Mai finds herself facing much more than her annoying crush on “Naru the narcissist” Shibuya, and often has strangely intense feelings regarding the strange occurrences and characters she meets over the course of her employment. Is the school truly filled with malevolent spirits, as her self-proclaimed ‘psychic’ classmate insists? Can a haunted doll be the source of the violent manifestations in a family home? When a seemingly innocent repeat possession starts to increase in frequency, are the children being possessed being pulled into a never-ending game of hide and seek?
A must-see for fans of paranormal investigation of any kind, this series takes a much more scientific approach than I would have expected, to fantastic effect! Running the gamut of otherworldly powers in the Shibuya Psychic Research “on-call” list is a shrine maiden (whose ‘maiden-hood’ is often questioned); a Shinto priest; a Catholic priest (from Australia, complete with wacky accent); a famous tv spiritualist; Mai, with her own burgeoning psychic powers, and of course the ever-professional Shibuya and his assistant Lin.
The caseload is varied as well, with a wide variety of causes behind the apparent ‘hauntings’, and sometimes (despite my original expectations) you just can’t explain things with science alone! All in all, this is truly one of my favorite series ever. All-around creepy with all the right levels of strange, my favorite part is the lack of the non-ending that most ghost stories succumb to. I find myself endlessly fascinated not only by the gripping plotlines, but the well-developed characters and their relationships to one another as their work-load, and friendships, grow.