The Elevator Game

How a South Korean Ritual Became Tokyo's Corporate Nightmare. On December 12, 2013, at approximately 2:43 AM, security cameras in the Akasaka View Hotel captured footage of 19-year-old exchange student Elisa Tam entering an elevator alone. The cameras show her pressing multiple buttons in a specific sequence before the elevator doors closed. She was never seen alive again. Three weeks later, on January 4, 2014, her body was discovered in the rooftop water tank of the building. The official cause of death was ruled accidental drowning, but investigators couldn't explain how she accessed the locked roof area or why she would climb into a water tank. More disturbingly, they couldn't explain the elevator footage that showed her appearing to converse with someone invisible before exiting on the 10th floor. The incident might have remained just another tragic unexplained death if not for what happened next. When the elevator footage leaked online in February 2014, several internet users immediately recognized the button sequence: 1-4-2-6-2-10-5. It matched exactly the instructions for "Elevator to Another World" (エレベーターゲーム), a ritual game that had been circulating on Japanese and Korean forums since around 2008.

The rules of the game are specific:

1. Enter an elevator alone in a building with at least 10 floors, preferably at night

2. Press the buttons in sequence: 4-2-6-2-10-5-1

3. When the elevator reaches the 5th floor, a woman may enter – do not look at or speak to her

4. Press button 1 before reaching the 10th floor

5. If the elevator goes to the 10th floor instead of the 1st floor, you've succeeded in entering another dimension.

After Elisa Tam's death, several office workers in Tokyo's Shinjuku district reported strange experiences when working late. At Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation's headquarters, a junior analyst named Kenji Yamada filed an incident report on March 18, 2014, describing how he entered an elevator on the ground floor at 11:22 PM, only to find himself inexplicably on the 10th floor despite pressing the button for the 6th floor.

"The lights flickered," he wrote. "When they came back on, the indicator showed I was on the 10th floor. When the doors opened, the corridor was identical to our office floor, but completely empty and silent. Even the potted plants looked withered. I immediately pressed the close button and returned to the lobby."

By April 2014, similar reports began surfacing from other Tokyo skyscrapers. At Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, overnight security guard Takashi Ikeda documented in his logbook dated April 23, 2014: "Third night this week elevator 4 has traveled to 10th floor despite no button selection. Cameras show no one entering/exiting. Maintenance found no mechanical issues."

The phenomenon spread to Osaka by summer 2014. On July 7, cleaning staff at Abeno Harukas, Japan's tallest skyscraper, collectively refused to service the 10th floor after 10 PM. Their supervisor, Mieko Tanaka, explained in an internal memo obtained by researchers: "Two staff members reported seeing a woman in dated office attire standing in the 10th floor corridor at 11:45 PM. When approached, she allegedly turned and walked through the wall."

The Elevator Game gained mainstream attention when TV Tokyo aired a special investigation on October 31, 2014. The broadcast included interviews with office workers who claimed to have accidentally played the game. One interviewee, her face obscured, described reaching the 10th floor at midnight in the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower: Everything looked normal, but felt wrong. The air was heavy. When I looked out the window, Tokyo was there but with subtle differences—buildings that shouldn't exist, missing landmarks. Then I saw my reflection in the window glass. I was smiling, but I wasn't. By 2015, the phenomenon had become so widespread that several major corporations implemented official policies. Mitsubishi Estate Company, which manages numerous Tokyo skyscrapers, issued internal memorandum #458 on February 10, 2015, stating: "Employees working after 9 PM are advised to use stairwells instead of elevators when traveling to or from the 10th floor."

Public records obtained from Tokyo Electric Power Company show unexplained power fluctuations occurring in multiple office buildings between 11 PM and 3 AM, particularly affecting elevator systems and 10th-floor electrical circuits. Maintenance reports from this period show a 40% increase in elevator service calls specifically related to "phantom trips" to the 10th floor.

Professor Hiroshi Nakamura, a cultural anthropologist at Waseda University, began studying the phenomenon in 2016. In his paper published in the Journal of Contemporary Folklore (Vol. 28, 2017), he noted: "What makes the Elevator Game unique is how it has transcended from internet folklore to actual workplace policy. The ritual's specific instructions, combined with high-rise architecture and Japan's notorious work culture keeping employees in offices late at night, created perfect conditions for this urban legend to manifest in seemingly real experiences."

As recently as November 2022, a survey conducted by Rakuten Research found that 64% of Tokyo office workers reported avoiding the 10th floor after dark, despite only 27% claiming to believe in supernatural phenomena.

The most recent documented incident occurred on March 8, 2023, at the Sunshine 60 building in Ikebukuro. At 1:17 AM, security cameras captured a lone office worker entering an elevator on the ground floor. According to the timestamp, the elevator traveled directly to the 10th floor despite the console showing the button for the 7th floor had been pressed. The worker exited on the 10th floor and disappeared down the corridor.

Forty-three minutes later, the same security system recorded that same worker emerging from a different elevator on the ground floor, visibly shaken. Building security reported that when questioned, the worker insisted no more than five minutes had passed and refused to explain what happened on the 10th floor.

Today, it's common practice for Japanese office workers to ask colleagues to accompany them when they need to visit the 10th floor of any building after sunset. Many will take the stairs or travel to the 11th floor and walk down rather than risk encountering what they believe awaits them if they arrive directly at the 10th floor.

Whether viewed as mass hysteria, an urban legend come to life, or something more sinister, the Elevator Game has permanently altered how thousands of people navigate Tokyo's vertical landscape after dark. The 10th floor, once just another number, has become a threshold that many refuse to cross alone. As one anonymous elevator technician told the Asahi Shimbun in a 2021 interview: "I've been servicing elevators for 28 years. I can explain every sound, every mechanical quirk. But I won't work on 10th floor calls after midnight. Some things you learn to respect, whether you believe in them or not."