I guess it figures since this town and the Otherside overlap so much that if you just kinda lose the will to go on you can be pulled over without actually biting it. Come to think of it something similar also happened back in Ch. 6.
Poor Taniguchi. I think what strikes me as the most terrible is it seems like. He came to resemble that first spirit that appeared to him in the first place. Like ever since then, he'd running towards this terrible fate....