A teacher at an elementary school located in the city of Kusatsu in Shiga Prefecture, got in a bit of trouble earlier this month after he showed his students a “scary video” and caused some of them to run out of the classroom in fear.

According to the Kusatsu Board of Education, on February 8th, a 25-year-old male teacher at Tokiwa Elementary School in Kusatsu, used a digital blackboard for about 5-minutes during lunchtime, to show his 5th grade students a YouTube video of a television program about places thought to be haunte.

The video scared three of the teacher’s female students so much that they stopped eating their lunches and ran out of the classroom. After exiting the classroom, the three students told a nearby teacher what had happened. The teacher apologized to his students the same day.

Although the teacher had used the digital blackboard to show his students (illegally uploaded) YouTube videos of popular television shows on several previous occasions during lunchtime , this was the first time it had caused this sort of problem. However, it appears that this may have also been the first time the teacher showed his students this kind of video. Interestingly, it was not the teacher who came up with the idea of showing the students a “scary video.” According to the Board of Education, that day the students told the teacher “We want to watch a scary video.”

In response to questioning by school officials, the teacher was quoted as saying “The students said they wanted to see it (a scary video), so I thought ‘alright then’ and played the video. I did not check the content of the video and I was not careful enough.”

All classrooms at Tokiwa Elementary school have a digital blackboard, however, they are only supposed to be used for educational purposes.

The Kusatsu Board of Education has put out a written apology saying “It was an inappropriate action and the training on this new method of teaching was insufficient.”

If you’d like to see an amusing CG recreation of the events described in this story, then check out the TomoNews Japan video below.

Sources: NHK, The Huffington Post, TomoNews Japan