The Seventh Storyteller Never Comes: Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi and Japan’s Seven Wonders of the School

In Japan, school ghost stories are counted in sevens. Collect seven of the tales told about a school and you have its 七不思議, its “seven wonders”. The warning that usually comes with them is that anyone who learns all seven, or finds out about a hidden eighth, is in for something bad. It is less a single legend than a template, and in the 1990s it became a stock setting for Japanese films, television, manga and video games.

Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi, a 1995 Super Famicom game from Banpresto, does not adapt one of those legends. It is built on the template itself. A high-school newspaper club is putting together a feature on the school’s seven wonders. Seven storytellers are invited to tell them. Only six arrive. Who you listen to, and in what order, decides which stories you hear — and who tells the sixth decides what the seventh will be.

The game is back in the news this month: on 10 September 2026, D3 Publisher released it on Nintendo Switch together with its 1996 sister game, 晦-つきこもり (Tsukikomori). This guide explains the format for readers who did not grow up with it, how the game uses it — and where its writer says it goes somewhere else — how the 1996 PlayStation remake differs, and how to find each version by the code printed on it.

• Japanese title: 学校であった怖い話 (Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi, literally “scary stories that happened at school”), commonly shortened to 学怖
• Platform and date: Super Famicom, 4 August 1995 (Japan)
• Developer and publisher: developed by Pandora Box · published by Banpresto, a Bandai subsidiary at the time (Banpresto’s game business was folded into Bandai Namco Games in 2008)
• Writer and director: 飯島健男 (Takeo Iijima, who now writes as 飯島多紀哉, Takiya Iijima)
• Product code: SHVC-AHXJ-JPN in the catalog — search shops with SHVC-AHXJ, because the -JPN form finds nothing at Suruga-ya
• Series: the first game in what is now called the Apathy series, a name that was only applied from 2007 onward

What are the “seven wonders of the school”?

The word 七不思議 is older than any school. It originally meant seven unexplained things associated with a place — a shrine, a region, a district of Edo — and in the Edo period it became a recognised form for ghost stories. Today, the Japanese Wikipedia article on the term notes, most people know it through the modern version: the 学校の七不思議, the seven wonders of the school, which it describes as better known through urban legend than in its original sense.

School ghost stories themselves, 学校の怪談, are an oral tradition, handed down rather than written. Gathered into a set of seven, they become that school’s seven wonders, and the set usually comes with a curse attached: knowing all seven, or learning a hidden eighth, brings misfortune. The number is not strict — the same article notes that the total is not always seven. During the occult boom of the 1990s, the format turned up in film, TV, fiction, manga and games until it was a genre convention in its own right.

For a Western comparison, think less of one legend like Bloody Mary and more of the idea that every school has a list of its own. Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi is about that list.

How does the game use the format?

The set-up, as Japanese Wikipedia summarises it: the protagonist belongs to the newspaper club at a high school whose old building is about to be demolished. To mark the occasion the club plans a feature on the school’s seven wonders, and the protagonist is sent to collect the stories. Seven storytellers have been asked to come to the clubroom after school. Six are there. Nobody waits for the seventh, and the telling begins.

From there it is a sound novel — you read text and choose at branch points. You pick which of the six to hear from next, and both the order and your choices change what you hear. Wikipedia puts the arithmetic at six storytellers by seven stories, 42 before counting hidden scenarios, with more than 50 in total; the manual archive we checked gives 50, including eight hidden ones. Who you ask to tell the sixth story decides the seventh. The missing seventh storyteller is the frame the whole structure hangs on.

Two presentation choices set it apart from other games of the time. The text runs vertically, right to left, like a Japanese book. And the characters are digitised photographs of real people: Wikipedia says the game is known as the first to use photo capture for its characters rather than only for backgrounds. The cast were not actors. They were Pandora Box employees, a point both Wikipedia and the manual archive make — the archive adds, kindly, that they look a little old for high-schoolers.

Is it really a ghost-story game?

Most people have read it as one. The manual archive calls it a sound novel “with school ghost stories as its motif”, and the Japanese play-diary blog ひねもすのたりゲームする describes it as a game about the seven wonders of the school. The packaging leaned the same way: the box and title screen show the shadows of small children, which Japanese Wikipedia describes as calling to mind exactly the school ghost stories of childhood. The manual archive puts it more bluntly: the game is set in a high school, but the pupils in the logo look like they are in primary school.

According to Japanese Wikipedia, citing Iijima’s own accounts, that is not quite what he meant. The title is often taken to mean 学校の怪談, school ghost stories, but that was not his intention: many of the stories are not about ghosts at all but about the madness of living people, and in his words the title is closer to “the scary things you run into when you hold a meeting at school to hear ghost stories”. The children on the box came from an outside designer who had not been given the concept; Iijima objected, lost, and used the title screen — where the children’s shadows turn into monsters — to say something about the gap between how people look and what they are.

