8.2.08
A mean husband didn't appreciate his sweet young wife. He soon dumped her to marry a rich woman, who was also mean. After 10 years, he realized he had made a drastic mistake, as riches had not brought him happiness. The face of his sweet young wife kept appearing to him in dreams. His scolding rich wife continued to make him miserable, until he burned down the house with her in it.
As he left to find his young wife of 10 years ago, he vowed he would still love her--no matter how old and how ughly she may have become. To his extreme surprise, he found her in the same house, as sweet and as lovely as ever. She was not vengeful or jealous, but ran to meet him with tears of joy. "At last you have come back! Now I can rest in peace!" Oddly enough, even the room remained as it had 10 years ago; nothing had changed.
They spent a happy night together just talking, until at last they both crawled into bed exhausted. Her long black hair like the raven's feathers lay soft and shiny on the pillow.
In the morning, he was awakened by an icy wind blasting through the room. As he snuggled to his wife for extra warmth, something hard and bony jabbed him. When he opened his eyes, he found to his horror that he was snuggled next to a bleached, whitened skeleton with long, black matted hair. Worms crawled out of the eye sockets. The room had changed drastically. No longer was it cozy and comfortable. Bare walls were splintering and unkept. The broken shutters flapped in the wind. Cobwebs hung everywhere. It was as if the place had not been lived in for many years.
He ran screaming from the house. A huge shaggy bear with baleful eyes waited to gobble him up. Only his shoes were left. The wind blew them into the pond.
That night a passing villager heard a man and a woman's laughter coming from the decaying house. He fled past it, as he knew that the young woman who had once lived there died 10 years ago, wasting away from grief when her husband left. The following morning two skeletons, instead of one, lay in the bed on the floor. And the two ghosts lived happily ever after.
5.2.08
If the soul of the dead is not purified, it can return to the land of the living in the guise of a ghost. Also, if a dead person is not delivered, through prayer, from personal emotions such as jealousy, envy or anger, the spirit can return in a ghostly guise. The ghost haunts the place where it lived and persecutes those responsible for his or her bitter fate. The ghost will remain until released from its suffering through the good offices of a living person who prays that the soul of the dead may ascend.
During the Heian era (794-1185) it was believed that ghostly spirits floated above the living causing disease, plague and hunger. In the Kamakura era (1185-1333) a belief was reinforced that spirits turned into small animals, such as raccoons and foxes, that led people astray. Household objects, when a hundred years old, could become deities in the Muromachi period (1336-1573). These venerable objects were thought to possess special powers and were treated with care and respect. And in the Momoyama (1573-1600) and the Edo periods (1603-1868) there was a belief that if a man died of disease or in an epidemic, he turned into a monstrous demon.
Kaidan Four: Heartbroken Snakes
In Japanese folklore there are tales told of people who turned into snakes after death because of their evil ways and their miserly habits. A male becomes a serpent because his desires are not satisfied in life. A female snake appears as an attractive woman who marries a human: if rejected by her lover, her jealously will cause disaster. Women are often associated with snakes because of tales told of them being fierce and possessive towards their lovers. Children born of the union of a snake with a human may either appear as a serpent or as a human with snake-like qualities. They appear in the dreams of their family and friends, asking them to pray for the release of their souls from their snake-like bodies. The relative either reads a Buddhist sutra or recites special prayers. Then the soul is saved and the snake-body is shed. Some people are reborn in the guise of snakes after death when they wish to avenge wrongful deeds. The avenger’s ghost in Japanese lore is usually considered heroic. Snakes were not always thought of as symbols of evil, but also of love with no bounds. Long ago in Keicho era, there lived a beautiful girl in Senju in the province of Musashi. A bachelor called Yaichiro fell in love with her and sent her many missives of love to her; but she did not respond. Yaichiro died of sorrow, and the girl married someone else. On the morning after the wedding, the couple didn’t emerge from their room. When the bride’s mother entered, she found the bridegroom dead, and a snake crawling out of one of the bride’s eyes. The villagers believed that the snake was none other than the heartbroken Yaichiro.
