School Ghost Stories
1995 film directed by Hideyuki Hirayama
School Ghost Stories (Japanese: 学校の怪談, Hepburn: Gakkō no Kaidan), also known as Haunted School, is a 1995 Japanese horror film directed by Hideyuki Hirayama. It follows a group of schoolchildren who encounter spirits and other supernatural happenings in an abandoned wing of their elementary school.
The film is the first installment in the School Ghost Stories film series, and was followed by School Ghost Stories 2 in 1996.
Plot
At Ichogaoka Elementary School, on the day before summer vacation, a group of children accidentally break a small statue. When the school day ends, Mika Shinoda, a second-grader, encounters a bouncing football while retrieving her paint set. She follows the ball into an abandoned wing of the school, where, in the upstairs bathrooms, she is lifted into the air by an unseen force. Elsewhere, Mika's mother asks Mika's older sister, Aki, to bring her home.
Fifth-graders Kensuke Nakamura and Shota Segawa sneak into the abandoned wing of the school. Aki arrives, looking for Mika. She asks fourth-grader Hitoshi Chiba, who is drawing a magic circle on the ground in chalk, if he has seen Mika.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “School Ghost Stories” as 1995 film directed by Hideyuki Hirayama. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1995 film directed by Hideyuki Hirayama. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q181400. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1995 and 1996.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “School Ghost Stories”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow School Ghost Stories primary sources, School Ghost Stories archive and School research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “School Ghost Stories”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “School Ghost Stories” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.