Japanese Taxi Drivers are claiming to experienced having "ghost passengers" in the city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi. The prefecture is one of the devastated areas hit by the March 2011 9.0 magnitude earthquake that triggered a tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people, per FOX News.

According to a report by The Asahi Shimbun, a 22-year-old Tohoku Gakuin University sociology major named Yuka Kudo conducted a survey on over 100 taxi drivers about ghost encounters. It is part of her graduation thesis, but she could only get answers from seven drivers with most participants ignoring her question, "Did you have any unusual experiences after the disaster?"

One driver, who was in his 50s said that he encountered a woman wearing a coat near Ishinomaki Station who directed him to go straight to Minamihama district. The driver then asked the passenger, "The area is almost empty. Is it OK?" then the woman replied in a quivering voice, "Have I died?"

A cab driver who was in his 40s said that a young man in his 20s pointed once boarded in his taxi and pointed towards the Hiyoriyama Mountain. However, the young man disappeared when they arrived at the mountain.

Another driver is not afraid of the reported encounters with him saying that he will gladly accept the ghost as his passenger. Kudo noted in her thesis that the drivers he surveyed did not have any fear of the ghosts, instead shows them respect.

"Through the interviews, I learned that the death of each victim carries importance. I want to convey that to other people," Kudo said. Her thesis also reported that the drivers believed they were picking up real passengers because they started their meters and were recorded on their logs as unpaid.

The 22-year-old added that most of the "ghost passengers" are in their youthful ages and all believed to have died during the 2011 tsunami disaster. "Young people feel strongly chagrined (at their deaths) when they cannot meet people they love. As they want to convey their bitterness, they may have chosen taxis, which are like private rooms, as a medium to do so," Kudo explained.

The San Francisco Gate compared the Japanese drivers' encounters to the urban legend of "The Phantom Hitchhiker" where drivers often pick up a mysterious hitchhiker that vanishes after a while. In a report by the Scientific American, what the drivers are experiencing are "grief hallucinations."

This type of hallucination is the normal reaction of people in mourning that are rarely talked about to fear of being labeled as insane or mentally unstable.