[*img]http://fc98.deviantart.com/fs34/f/2008/311/9/f/Kuchisake_Onna_21_by_Alzheimer13.jpg[*/img]

Kuchisake Onna ((口裂け女, Split-mouthed woman)

kuchisake onna was a vain woman married to a samurai (in some accounts, a ninja) who distrusted her. Believing she was cheating on him, he slices her mouth open at the sides--splitting her face open from ear to ear. She wanders, hiding her mouth behind a fan, the sleeve of a kimono, a stole, or the surgical-style masks now worn in cold and allergy seasons in Japan. She asks someone "watashi, kirei?" (Do you think I'm beautiful?). The answer is usually a resounding "yes"; due to her otherworldly beauty, but then she exposes her face and repeats the question; her otherworldly beauty giving way to otherworldly horror. If the person says or does anything besides saying "yes", she pursues him with a kama (sickle) or knife and replies "I want to do for you what has been done
to me". She can't be outrun, and eventually slices her victim's mouth open ear to ear. Women killed in this fashion return as kuchisake onna themselves.

In some accounts she is said to run lightning fast, in others she 'floats' (due to a famous ukiyo-e artist in the Edo period always painting ghosts with no feet, it was generally regarded by many Japanese that all ghosts had no feet--nothing to truly link them to the material world).

She has appeared in picture scrolls of yokai and demons as early as the Edo period
She was eventually forgotten as the Japanese entered the modern age and built a war machine, and then recovered to form an economic giant, but kuchisake onna returned with a vengeance in late 1979. In late 1979 and even into the early 80s, there were many sightings of kuchisake onna. The urban legend probably grew from an actual attack against a child.

During the seventies, the urban legend went that if the victim answers "You're average" they are saved. When the urban legend was revived around 2000, the answer that would save you was changed to "so-so" with the change that this answer causes the kuchisake-onna to think about what to do, and her victim can escape while she is in thought. Another way to escape while the Kuchisake-Onna is distracted is to throw candy or other sweets at her. One other way is to ask her if you are pretty. She will get confused and leave.

The kuchisake onna from the 70s and 80s attack only children, and they attack regardless of whether the answer to her second question is 'yes' and if you say no she will kill you chopping your head off.

Parts of this story have been taken from wikipedia

The Mountain Witch or Yama Uba is a demon from Japanese folklore who lives in a hut in the mountains and eats anyone who is unfortunate enough to cross her path.



She is a hideous old hag with long straggily, yellowed hair, piercing eyes, tattered clothing and a gaping mouth that stretches across her entire face.

The Mountain Witch was once a normal old woman, living in a small village in Japan. But the area experienced a terrible famine and food became scarce. Her children didn’t want to feed her anymore so they drove her out of the village and left her in the woods to die of starvation.

But the Yama Uba didn’t die. She made her way up into the mountains and found shelter in a cave. Living alone for so many years gradually drove her insane and she became a cannibal, existing on the flesh of people she killed.

She built a little hut, deep in the forest, and now, to survive, she preys on travelers who become lost in the mountains. She poses as a pretty young woman and offers them shelter for the night in her hut. But once they fall asleep, she kills them and eats them. Sometimes she uses her hideous hair to entangle her victims and drag them into her giant mouth.

In some stories, the Mountain Witch offers to lead a lost traveller back onto the right path. Instead, she leads him off the edge of a cliff and he falls to his death on the rocks below. The Yama Uba then rushes down to the bottom of the cliff and hungrily feasts on the poor traveller’s remains.

Posted in Japanese Legends

The Long Neck Woman, or “Rokurokubi”, is a Japanese urban legend about female creatures that look and act like normal humans. But at night their necks grow longer and longer, freeing their heads to move around almost independently from their bodies. Most Rokurokubi are young, attractive women, and they take pleasure in scaring regular humans.



Some Long Neck Rokurokubi actually prefer to live their lives pretending to be a human. Although they may appear to be completely normal people, every night, their necks grow and grow, getting longer and longer, stretching out through windows in search of human prey.

