Ghosts & Yūrei

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

A grudge that outlives the person who held it, and keeps settling the account.

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

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

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

A ghostly court lady in a ruined palace, teeth blackened, watching for anyone who comes by.

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

She waits at the children's graves and nurses the ones buried there.

A cry or a sudden heavy leg on a night road, said in some villages to be a child who died too soon.

Seven dead who travel together, mostly by the sea and rivers. They take one living person, and the one they take joins them.

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

An infant that licks the oil from lamps—perhaps, Sekien wondered, the reborn ghost of an oil thief.

A horse that burned to death in a fire and turned into a yokai, sitting face to face with a toad inside a mosquito net.

The cuckoo that crosses the mountain of death and comes back calling — which is why its cry was never just a bird's.

The hour-of-the-ox curse: white robes, an iron crown of candles, and a straw doll nailed to a sacred tree.

Something else moves into a body already dead, and the corpse sits up.

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

Not a fox that haunts a house but one a household is said to keep, passed down the family line.

A small snake kept in a jar by a household, which brings wealth and cannot be got rid of.

A possessing spirit neighbours blame when a household grows rich fast — and fear once that household's luck turns.

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

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

An old woman with a great snake wrapped around her body, said to be the wife of Jagoemon of the snake mound.

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

The widow in a mountain temple's back rooms, who digs up the graveyard's dead and strips their skin.

A woman whose neck stretches to impossible lengths at night.

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

A woman whose body or neck runs out to seven fathoms—about 12.6 metres—before she looks down at you.

A woman stretched impossibly tall beside a brothel. Modern writers made her an envious peeper.

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

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

A woman who licks. Her famous story calls her a cat girl; the kanji we spell her name with today is a modern choice.

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

Enter the mountain on the 1st, 9th or 17th and a young woman points at you and laughs; you come down half dead.

A beautiful girl at a spinning wheel by the road. Stop to watch and she turns white-haired and laughs.

A giant woman's laughter rolling down over a fence, and never stopping.

A crooked old woman tied to white face powder, with a sake jug, a stick and a broken umbrella for a hat.

A childlike house spirit whose presence brings a family fortune.

A red-haired baby that slips into old houses at night to flip sleepers' pillows and press down on their chests.

A red-haired child yokai that moves into houses, sometimes called kin to the zashiki-warashi.

It lives in the storehouse rather than the parlour, and guards what is kept there.

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

Smoke that gathers into a human shape—seen, modern retellings say, only by the pure of heart.

Hair kept in a hemp tub as a shrine's sacred object, which grows long and binds intruders when the enshrined kami's mood turns unsettled.

The Ryukyuan word for all of them at once. Let one crawl between your legs and you die.