Presented by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Eleanor Matsuura, known for AMC’s The Walking Dead and Spooks. This definitive recording includes an Launch by Paul Murray.

In this assortment of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides haunt the living and a samurai delivers the baby of a Shinto goddess with mystical help. Here are all of the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: ‘rokuro-kubi’, whose mind separate from their bodies at night; ‘jikininki’, or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless ‘mujina’ who haunt lonesome neighbourhoods. Lafcadio Hearn, a get good at storyteller, drew on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own haunted years as a child in Ireland, to produce these chilling stories. They are today regarded in Japan as classics within their own right.