Japanese Urban Legends

The Bath Game

The Bath Game, also known as Daruma-San, is best described as playing a deadly version of Red Light, Green Light. 

This one also requires no friends, just like the One Man Hide and Seek game I mentioned earlier.

Anyways, in this one, you have to do a ritual at nighttime in order to summon Daruma-San. Daruma-San is the ghost of a Japanese woman that fell in a tub and got her right eye gouged out by the tap. It is unknown whether or not she died from this injury.

To start the ritual, you have to sit in a bathtub in complete darkness and do a few odd things. This involves chanting, looking into a mirror, and other activities. I'm not going to fully dive into the rules, so if you do want to check out the ritual yourself, click on the external link below.

Apparently, if you play the game correctly, you will get to see a mental image of Daruma-San when you summon her. Actually, you'll get to witness her falling over and getting her eye gouged out by the tap of your bathtub.

When you're done with the ritual, you simply go to sleep like any other day and wait until tomorrow. The moment that you open up your eyes the next day, the actual game starts.

You're supposed to start your day like normal, and just do whatever you usually do- but there's a catch. You'll feel like you're being constantly watched, and as if there's a presence behind you. If you turn around to try and see it, there will be nothing there. However, if you glance over your right shoulder, you'll occasionally see Daruma-San behind you. This time, her black hair will be messy and tangled, and she will only have one eye. 

As the day goes on, she'll try to shorten her distance from you. Every time you see her, she is said to get closer and closer.

If she catches you, then it's game over. In other words, you'll probably die, like most of these Japanese urban legends. Japan doesn't play around at all with their games.  

If you see her and you think she's way to close to you, they luckily give you a safe word that you can shout when playing the game. That makes her back off a bit and put some more distance between you both.

To win the game, you have to shout a certain word when you see her in your sights. Then she apparently just disappears cause I guess spirits have other things to do in their free time.

It is said that she likes water and darkness, so you shouldn't do something like go wading in the ocean at night while playing this. Also, you're supposed to use the safe word sparingly, because she'll just go less farther each time you use it. If you abuse it enough, when you say it, she won't even step back at all.

There aren't many accounts of this game, except for a few videos of people trying to play it. But, from what research I've done, a lot of people that have played had nothing happen. Either way, maybe it'd be better to just take a bath like a normal person than try and meet Daruma-san