Sometimes, the Long Neck Woman will get so tired searching for her prey all night long that she forgets to retract her neck and falls asleep with her neck completely stretched out. During the day, the Rokurokubi has one giveaway sign – she will have pale stretch marks on her neck.

There is also another, more sinister form of Rokurokubi. This version is called Nukekubi or “Removeable Head Woman”. She has a head that completely detaches from her body. The disembodied head then flies around in the air at night searching for humans to eat.

These Nukekubi attempt to hide their bodies at night, and can be killed if their bodies are discovered while the heads are not attached. In fact, if you find a Nukekubi’s body without a head, you should hide the body so that she can never find it.

Posted in Japanese Legends

Red Cloak (Aka Manto), also known as Red Mantle, Red Vest or Red Cape, is a Japanese ghost who haunts the girls’ bathroom. He appears, wearing a red cloak and a white mask and is said to be so charming that girls are unable to resist him.



Red Cloak hides in the last stall of the girls’ toilet and when you enter, he steps out and asks “Which do you prefer, Red Cloak or Blue Cloak?”

If you say Red, he slits your throat or chops off your head and the blood flows down your back, making it look like you’re wearing a red cloak. If you say Blue, he grabs you by the neck and chokes you until your face turns blue and you die of suffocation.

Don’t even think about asking for a third color. If you do, the floor will open up beneath you and pale white hands will reach up and drag you down to hell.

One school ghost story tells of a young girl who heard a voice coming from the toilet next to her saying “Shall we put on the red vest?” She got scared and ran away with her jeans around her ankles. She told her teacher what she had heard and the police were called.

A police woman went into the bathroom while her male partner waited outside. She heard the same voice asking “Shall we put on the red vest?” The police man, listening at the door, heard her answer “OK. Put it on!” Suddenly a loud scream was heard, followed by a thump. When the partner opened the bathroom door, he found the police woman lying dead on the floor. Her head had been cut off and the blood on her clothes made it look like she was wearing a red vest.

In Japanese, this murderous ghost is known variously as “Aka manto”, “Ao manto” or “Aka hanten, Ao hanten”. Some people say that, years ago, Red Cloak was a young man who was so handsome that every girl immediately fell in love with him. He was so awesomely beautiful that girls would faint whenever he looked at them. His beauty was so overwhelming that he had to hide his face behind a white mask. At some point, he kidnapped a beautiful young girl and she was never seen again.

In another version of the story, he is called “Red Mantle” or “Red Cape”. He lurks in the toilets and asks you if you want a red cape. If you say yes, he rips off your top and tears the skin off your back.

In yet another version of the legend, he is called “Red Paper, Blue Paper” (Akai Kami, Aoi kami). Girls who go into the bathroom, hear a voice coming from the last stall. It asks “Do you want red paper or blue paper?” To answer red means a bloody death by being skinned alive. To answer blue means to have all the blood drained out of the body.

Still more versions involve a bloody hand emerging from the toilet and trying to pull you in, blood raining down from the ceiling, being drowned in blood and having disembodied white hands grabbing you and choking you to death. In the funniest version, if you answer “Yellow” he will force your head down the toilet and make you smell pee. Yuck!

Posted in Japanese Legends

This Japanese urban legend is called “No Face” and is about Nopperabou, a creature from Japanese folklore.



Though the No Face is able to appear to others like a normal person, this is just an illusion. The Nopperabou really lacks eyes, a nose or a mouth. Instead of normal human features, nopperabou have only smooth skin. People who encounter nopperabou usually do not immediately realize that they are talking to something that is otherworldly, as the creatures are able to create the illusion that they have a normal human face.

A nopperabou will wait for the right moment before causing their features to disappear, scaring the person they are speaking with. People usually run into nopperabou at night in lonely rural settings, although they can appear anywhere as long as the area is deserted. The nopperabou’s primary purpose is to scare humans, but beyond that they do not seem to have any sort of agenda.

One famous nopperabou story is Lafcadio Hearn’s Mujina. The story is short and deftly describes an encounter with a nopperabou, but it is also the source of much confusion. In the story, Hearn refers to the creatures as mujina, which is actually a different type of creature altogether (a sort of badger). This mistake has caused a lot of Western readers to mix up the names for nopperabou and mujina, and even today you will run across authors and scholars that are using the wrong name. Regardless, the story itself is a very typical tale of nopperabou mischief.

