Yokai of the House

A childlike house spirit whose presence brings a family fortune.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A small yokai that creeps into dirty bathhouses at night to lick up the grime.

A hairy, grinning river yokai—cousin of the kappa—that loves eggplants and startles bathers.

A monk who peers up through the privy floor on New Year's Eve—unless you say his name first.

A long-tongued yokai that licks ceilings; later books blame it for the dark stains overhead.

A clawed thing that peers down through the skylight on the one night you are required to stay awake.

It lives in the hearth ash. Poke the ash and it comes out — which was the point of saying so.

A two-tailed cat wearing a hearth trivet as a crown, puffing the embers back to life.

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

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

The idler's yokai: a man who did nothing with his life, reborn as a thing that licks lamp oil and does nothing still.

A gourd-headed old yokai who slips into homes and acts like the master.

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

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

A demon king who spent thirty nights trying to frighten one sixteen-year-old, and lost the wager.

Stones fall from the sky with no thrower ever seen, blamed on a tengu.

Countless eyes that appear on the paper sliding screens (shoji) of a ruined house.

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

A black, Buddha-like figure climbing out of a family altar, its eyes dangling on their stalks.

A creature covered in hair all over, like the hairy immortal woman of Chinese legend; its name can also be written to mean 'seen only rarely.'

Ogre-masked visiting deities who storm into homes at New Year roaring 'Any crybabies here?'

A childlike, one-eyed monk yokai that startles people on lonely roads.

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