▪	RELEASED BY:		DEL REY
		▪	AUTHOR / ART:		SHIHO INADA / FUYUMI ONO
		▪	FORMAT:		JAPANESE / B&W
		▪	PAGES:		202
		▪	RATING:		T
		▪	RELEASE DATE:		09/25/2007
		▪	REVIEW DATE:		09/25/2007
		▪	REVIEWED BY:		KATIE GALLANT

This may be one of SPR’s hardest cases yet, and things are not likely to get easier before the job is done. The entire Shibuya Psychic Research team is “living” on the investigation site as they try to decipher the meaning behind the strange occurrences and mass amounts of death in the client’s family.

Mai Taniyama is a high school student working part time for Kazuya Shibuya, president of SPR, after she accidentally broke a piece of video equipment. Mai nicknamed him Naru after his narcissistic nature, and everyone around them quickly adopted the term for him as well. Fellow SPR team members include Lin, a man who just may be an onmyouji and is always around Naru, John Brow, an exorcist who speaks with a Kansai dialect, and is older than he looks, Houshou Takigawa, a former monk who acts as the older brother in the group,  Masako Hara, a television psychic and Mai’s rival for Naru’s feelings, Ayako Matsuzaki, a self proclaimed priestess who has yet to prove her position in SPR, and Osamu Yasuhara, a former client and expert at getting reliable information. In this latest mystery, a family is being terrorized with death and their children have strange markings on their backs. When Monk-san translates the markings as an ancient language, it reads, “the foolish girl will descend into hell” and instantly intrigues SPR. Naru is rendered comatose by his own team when he becomes one of the possessed, so he’s out of the game for now.

The opening scene goes quickly, and Mai uses quick judgment to save one of the children, only to be reprimanded for it later. Monk-san comes up with a few short term solutions to the possessions taking place in the house, and they send out Yasuhara to gather information on the family. Yasuhara finds more than that, and the group determines that the curse is rooted to the location itself, rather that this particular family. A few local legends are found to all be partially true, and the team uses trial end error to see which details are the correct ones. They do not get far though, before the power residing over the land comes after them. Mai has both a vision and a daydream that prove vital to the survival of the team and to solving the case. Some wrong doings on the part of the houses’ previous owners has quite literally made everyone living their since then die in one gruesome way or another. A tunnel in the cliff seems to be a focal point for washed up dead bodies, and the team decides to investigate the shrine at the end of it. Will Naru wake up in time to help expel whatever is haunting the land, or will he be the one doing the haunting?

GHOST HUNT Volume 9 will leave its readers like a rush of air leaving your lungs. The case is over, but so much is left unsaid. Once again, the translation was great and leaves not many questions to be asked. For those who are just joining this bandwagon, there are translation notes in the back of the book. The drawing style of Fuyumi Ono, as always, compliments Shiho Inada’s storyline perfectly. Perhaps one of their darkest works in the Ghost Hunt series, they mastered the suspense genre perfectly.

EXTRA:
As usual, Del Rey has provided translation notes to not only illuminate aspects of the language for readers but the Japanese culture itself.  The book also contains character biographies and ads for other Del Rey titles.

IN SUMMARY:
A house with a history of murderous families; a family suffering from possession; a curse big enough to affect the real world more than 200 years after it is placed. The Shibuya Team proves itself worthy of their field of work even with their head honcho out of the loop. A fast-paced mystery with characters so realistic and flawed, and pictures free of mature subject matter, foul language and gore. This volume of GHOST HUNT is most definitely the most developed and mind gripping of them thus far.