The woman died and returned as Kuchisake Onna, an angry spirit that has haunted roads and paths ever since. In the old days it was said that she wore a kimono and would hide her face with the large end of the sleeve, but nowadays she wears a brown trenchcoat and uses a surgeon’s mask to cover her mouth.
The legend of the Slit-mouthed Woman stayed in the shadows for generations until the year 1979 when Kuchisake Onna sightings started happening everywhere and it became an example of an urban legend run amok. The police feared that it was some crazy woman dressed as Kuchisake Onna and chasing children, but the source of it all seems to be the stories of Kuchisake Onna that schoolkids were telling each other.
The hysteria reached it’s peak in late 1979 and mysteriously just stopped, the scare retreating into the shadows again.