Ghosts & Yūrei

The hag of Adachigahara, who offered travellers a bed and kept a room they must not open.

The widow left in a dead temple's back rooms, who strips the skin from the corpses left at the gate.

The classic Japanese ghost: white burial robe, black hair unbound, no feet below the knee.

Okiku's ghost rising from the well, counting nine plates and never once reaching ten.

An infant that slips into houses to drink the oil from lamps—the reborn ghost of an oil thief.

The starved monk of a ruined temple, still ringing an evening bell that no one comes to hear.

A crooked hag caked in white powder, shuffling through winter streets with a sake jug and a broken hat.

An old woman with a snake coiled around each arm, guarding the grave of her serpent husband.

Hearth smoke that drifts into the shape of a woman—seen only by those pure enough to see it.

A giant woman's laughter rolling down over the pleasure quarters, and never stopping.

A masked woman who asks 'Am I pretty?'—then removes the mask to reveal a mouth slit ear to ear.

The vengeful monk Raigo reborn as a swarm of iron-toothed rats that devour scriptures.

A ghostly court lady in a ruined palace, endlessly making up her face to greet a lord who never comes.

A woman who stretches her body impossibly tall to peer, envious, into upper-floor windows.

A blue-lit specter that appears when the hundredth ghost story is told by lantern light.

A spurned woman whose rage transforms her into a fire-breathing serpent to hunt down a fleeing monk.

The horned, grimacing visage of a woman consumed by jealousy and turned into a demon.

A dog-spirit familiar that serves a family but can be sent to curse their enemies.

A courtesan whose face and body are entirely hidden by cascading hair.

A skeletal woman who, seen as beautiful only by her lover, visits him each night.

A thieving woman whose arms sprout countless bird-eyes as punishment for stealing coins.

A childlike house spirit whose presence brings a family fortune.

The ghost of a woman who died in childbirth, begging you to hold her baby.

A woman with a second, ravenous mouth hidden at the back of her head.

A woman whose neck stretches to impossible lengths at night.

A pale, beautiful woman of the snowstorm who freezes travelers to death.