Chizuko Mifune and the Cursed Origins of The Ring | Spotlight
On Halloween, few images are as instantly unsettling as a ghost crawling out of a television screen. In The Ring, Sadako’s curse turns an ordinary recording into a source of terror. But behind this iconic horror story lies a real person whose life helped inspire its disturbing mythology: Chizuko Mifune, a Japanese woman who claimed […] The post Chizuko Mifune and the Cursed Origins of The Ring |…
Chizuko Mifune, born in Kumamoto Prefecture on July 17, 1886, was a Japanese woman whose psychic abilities captivated the public in the early 20th century. Married briefly to an army officer, she gained notoriety after a missing money incident that allegedly led to accusations of theft and her eventual divorce. Mifune's sister-in-law, Takeo Kiyohara, a hypnotist, claimed to have discovered her clairvoyant abilities and conducted experiments to test them.
These tests, including the identification of hidden characters within sealed envelopes, attracted attention from psychologists and journalists. Despite mixed results, Mifune's abilities were scrutinized by Tomokichi Fukurai, a researcher into psychic phenomena at Tokyo Imperial University. However, suspicions of fraud arose when Mifune identified characters within a practice object given to her by Fukurai.
Mifune, facing criticism, returned to Kumamoto and died by suicide on January 19, 1911, at age 24. Her story influenced the character of Sadako, the psychic mother in the Japanese horror novel "Ringu" and its film adaptations.
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