So the seven wonders are the container, and the game is honest about that. Some of what comes out of it is a classic haunting, like the mirror on the old building’s landing. Some of it, like the story Wikipedia lists as 赤い傘 (“The Red Umbrella”), is about what an ordinary person is capable of. The format promises you ghosts. The storytellers do not always deliver them.

How is the PlayStation version, Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi S, different?

学校であった怖い話S came out on the PlayStation on 19 July 1996, again from Pandora Box and Banpresto, and Wikipedia lists it as a remake rather than a straight port. What the sources describe as changed:

• New scenarios, redone graphics and sound. Wikipedia, citing Weekly Famitsu, lists added scenarios and branch points, and CG movies inserted at the climaxes of stories. The pixiv encyclopedia notes many added scenarios, branches and endings, and characters who appear only in S
• A choice of protagonist. You can play as a boy or a girl, and the flow of the scenarios changes with the choice. The female protagonist, Emi Kurata, was new to this version (pixiv)
• A new cast. Where the Super Famicom game used Pandora Box staff, the PlayStation version cast actors in most of the student roles (Wikipedia; pixiv describes the change the same way)

The ひねもす blog sums it up as a remake with added scenarios and upgraded visuals. Which version to play is a matter of taste; which one is harder to find is not. Wikipedia notes that S carried a premium until it was re-released as a download in 2007, and the physical disc still costs more: on 16 September 2026, Suruga-ya’s one in-stock copy of S was listed at ¥8,080, against ¥1,160–¥2,840 for the Super Famicom cartridge.

Where else can you play it, and which version is on Switch?

Japanese Wikipedia lists the later releases: the Super Famicom version as a Nintendo Power rewritable-cartridge title (1997), as a Virtual Console download on Wii (5 August 2008) and Wii U (27 August 2014), and S on PlayStation 3 and PSP through Game Archives (30 August 2007). Kataban’s catalog lists the Wii release as download-only, so there is no disc or cartridge of it to look for.

The newest release is on Nintendo Switch, from D3 Publisher, on 10 September 2026. The physical edition is a single package, 学校であった怖い話と晦-つきこもり, containing both games, at 6,578円; each game is also sold as a download at 2,970円. The publisher lists three additions — save and load anywhere, rewind, and a game-speed setting — and states that everything else in the games is as originally released, with nothing added.

What the publisher does not say in so many words is which version it ported. Its announcement introduces the game as a 1995 Super Famicom release that was later enjoyed “on various platforms”, without naming S; the Japanese Wikipedia article lists the Switch release as a port of the Super Famicom version. We have not found a statement from D3 Publisher that settles it, so this guide does not either.

The other game in the package, Tsukikomori (Super Famicom, 1996), is the sister title: the pixiv encyclopedia describes it as inheriting the seven-wonders system, and Wikipedia calls it a sister game built on the same system.

How do you find each version by its product code?

Use the code, not the title. A title search mixes everything together. At Suruga-ya on 16 September 2026, searching 学校であった怖い話 in the games category returned seven listings, four of them in stock: the Switch package, the PlayStation S and two Super Famicom listings. The other three were sold out: a Super Famicom copy without box and manual, and two editions of a later Apathy game. Each version’s product code keeps them apart:

• Super Famicom: search SHVC-AHXJ. On 16 September 2026 that returned two listings in stock at Suruga-ya (used copies at ¥1,160–¥2,840 — the range covers several conditions, including copies missing the box or manual — and a rank-B copy at ¥1,260), and four with sold-out listings included. The catalog form SHVC-AHXJ-JPN returned nothing at all
• PlayStation S: search SLPS00404, with no hyphen. One copy in stock (¥8,080), nine including sold-out listings — all of them S. Typed as SLPS-00404, the same search pulls in unrelated games
• Switch package: search HAC-BVJ5A at Suruga-ya. One listing, the standard edition, at ¥5,280. On Kataban, search the full code HAC-P-BVJ5A instead

When you search by product code, Suruga-ya hides sold-out items by default, so a code search that shows zero results means nothing is in stock that day, not that the shop has never carried it. On a Japanese shop shelf, all three versions are filed under カ, in the か row.

Gakkou de Atta Kowai Hanashi · 学校であった怖い話 · Super Famicom · 1995 · Banpresto (バンプレスト) · SHVC-AHXJ-JPN

Where to buy: Suruga-ya.jp — Super Famicom (SHVC-AHXJ) · Suruga-ya.jp — PlayStation S (SLPS00404) · Suruga-ya.jp — Switch (HAC-BVJ5A)
Search for the Super Famicom cartridge on Kataban →

Seven storytellers were invited, and six came. Thirty-one years later the game is still asking the question its premise sets up — what the seventh wonder is. You can now hear the answer on Switch; on original hardware, the cheapest way in is still the cartridge that started it.