Thrills as actors serve forerunner of Halloween aboard train

It's usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan's famously efficient bullet train. But the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror.

- 

Organisers of Saturday's adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the "world's first haunted house experience on a running shinkansen".

On board one chartered car of the shinkansen - the Japanese word for bullet train - were about 40 thrill-seekers, ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka.

The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and daughter were trapped in a moving train battle (with) zombies hungry for human flesh.

All seemed normal as the train made a peaceful departure in the evening, but it wasn't long until the first gory attack.