Ghost Hunt, Volume 1 by Shiho Inada and Fuyumi Ono

ai Taniyama is a typical high-schooler, but she's interested in the occult and ghost stories, as is witnessed by Mai and three other friends telling Ghost stories in a supposedly-haunted AV room at her school. The four each tell a story by the light of a flashlight and when the story is over, turn off the flashlight. When everyone has told a story, the light is switched off, and they count. Supposedly, there will be an extra voice counting, and that will be a ghost.

When the flashlight is turned off at the end, there is an extra voice, but it turns out to be Shibuya, who they at first think is an older upperclassman, but who turns out to be the owner of the Psychical research company called SPR- Shibuya Psychic Research. Mai, who is interested in the haunted history of her school, snoops into an empty room and knocks over a very expensive camera worth 100 million Yen. Because she isn't rich, Mai must pay him back by acting as his assistant, while his other assistant, Lin, is in the hospital.

Kazuya Shibuya amd SPR aren't the only psychic experts called in by the Principal of Mai's School. As well, there are John Brown, an Australian Priest who speaks in the Kansai Dialect, Ayako Matsuzaki, a self-proclaimed Miko, Takigawa Housho, a Buddhist Monk, and Masako Hara, a Psychic who is famous on TV.

Despite the best efforts of the other psychics, Masako is unable to feel any spirits haunting the place. But she is contradicted by one of Mai's classmates, who claims that the building is filled with spirits, and that when they gather, it gives her a headache.

After some mysterious incidents, Mai's temporary boss Kazuya Shibuya gathers everyone together and tells them that there will be an incident in the night where a chair will move, with no one around to touch it. When the chair moves, seemingly on its own, he has his answer to what is causing the incidents at the school. But will the other psychics believe it, and can he finally put to rest the haunting incidents at the school?

I really liked this series, but the first book isn't really an indicator of how the rest of the series will go. It's spooky, yes and filled with eerie incidents that provide some pretty intense scares, but the case ends in a way that make you think that perhaps this series will be dedicated to debunking psychic phenomena, while nothing can be further from the truth.

Perhaps this story was meant to be a more lukewarm lead-in to the other stories, which are much more intense with psychic phenomena that in the end turn out to be real ghosts rather than poltergeists or faking it. If so, it does serve to ease you into the scarier aspects of the series, but it makes the first story stand out for how "de-fanged" it seems to be compared to the rest of the stories so far.

I still like the series, but the first volume seems rather weak tea compared to the rest of the stories. This won't stop me from reading or enjoying other volumes, but be warned that the series gets much more intense from here.