In 1918, a teenage boy named Eikichi Suzuki went to see an exhibition in Sapporo, Japan. He was seventeen years old and wanted to bring back a gift for his little sister. While walking down a busy shopping street, he saw a doll in a store window. The doll was wearing a traditional Japanese kimono and had black hair that came down to its shoulders. He bought it right away and took it home for his sister, Kikuko, who was only two or three years old at the time.
Kikuko absolutely loved the doll from the moment she got it. She took it with her everywhere she went and would not go to sleep without it. The little girl was so attached to her new toy that she decided to give it her own name, calling it Okiku. For about a year, the two were never apart. But then something terrible happened in 1919. Kikuko got sick with a bad cold that turned into a high fever. Her family tried everything they could, but she did not get better.
The little girl died when she was just three years old, and she was holding her favorite doll when she passed away, as per OddityCentral. Her family was heartbroken. They put the doll on a special altar in their home where they could remember their daughter. Every day they would pray there, and after some time, they started to see something very odd. The doll’s hair was getting longer. It was not shoulder length anymore like when they first got it. The family started to think that maybe Kikuko’s spirit had somehow gone into the doll.
The hair keeps growing and no one can explain it
For almost twenty years, the Suzuki family kept the doll and watched its hair grow longer. When 1938 came around, Eikichi had to join the army because Japan was heading into World War II. The family had to move away from Hokkaido. They made a difficult choice to leave the doll behind instead of taking it with them. They gave it to monks at a temple called Mannenji in the town of Iwamizawa. They thought the doll should stay in the place where Kikuko had lived.
The monks agreed to look after the doll and take care of it properly. As time went by, they saw the same weird thing happening that the family had told them about. The hair just kept growing and growing. The monks said it got to be about 25 centimeters long, hanging down past the doll’s knees. They started cutting the hair every now and then to keep it from getting too long, but it would always grow back again.
— Tango Charlie (@Charlie86861) October 30, 2025
Dolls can grow “real” human hair.
A Japanese doll named Okiku is said to have its hair mysteriously grow over time — scientists confirmed the hair is human, but can’t explain how it keeps lengthening. pic.twitter.com/OAdWKKenuU
Today, the Okiku doll is still at Mannenji Temple, more than one hundred years after that teenage boy bought it for his little sister. People travel from all over the world to see this strange doll, but the temple does not let anyone take pictures of it.
The monks say that cameras do not work right when people try to photograph Okiku, or weird things show up in the photos. Like other infamous haunted dolls that have caused fear and fascination, Okiku has become famous and brings in people who believe in ghosts and people who do not.
‘โอคิคุ’ ตุ๊กตาผีสิงแห่งเกาะฮอกไกโด ตุ๊กตาที่เชื่อกันว่ามีวิญญาณเด็กผู้หญิงสิงอยู่ ผมยาวเองจนมีการจัดพิธีกรรมเพื่อตัดผมตุ๊กตาทุกปี และยังมีการจัดพิธีงานศพ เผาเพื่อเป็นการปลดปล่อยวิญญาณตุ๊กตา (มีต่อ) pic.twitter.com/7tM0ZcSSsK
— L O L A (@lolitascak3) August 29, 2025
Some folks have tried to come up with normal reasons for why the hair grows. One idea is that old dolls like this one used real human hair that was bent in half and stuck into the head with glue. Maybe over many years, the glue got weak and the hair started to slip out, making it look longer.
But this does not really explain why it keeps growing year after year, or why the monks need to keep trimming it. The monks at Mannenji Temple still take care of Okiku and treat it with respect because they believe a young girl’s spirit lives inside it. The story has inspired numerous horror films featuring possessed dolls and is still one of the most famous ghost stories in Japan.
