None of us wants to live in an apartment or house where someone was killed, also known as stigmatized properties. It’d be pretty creepy in the least.  However, in Japan the desire to not live in a place like that is so intense that you’d think Poltergeist was a documentary.

Oshima Teru is an up and coming website that also must be a real estate agent’s worst nightmare.  Its main purpose is to map out every property where unnatural deaths occurred. Originally only focusing on the Greater Tokyo Area, they have expanded into nearly worldwide coverage including North America and Europe.

Despite the extremely wide coverage the further out from Tokyo it goes the more sparse the coverage is.  Most places are limited to major cities but this site looks like it has lots of room to grow.  As the Japanese version starts from Tokyo, the English version seems to start from Manhattan.

The site’s administrators seem to handle all compiling of reports, but it seems for such an operation users would also be important sources of information. That could be a dangerous prospect as mislabeling a stigmatized property is a financially devastating lie/mistake.

The sad part of this website is that it could be a death blow for the owners of these building who can’t make money mostly due to superstition. It would be great if happy people could live there for years. Then the stigma can wash away thus saving the landlord’s livelihood.

So I encourage all of you who are thinking of moving to search out a stigmatized property on Oshima Teru and make it your own… ‘cause there’s no way I’m moving into one of those places.

Japanese Site: Oshima Teru
English Site: Oshima Land

▼The information seems largely taken from news reports in America.

[ Read in Japanese ]