Reported by BBC Business
The previous occupant of Ryua's apartment, pictured here, sadly took their own life
From the moment Ryua first walked into her rental apartment in Tokyo she believed it to be haunted.
"When I visited the place for a viewing there was a man standing there, glaring at me," she says.
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"Since the estate agent couldn't see him, I realised he must be a ghost."
While someone more squeamish would probably have quickly left the flat never to return, Ryua chose to go ahead and move in.
"I'm a bit of a contrarian, so I decided I wanted to become friends with this glaring male ghost," adds Ryua, who works as an aidoru, a young entertainer, and who doesn't wish to share her surname.
Four years later, and still in the same apartment, she says she continues to experience paranormal activity on a daily basis. She says she hears endless footsteps and the ghost talking.
Although Japan has increasingly marked Halloween , external in recent years, many Japanese people take ghosts seriously all year round. The country has a word, "yuurei", which means a lingering, troubled spirit.
These are the ghosts of people who died in violent or tragic circumstances - those who were murdered, killed themselves, or simply were lonely and died alone. If they died at home, then the belief is that their yuurei won't go away.
For house hunters who are not superstitious or squeamish it means there are big bargains to be found. There is a whole category of dwellings called jiko bukken, which means "stigmatised" or "incident" properties.
Under guidelines issued by the government in 2021, Japanese estate agents must disclose suicide, murder, death by fire, and any death where the body was not discovered for an extended period of time.
For rental properties this information must be disclosed for three years, and it must be revealed indefinitely for any property offered for sale.
By contrast, in the UK there is no legal requirement , external to reveal that a person died in a property. And in the US, it differs from state to state. ,…