Enjoy old school survival horror at your favorite intersections
Days are shorter, the shadows clinging to the edges of the sidewalk are a bit darker. The season of death inches so near that you can feel its icy breath on the back of your neck.
The veil between the worlds of the living and dead becomes thinner, and as we draw closer to Halloween those of us with a curiosity for games that border on esoteric ritual and insanity salivate with anticipation.
I’m digging into sour ground that borders on folklore study and creepypasta fodder and what I’ve unearthed is not for the faint-of-heart or weak-of-bladder.
But if you are up for the next level of gaming adventures to earn the brass balls achievement or bragging rights feel free to grab some friends, some salt, some sage, and saddle up to get wrecked by the forces of darkness.
Many popular games that we so know and love whether it be traditional card games, throwing bones (dice), or even Chess have deep roots in history’s graveyard with early divination and the occult. Our early ancestors believed that certain rituals built around games of chance created new possibilities in reality with the help of supernatural forces; most of them evil of course.
Maybe you experimented with paranormal games in your youth with Bloody Mary, Three Mirrors, or Light as a Feather. Games where conjuring beings from beyond created funny stories, soggy pajamas, and/or expensive therapist bills later on in life have been engrained into the thumbprint of human culture since the dawn of time.
One of these games comes from our friends the Japanese and may have inspired the fortune cookie. There are no cards, candles, game pieces, or mirrors. Requiring two paths crossing each other anywhere in the world and pure macabre curiosity.
Tsuji-Ura (Soo-Jeera). The fascinating game of learning about your fortune from complete otherworldly strangers. All you need is a pocket comb, something to cover your face, and a 4-way intersection.
You can bring friends just make sure one person initiates the game, the others are there only as bystanders. Also make sure your moral support doesn’t speak or look at who or what comes at you if you pull this off.
The ritual is simple enough: stand at any intersection or crossroads at night, run your thumb across the teeth of the comb three times. Be sure to make the comb “sing” as loudly as possible then chant “Tsuji-Ura, Tsuji-Ura, grant me a true response” three times.
Then you wait.
A stranger will approach, as they do quickly hide your face, ensure the moral support covers theirs as well and ask the stranger to tell you your fortune. If they don’t respond, then simply wait for one that does but be sure not to show your face until after the stranger has passed. Allegedly many people have committed suicide after learning their fortune because the revelation was so horrifying it shattered their sanity.
While this may sound like the start of a Japanese horror flick the hidden story to this Faustian game actually crosses over other mythologies and folklore together in creepy ways.
Mysticism and crossroads go back a long way from Greeks leaving offerings for the witch goddess Hecate to sacrificial altars of criminals with Germanic tribes. The British staked the remains of suicide victims through the heart at crossroads and leave them on display until legislation banned the practice in 1823.
But the human fascination and fixation of crossroads as divining point still exist. Blues legend Robert Johnson was famed to have sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in order to obtain his success as a musician. In Vodou tradition, a shadow man called Papa Legba is said to connect humanity with the realms of the Loa standing at crossroads granting access to the spirit world. Just be careful should you challenge him to rock, paper, scissors or a quick game of Battleship.
I can’t decide if being approached by a demonic spirit to tell me the future is scarier than seeing a group of people hiding their faces, strumming a comb, and chanting in Japanese. I’m willing to bet that crossroads divination games were our ancestors’ way of telling the kids to go play in traffic with the hopes that there would be one less mouth to feed by the end of the night.
Either way I know what I’m doing at the intersection of East MLK and Houston St. on Halloween. Issues of The Pulse would make for amazing face covers.
When not vaporizing zombies or leading space marines as a mousepad Mattis, Brandon Watson is making gourmet pancakes and promoting local artists.