Most of us are aware of Sadako and her mythos. Someone found her tape, watch it, and die. I don’t know about you, but I never read the books nor watch the movies. I knew the stories from my friends who were into supernatural stuff.
When I first think about making this ReFrame series, I wanted to tell stories that are often misunderstood or a character’s perspective. So I thought that making a ReFrame of horror stories would be the perfect starter.
And wouldn’t you know it, Sadako is my top pick because, after reading about the story, I learned that Sadako is the realest supernatural horror legend.
But first, a brief recap of Sadako’s story.
(Skip to Part 3 if you already know or do not care and want to get to the good stuff.)
Part 1. The Cursed Tape
The story began with a group of four teenagers who mysteriously and simultaneously died. Asakawa was an investigator and an uncle to one of the teenagers. As he investigated the mysterious deaths, he found the tape they watched… and he also watched it.
The tape is a compilation of abstract realistic images, including an injured man, and at the end, words that suggested he would die in seven days.
A curious friend who claimed to be a rapist, Ryuji, offered help. After watching the tape, he asked Asakawa to make a copy so they both can study the tape, from which Ryuji’s wife and daughter watched.
Anyway, studying the images from the tape, the two of them found out that the images were created with ‘thoughtography’ or mental images. This technopathic skill was connected with Sadako Yamamura, who mysteriously disappeared decades prior.
They researched Sadako’s history, and it led to a sanatorium where she frequented when her father contracted tuberculosis. Asakawa then met with one of the doctors, Dr. Jotaro. Coincidentally, Jotaro was the injured man in the tape, and he got some history with Sadako.
And speaking of history…
Part 2. Sadako’s Origins
Sadako Yamamura was born in 1947 in Oshima Island. Her mother, Shizuko Yamamura, gained psychic power through an ancient statue a year before giving birth to Sadako. Because of this, Shizuko could project images on papers, and Sadako, project images into televisions.
Sadako was raised by her grandmother because Shizuko and her husband, Ikuma, decided to make public demonstration of her psychic powers. However, Shizuko got migraine from her psychic power and bailed out of her own show. Because of this, people denounced her as a fraud. She got depressed, returned to Oshima, and ended her life by jumping into mount Mihara.
At the age of nineteen, Sadako joined an acting troupe and fell in love with the sound operator, Hiroshi Toyama. However, she left him and the trope after learning that her power, in form of a sound recording, had killed four people, including the director.
When she returned, she took care of her father and often visited the aforementioned sanatorium. Dr. Jotaro was infatuated with Sadako for her beauty, and so he tried to rape her in the woods near the sanatorium. Sadako bit Jotaro and struggled, giving him injuries that was seen on the tape. Jotaro threw her in a well and threw a rock, crushing her.
The duo located the well, went down, and recovered Sadako’s corpse to give her remains a burial. Asakawa passed his deadline and survived, but Ryuji wasn’t as fortunate as he died of heart attack the next day. However, because of this, the nature of the curse was revealed.
Jotaro was contracted with smallpox virus and infected Sadako when she bit him. This virus coalesced with her psychic power and mutated into a different, supernatural virus called the “ring virus”.
This virus is activated when the tape is viewed, and demanding the infected to replicate the virus (the tape). Those who copy the tape are spared from death, hence Asakawa, who copied the tape for Ryuji, was spared. Ryuji’s wife and daughter did the same and survived.
Source: Ring novel by Suzuki & Sadako Yamamura on Wikipedia.
Part 3. ReFraming Sadako
When reading Sadako’s story, I thought that the story is meh. Other than the curse and her appearance, Sadako isn’t that scary nor interesting. Plus, there isn’t any hidden message or meaning behind the story.
BUT that is until I found something unique about the main character…
Sadako is fear.
Compared to other legendary fictional horror characters, such as Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, Sadako is very different. Other than her method of killing her victims, which is less involved, how she picks her victims is also unique.
Sadako traps her victims using their own curiosity into watching her tape. After that, they have to do certain things within a set time limit to save themselves or avoid certain death.
