ways to approach this story. The first requires a bit of exposition to expound on is back-story so you can better understand why there are hundreds of dolls sprinkled about this quiet, seemingly innocent Japanese village. The second option consists mostly of creative storytelling from yours truly that’s paired with scary images of evil, possibly even possessed dolls that use the appeal of a quiet village to lure unsuspecting tourists in so they can add them to their ranks.
As much as I’d like to take the latter route — this is a list of scary places, after all — I won’t. There’s nothing inherently sinister about the dolls of Nagoro village, just as there isn’t with the dolls that reside in the Isla de las Muñecas. That’s not to say it isn’t unusual and maybe even a little creepy, because it’s equal parts both.
The source of these dolls is a woman named Ayano Tsukimi who has witnessed numerous people either leave or pass away since she returned to Nagoro eleven years ago. This has caused the village she calls home to gradually shrink. In an effort to put a tourniquet on all this sad, Tsukimi decided that as Nagoro villagers die, she would craft a doll version of them to take their place. Today, the doll population has reached somewhere around 350.
Horror games have often turned dolls into things to be scared of. A few examples would be the doll factory in Condemned 2, that creepy foll forest in Shadows of the Damned (inspired by the aforementioned Isla de las Muñecas), even Silent Hill: Downpour had them. I mean, they were sex dolls, but I’m almost positive those still count.
If you’d like to take a virtual tour of the village and its stuffed citizens, you can do just that, thanks to the wonders of Google Street View.
