Gakkou no Kaidan 1 (Hirayama Hideyuki 1995)

The story revolves around an unused wing of an elementary school. Among the school children, rumors abound that the wing is haunted, causing the adventurous or foolhardy among them to sneak into the abandoned building and poke around. When little third grader Mika disappears after following the sound of laughter into the third bathroom stall on the left (in a reference to Toire no Hanako-san) her 5th grade brother and an odd band of his classmates must go looking for her. Once inside the school, they hear the doors shut and lock behind them. Now trapped in the haunted school building, their spooky adventure begins.

This is indeed a ghost story, and before long, our brave band is experiencing very bizarre supernatural phenomena. Director Hirayama has done a wonderful job of creating a mixture of ghosts and situations the type of which our young adventurers could easily conjure up in their own imaginations and nightmares. The result is that our ghoulies are both frightening and funny, dangerous yet somehow less than murderous. The pudgy, translucent neon demon who sticks out his tongue while giving the kids a thumbs-up, the humongous (40 foot!) person lumbering down the darkened hallways, the pickled biology specimens suddenly come to life, are all as convincing and entertaining as they are spooky.

There is one ghoul, however, which does indeed seem intent on harming these kids, the ghost janitor who steadily morphs into a large spider-like creature. After discovering that it is the spider janitor who has captured Mika, wrapping her in a large web, the children must gather all their bravery and resources to rescue her and escape the school before being caught themselves. But escaping the school proves far more treacherous than they had imagined.