Fatal Frame: Zero Anthology Final Part - Development Room
Head: Makoto Shibata (director)
I didn't think I should talk about this officially, but I have to...
Maybe the staff member imagined her hair being tugged.
Maybe the woman reflected in the glass had been a mistake, since it was dark.
I have actually seen something impossible with my own eyes that can't be brushed off as a simple mistake.
I think people would say that I should talk about something so good more often, but I never felt like it.
I never mentioned it in interviews, and of course I said nothing to the staff.
After the project finished, I finally felt like talking.
Of course, there's a reason for that...
A ghost that appeared in the Fatal Frame development room
A ghost actually appeared in the development room
This was at the end of development, after 2am. No one was left on the floor, and I was working alone. It looked like the other staff had gone for naps.
It was lonely being all by myself on such a spacious floor, but this does happen sometimes. The area was quiet, and all I could hear was the faint sound of the computer's fan.
As I was working, I momentarily looked up from my PC and saw that the meeting room door was open. My desk is the furthest in on the fifth floor of headquarters, in a position that affords me a view of the whole floor. From there I could see the fifth floor meeting room door from the side, but this meant that, though I knew that the door was open, I couldn't see inside. From out of the door peeked the profile of a white face.
It was frightfully expressionless, and its eyes were open. The mouth was half open, apparently slack. Not only that, but its hair was light... or rather, to me it looked like it might not have any hair at all.
Working on the Fatal Frame project is a pale-faced man called U. I thought that, having been asleep in the meeting room, he must have been messing around in attempt to make me laugh. U's hair is dyed brown, so I wondered if it had melded with his skin colour and that was why he appeared this way. As I did so, the white face withdrew inside the room and peeked back out, repeating this over and over.
Peek. Peek.
The white face continued to move at a comical rhythm. Seeing this, I let down my guard and reflexively laughed. Fine, I thought, returning to work.
I concentrated on working, and after almost an hour had passed I relaxed and casually looked up. The face was still there, peeking in and out.
"This guy's persistent, huh," I thought to myself, standing up. From that moment onwards, the face withdrew back inside and never came back out. Peering into the meeting room, I saw that it was pitch black inside. I turned on the lights, but there was no one there. Then who had been coming in and out before?
...I had seen one... Without a doubt, that was an "impossible thing" that I had seen clearly. It was, however, too humorous to call it a ghost. Perhaps if the face had been looking right at me as it had moved then I would have felt some kind of malice towards me, but because it was always from the side, peeking its face out, all I could do was find it amusing.
Maybe paranormal experiences are often like this. It seemed to have no ill will towards me, and wasn't trying to scare me. It was just moving back and forth.
This was my awkward encounter with it, not knowing what it was trying to do. I suppose that real life ghostly encounters are the kind that end abruptly, without the climax or punchline that you might find in a ghost story. These days I tell it like an amusing tale, but at the time I was troubled, not having any idea what it was. I'm sure that the people who hear this story wouldn't know how to react, either. That is the reason why I didn't tell anyone.
Follow-up: These "Mysteries of Zero" began in the format of staff columns. What did you think? There are some parts of the anthology that have been taken directly from the proposal, and I think they're more content rich than anything on the Tecmo homepage ever has been before. I hope that this staff corner will strike a chord with people who have played the game, and that it has stirred up interest in the game within those who haven't. Thank you. (Shibata)