Cracked Ghost Stories: The Anus Ghost

Recently, cracked.com posted a list of the seven most ridiculous ghost stories.   It was a wonderful list that I enjoyed on every level.  I didn't agree with the writer on every count.   He did seem to think all Japanese ghost stories are insane.  I love Japanese ghosts and folklore and I know some of their ghost stories are silly, but I can't agree that all of them are ridiculous.  I also have to wonder if some of the list just seems ridiculous to Westerners because there is cultural context we are missing.   Most of cracked.com's list seems to come from other cultures and different cultures vary greatly in their folklore and religion and this makes one culture's terrifying tale another cultures exercise in absurdity.   Anyhow,  here is my favorite ghost story from the list and I can't think of a cultural context that wouldn't make me giggle a little over this.

The Shirime

According to cracked.com, The Shirime is a terrifying naked man ghost.  It accosts people on long lonely roads and sexually harasses them.   In one story, a samurai is attacked and when the samurai turns around to face his attacker, his attacker disrobes.  When the samurai decides to flee, the naked man ghost bends over and exposes his anus.   This is horrifying on so many levels.   The most horrifying aspect of this is that the ghost has an eyeball in its butt hole. I did some research and I couldn't find any more to this story than this.  Apparently the Shirime can be attributed to one Haiku poet from the 17th century.  I haven't read of anyone who has actually encountered this spirit, so thankfully it seems to be just folklore.  I guess we are all grateful for this.
 
I plan on continuing to write about Alabama State Hospitals tomorrow.   As the doors close on Alabama's hospitals, I hope these posts will serve as a memorial, but for today I needed a laugh and there isn't a ghostly story out there that made me laugh as hard as the butt hole ghost.
 
To read more of cracked.com's ridiculous ghost stories you can follow this link: 

http://www.cracked.com/article_18814_the-7-most-ridiculous-ghost-stories-from-around-world.html?wa_user1=3&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended

Kwaidan: Japanese Ghost Stories

It was a good Christmas for me this last year.   I was under the weather, recovering from surgery, but my family filled my stocking with enough haunting books to keep my spirits up.  The first book I got was from my baby sister, Rose.   It is a collection of Japanese ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn.    The book is absolutely beautiful, filled with Japanese depictions of ghosts and monsters from folklore in rare color.  Just flipping through the book is a visual journey into the dark world of Japanese folklore and it is a beautiful one.   The stories are very different from American ghost stories.  The book is called Kwaidan, which is translated as meaning ghost story.

My favorite story was a story of a Rokuorkubi.  According to Wikipedia,  Rokourkubi "look like normal human being by day, but at night they gain the ability to stretch their necks to great lengths. They can also change their faces to those of terrifying oni to better scare mortals."   The depiction of Rokuorkubi in Hearn's book is an original translation and is different from Wikipedia's depiction and a little more terrifying.   The story in the book tells of a wandering priest who was once a Samurai.  He is sleeping in a forest known to be haunted by horrible ghosts and demons when a kind man comes upon him  He was taken in by the kind man and given a bed only to wake up in the middle of the night to find the bodies of the residents of the house lying on the floor in front o his room without a their heads.  At first, he assumes some dreadful spirit has killed everyone and taken their heads, but upon careful examination he discovers that the bodies are the bodies of Rokuro-Kubi.  The heads of the Rokuro-Kubi had separated from their bodies to do evil in the night.  The Samari hides the bodies from the heads and battles the Rokuro-Kubi only to have one of them attach itself to his sleeve.   He is almost executed because people assume the head is a souvenir he has taken of a someone he has slaughtered, but at the last minute a wise judge sees the markings on the neck of the Rokuo-Kubi and knows the demon for what it is. 

This is just one of the tales gathered by Hearn who was a translator and scholar of Japanese folklore from the turn of the last century.  Although the book I was given was subtitled Japanese Ghost Stories,  I have seen the book in other places called, Kwaidan, Stories: Studies of  Strange Things. Other stories include tales of murdered birds that haunt the murderer and a young woman who makes her betrothed wait for her after death.  They are a beautiful glimpse into another world of death and I enjoyed them all.  This book was made into a Japanese film in 1965 which I am definitely going to try to see.