DAY 1: Japan’s Suicide Forest (ShortHand’s 13 Days of Halloween)

RedHanded

Wondery | RedHanded

True Crime

4.5 • 18.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.

Few places live up to their reputation like Aokigahara, known in the West as Japan’s ‘Suicide Forest’.

Dense woodland, purported magnetic interference and tales of ghostly Yurei make navigating the forest difficult – but finding a secluded place to contemplate your existence is all too easy. Every year, dozens of people travel to Aokigahara to take their lives. But why? This week, we discuss the dark Japanese folklore and sinister realities behind one of the world's most tragically disturbing places…

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free.
0:04.6	Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:09.1	Hello there, spooky listener.
0:10.7	It's October, our favourite time of the year.
0:13.4	And so to celebrate and give you all a well-deserved treat,
0:16.6	we're bringing you the 13 days of Halloween.
0:20.0	Short-hand edition.
0:22.0	Usually, every single week over on Amazon Music,
0:25.1	we release brand new episodes of our bite-sized sister show,
0:29.2	Shorthand. It's like Red Hand's little friend.
0:31.7	Where we delve into all sorts of fascinating topics.
0:35.1	From hell in different religions, Haitian voodoo, the death of Edgar Allan Poe,
0:39.7	Katad Syndrome, Japan's suicide forest, and so much more. And this Halloween, from the 19th of October
0:46.7	to the 31st of October, we are going to be pulling out 13 of our most terrifying episodes of
0:52.5	shorthand to drop straight into your red-handed feed every single day.
0:58.3	But beware.
1:01.0	Each episode will only be available for 24 hours.
1:05.7	So get listening or abandon or hope.
1:10.3	Enjoy. Enjoy.
1:11.2	Hello.
1:35.9	I'm breaking the number one rule of podcasting. No headphones because I sat on them with my giant fat ass and they broke.
1:40.7	They're made to break so we have to keep buying them. You're probably not supposed to sit on them.
	...

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