4.2.08
When they arrived at the address, the girl didn't get out, but whispered for him to wait a bit, while she stared out the window at a 2nd floor apartment. Ten minutes or so passed as she watched, never speaking, never crying; simply observing a solitary figure move about the apartment. Suddenly, the girl asked to be taken to a new address, this one back near the cemetery where he had first picked her up. The rain was heavy, and the driver focused on the road, leaving the girl to her thoughts.
When he arrived at the new address, a modern house in a good neighborhood, the cabbie opened the door and turned around to collect his fare. To his surprise, he found himself staring at an empty back seat, with a deep puddle where the girl had been sitting moments before. Mouth open, he just sat there staring at the vacant seat, until a knocking on the window shook him from his reverie.
The father of the house, seeing the taxi outside, had calmly walked out bringing with him the exact change for the fare. He explained that the young girl had been his daughter, who died in a traffic accident some years ago and was buried in Aoyama Cemetery. From time to time, he said, she hailed a cab and, after visiting her old boyfriend's apartment, asked to be driven home. The father thanked the driver for his troubles, and sent him on his way.
According to Shinto beliefs, all people have a soul called "reikon." When a person dies, the reikon leaves the body and joins the souls of its ancestors. However, when a person dies suddenly by murder, is slain in battle, commits suicide, or when he or she hasn't been given an appropriate funeral, the reikon may become a yuurei (Ghost) to seek revenge. Many yuurei are female ghosts who suffered badly in life from love, jealousy, sorrow, or regret. Male yuurei are less common.
Yuurei usually appear in a white kimono, which people were buried in the old days, and have no legs. They also wear a white triangular piece of paper or cloth (hitaikakushi) on their forehead. They usually appear between 2 and 3 a.m.
Okiku works as a maid at the home of the samurai Tessan Aoyama. One day while cleaning a collection of ten precious ceramic plates, which is a family treasure, she accidentally breaks one of them. The outraged Aoyama kills her and throws the corpse into an old well. Every night afterwards, Okiku's ghost rises from the well, slowly counts out nine plates and then breaks into heartrending sobs, over and over and over again, tormenting the samurai. Finally, vengeance is wrought when Aoyama goes insane.
With this tale told, wet your fingers and pinch out the fire of the second candle.
3.2.08
From that night onward, always at dusk, she would arrive with her maid, carrying the same Peony Lantern. Ogiwara and Otsuyu rapidly progressed in their affair, and she took to sleeping with him, always leaving before dawn. This relationship continued for some time, and both were happy.
However, a suspicious neighbor, wondering at Ogiwara's new habit of staying awake all night and sleeping the day away, hid outside his house, peeking through a small hole in the wooden wall in order to observe the old man's nighttime shenanigans. Much to his surprise, he uncovered the widowed samurai passionately entwined with a skeleton, packing only scarce, clinging bits of rotting flesh and cobweb-infested long black hair. Half-mad, the neighbor fled screaming from the scene.
The next day he confronted Ogiwara, bringing with him a Buddhist priest who warned of the danger facing his soul. One cannot dally with the dead. Ogiwara took this to heart, and vowed to free himself from the spell of Otsuyu. With the priest's help, he surrounded his house with ofuda, strips of paper upon which are written Buddhist sutras, offering protection from the supernatural. That night, Otsuyu and her maid came as always, but they cried at the steps of his porch, unable to enter the house.
Night after night she returned, begging Ogiwara to remove the ofuda so that they may be lovers again. Slowly, the lonely old man's resistance slipped away, and one night he left his house to join his beloved.
The next morning, he was nowhere to be found. His friends looked far and wide, until the neighbor suggested they search the cemetery. At long last, they found the graves of Otsuyu and her maid, emblazoned with the same peony pattern. Opening the crypts, no one was surprised to see the corpse of Ogiwara, still passionately entwined with his skeletal lover.
With this tale told, wet your fingers and pinch out the fire of the first candle.