This might remind you of the good old “if you don’t share this, you’ll die in three days” era. I don’t know if you remember or even aware of this trend, but this is similar to Sadako and her ring virus.
These days, you can find pretty much every reason to fear anything thanks to the internet.
- Your favorite food contains a toxic chemical that can cause cancer.
- Your shoes are terrible and can cause arthritis and ruin your posture.
Usually followed with better alternatives, but if you search those alternatives, you’ll likely find reasons to avoid them, and the cycle continues.
Yes, knowing those fears won’t necessarily kill anyone, and sharing them won’t save us, but the fear is already there.
How your brain works on fear (simplified)
As your amygdala senses fear, the part of our brain that is used for reasoning and judgement, the cerebral cortex, gets impaired. We get irrational, we can’t think clearly and make good decisions.
Fear isn’t all bad, though, because fear keeps us alive. Fear alerts us when there’s danger, triggers our nervous system to get us in fight-or-flight mode.
Of course, in those cases I mentioned, toxic food and bad shoes, won’t get us in fight-or-flight mode. However, fear can still work in a subconscious level. It might not be aggressively hating them because of the ‘facts’ you learned on the internet.
Like in Sadako’s story, as the knowledge of its existence lingers, we take certain actions to avoid them — and save ourselves…
Hence, Sadako is the ‘realest’ fictional horror story.
One rumor. One curiosity. One action. One death.
Sadako is fear.
Part 4. Closing Statement
Sadako or the Ring may not be the first story you think of when someone asks about the scariest or the best horror stories. And if we’re to discuss about supernatural entities and curse in our phones or messengers, most would dismiss the conversation immediately.
Of course, they’re not real. Jeff the killer is as fictional as Sadako. Of course, you won’t die if you don’t share the creepy images you got through WhatsApp, but… they were fun.
It’s fun having creepy images and deadly rumors spread around.
It was also fun for me to connect Sadako with our internet culture and how we develop fear over things that aren’t necessarily supernatural, but still, often time, baseless.
Sadako’s story is closest to home when it comes to spreading the fear, but she has more intrigue than just that. The way Sadako haunt and kill her victims are unique, plus the curse, power, illness, trauma, and the story of it all.
Unfortunately, we’ve lost the fun in the supernatural stuff. Was it overdone? Did it get too much attention? Are those the reasons everyone lost interest in supernatural horror, or was it because of the killjoys?
Movies, for example.
- We get adrenaline rush watching action and horror movies.
- We get emotional watching romance dramas.
- We get horny and excited watching porn.
But nobody came out of the cinema saying “yeah, but ghost isn’t real,” “Superman is physically impossible,” or “the movie is too unrealistic.”
Of course, we know they’re not real, and yet we love watching them. Why? Because they’re fun to watch and, sometimes, we want to experience them ourselves. Yeah, they’re impossible to have, but no need to be a killjoy.
Killjoy… That’s what I think about people who debunk supernatural stories.
When I was a kid, there was an old and creepy house near mine that nobody seems to want. Every time someone bought the house, they moved out within a month. Of course, as kids with imaginations, my friends and I made up stories that the house was haunted with demons and stuff. Since the house was quite big, we imagined a lot of how the paranormal activities would play out. And thanks to those made-up stories, we got creeped out whenever we walk by, but it was fun to have a little scare.
I might not be a kid anymore, but what’s wrong with having a little stupid fun? I’m not dumb enough to actually believe and be dramatic about it, and I believe most people are too.
Yes, we need to educate some people about hoaxes to avoid mass hysteria. However, not in a way that ruins the fun for everyone else.
Sadako reminds me of the good ol’ horror stories from my elders, friends, or creepypastas around the internet. It’s not that the horror culture is dead, but it’s hard for me to discuss it with anyone offline.
Everything has to make sense and everything has to have proofs, which, as a writer myself, ruin the fun of fiction.
Unless… I’m the one who fell too deep into the intrigue. Sadako, creepypastas, and the supernatural. I love them. I don’t care whether or not they’re real because they’re fun. Not to mention the story behind them which add layers and intrigue to the horror.
But alas, trends die eventually.
I just wish everyone can find the fun in a little bit of silly scare.
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