Suicide Forest is as real as the remains of over a hundred of those who each year went to take their lives in silence or unheard screams in that "Sea of Trees".
When a group of friends ended up in Aokigahara just outside Tokyo, it wasn't because they wanted to commit a mass suicide or hunt the spirits who lingered between the branches of the trees. Bad weather prevented them from their original mission of climbing Mt. Fuji and nudged them into making a bad decision of spending the night camping in Aokigahara.
As the night closed over them, extinguishing every sign of life and light from the forest, their thrill of personally exploring Japanese legends turned into a bone-chilling experience when the first one of them went missing. The seemingly dead forest came alive with a face of terror that none of them wished to see as they wandered around in their frantic attempt to find a way back to civilization.
Jeremy Bates already bought me with his brilliant novella Black Canyon and he did it again with Suicide Forest, a gripping, chilling and full-blooded novel that leaves you no space to calm yourself as it tightens the rope around your neck and drags you up to its climax.
Suicide Forest is real, but if Aokigahara hadn't already existed as a beautiful creation and the final resting place for many, Jeremy Bates would have made it real.
Also read my review of Black Canyon by Jeremy Bates.
BJ