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Room 404: What happened when we stayed in an unlucky hotel room in Japan

Oona McGee Feb 14, 2026
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There’s a reason hotels don’t use this number for their rooms.

In Japan, the numbers “4” (“shi”) and “9” (“ku”) are associated with death and suffering, due to the way the word “shi” can also be used to mean “death” and “ku” can mean “suffering“.

The belief is so widespread that hospitals and hotels avoid using these numbers wherever possible, so much so that it’s not uncommon for hotels to skip a room with double numbers like 404, rebranding it as 405 after 403 to avoid giving guests an ominous impression.

Our reporter Masanuki Sunakoma, who stays at accommodation facilities near Tokyo almost every week, has long seen this custom firsthand during his travels, which is why, when he received the key to Room 404 at a hotel in Tokyo the other day, he couldn’t help but pause for a moment.

Though he doesn’t have any particular psychic sensitivities, and is in no way woo-woo enough to worry about numbers himself, Masanuki couldn’t shake the strange feeling that began to grow in his chest. As he looked at his room key and wondered whether he should ask for a different room, his curiosity got the better of him and he decided to take the room that had been allocated to him.

As he made his way to Room 404, Masanuki began to reason with himself, telling his mind that these were just numbers and there was no need to feel frightened. After all, there’s no rule in Japan to say these rooms shouldn’t exist, and with so many international visitors it makes sense to offer as many rooms as possible. Plus, he has no qualms with numbers like “13” or “666”, which might spark fear in foreigners, who in turn wouldn’t blink an eye at staying in a room with the number 9 or 4.

▼ So when he opened the door to his room, he decided to feel lucky that it was a corner room, which looked similar to this one below.

If you’re wondering why Masanuki didn’t share an actual photo of the room, the reason will soon become clear once you hear what happened when he stayed there. He doesn’t want to tar the hotel’s reputation by revealing any identifying details, other than the door, and spoiler alert – the mysterious lights.

As he got settled in the room, Masanuki reminded himself that when you stay in hotels on a weekly basis, you’re bound to come across some unusual experiences. Like that one time he went to check out of a hotel, only to be confronted by the assistant manager who asked him with a straight face, “Did you set off the fire alarm last night at around 2 a.m.? ” He had no recollection of doing so, and that experience rattled him so much he can’t look at a fire alarm now without thinking about it.

Now, as he felt his nerves rising while in the room, Masanuki began to realise that the fire alarm encounter may have traumatised him more than he realised. Usually, he wouldn’t feel so on edge in Room 404, but now he felt as if he’d become sensitive to even the smallest of strange happenings. Trying to remain calm, Masanuki turned off the lights and quickly hopped into bed, but that’s when…

▼ …the lights in the room suddenly turned back on and started flickering.

Masanuki froze, staring at the lights while wondering how on earth they’d turned on, right after he’d closed his eyes no less. Then, a cup that had been placed on the sink in the bathroom suddenly fell, making a loud clanging noise.

▼ This isn’t a photo of the actual bathroom, but the plastic-covered cup on the bottom right shows roughly where the cup was.

Had he been even a little bit woo woo, Masanuki would’ve run out of the room so fast no yokai spirit would be able to catch him. Instead, he stayed in bed and slowed his racing heart by taking some deep breaths, until he felt safe enough to get out of bed and, while avoiding the bathroom at all costs, turn the lights back on, and then off again.

Masanuki is happy to say that after these frightening events, nothing else out of the ordinary occurred during his stay in Room 404. Now, looking back on it, he likes to think that he simply let his imagination run wild, making him feel more scared than he needed to be. It was an old, cheap hotel that may have had problems with its wiring, and perhaps there was a tremor or lorry on the street that caused the cup to fall.

If these things had happened in another room, Masanuki wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but somehow, in Room 404 everything felt a bit more ominous. He decided to walk away from this experience by seeing it as an insight into the workings of the human mind, rather than the workings of a poltergeist, although he has to admit that if he ever gets given the key to a Room 404 again, he might just ask for a different room.

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[ Read in Japanese ]