This week Josh Gates’ Destination Truth explores the very scary Suicide Forest in Japan and tracks down stories of ghouls in the Philippines.
Aokigahara is an area of forest on the side of Mount Fuji and is sometimes known as the Suicide Forest or Sea of Trees.
The trees grow on hardened lava and due to the sound absorbing properties of the lava and the dense nature of the tree growth give what many visitors experience as a profound sense of peace.
The darker side of the forest is as home to Yurei or ghost of the dead and more recently it has become an area popular with people committing suicide. In some years over 100 people have killed themselves in the forest, usually by hanging or with poison.
It has let to notices being placed at trail heads urging people contemplating suicide to seek help and official have stopped publishing figures on the number, to stop the constant media attention.
However, the forest already had a historical association with death and some claim it was a popular place to carry out Ubasute. This is a practice that was allegedly carried out in the past. When times were tough old relatives would be taken to a remote spot and left to die of exposure or dehydration.
Later Josh and the team head to the Philippines where they are on the trail of some jungle ghouls.
Josh Gates’ Destination Truth airs Fridays at 9:00 PM on Travel Channel.