It’s usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train.
But the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror.
Organisers of Saturday’s adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the “world’s first haunted house experience on a running shinkansen”.
On board one chartered car of the shinkansen — the Japanese word for bullet train — were around 40 thrill-seekers, ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka.
The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie “Train to Busan”, in which a father and daughter trapped on a moving train battle zombies hungry for human flesh.
All seemed normal at first as the bullet train made a peaceful departure Saturday evening, but it wasn’t long until the first gory attack.
The victims — actors planted in seats by the organisers — jerked in agony and then underwent a terrifying transformation before starting a rampage against their fellow passengers.
Event organiser Kenta Iwana of the group Kowagarasetai, which translates to the “scare squad”, said they wanted to “depict the normally safe, peaceful shinkansen — something we take for granted — collapsing in the blink of an eye”.