Posted in Japanese Legends

Kappa
The Kappa is the most famous of all the legendary Japanese monsters. He resembles a cross between a monkey, a frog and a turtle.



The Kappa has the face of a monkey with the beak of a turtle and a plate-shaped depression in the top of his head. He has green skin like a frog and a turtle shell on his back. His arms and legs are able to stretch out really long and his hands and feet are webbed like a frog.

Kappas usually play pranks such as delivering loud, smelly farts and peeking up women’s dresses. However, they have also been known to commit horrible crimes like kidnapping small children and killing people and eating their internal organs.

The Kappa will lurk underwater in rivers and streams, waiting for its victims. In olden days in Japan, people would go squat by the side of a river and go to the toilet. The Kappa would swim underneath you, until it could see your big bare butt hanging over the side of the bank. Then it attacks when you least suspect it.



Sometimes the Kappa grabs your butt and drags you into the water, holding you under the surface until you drown. At other times, the Kappa sticks his elongated arm up your butt, up through your insides and grabs hold of your tongue. Then the Kappa pulls your tongue out through your butt, turning your body inside-out. Finally, as you flop around on the ground, with your skin on the inside and your guts on the outside, the Kappa takes out your liver and eats it whole.

Nowadays, since people go to the toilet indoors, the Kappa lurks in sewers and bathroom pipes. He sticks his arm up into your toilet, waiting for you to come along and sit down on the bowl. So if you’re ever sitting on the toilet and you feel something moving underneath you, jump up as fast as you can. You may just avoid being turned inside-out by a Kappa.

Posted in Japanese Legends

The Alphabet Song – a scary poem for kids.



A is for Amy who fell down the stairs
B is for Basil assautled by bears
C is for Clara who wasted away
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach
F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leach
G is for George smothered under a rug
H is for Hector done in by a thug
I is for Ida who drowned in a lake
J is for James who took lye by mistake
K is for Kate struck with an axe
L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea
N is for Neville who died of ennui
O is for Olive run through with an awl
P is for Prue trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quentin who sank in a mire
R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire
S is for Susan who pershed of fits
T is for Titus who was blown to bits
U is for Una who slipped down a drain
V is for Victor squashed under a train
W is for Winnie embedded in ice
X is for Xerxes devoured by mice
Y is for Yorick whose head was knocked in
Z is for Zillah who drank to much gin

Posted in Scary Poems by scary for kids

Haha, the only one I didn't recognize was the Alphabet song. Lovely.

Just so you know, remove the asterisks to get the pics to post-

There was a film made based on the slit-mouthed woman legend: Carved aka Slit-Mouthed Woman, aka Kuchisake Onna-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFTs8ujxrE

daisuke88, you have a visitor.


Quick! Hide in my space ship.

ohw thanks i thought where gone wrong. Domo Arigatou

I thought it was cute lol

HONTO? you have your own spaceship??!!

I think it's stolen.

Of course. How do you think I traveled to Earth?

And unlike UltraMan, I did not crash into a human's aircraft.
I crashed into a human's garage instead.

Now, if I can't chase you in with my red cape and white mask . . .

...err... if Aka Manto won't scare you into hiding in my ship,

then can I lure you in with . . .


and


and



[Cultural Note: If you don't understand my persona, then visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALF_(TV_series) ]

I did not steal the space ship.
I did, however, "borrow" a land-based vehicle.

From Lafcadio Hearn's classic Kwaidan, 1904.

In a village of Musashi Province (portions of contemporary Tokyo and Saitama), there lived two woodcutters: Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an old man; and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years. Every day they went together to a forest situated about five miles from their village. On the way to that forest there is a wide river to cross; and there is a ferry-boat. Several times a bridge was built where the ferry is; but the bridge was each time carried away by a flood. No common bridge can resist the current there when the river rises.

Mosaku and Minokichi were on their way home, one very cold evening, when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry; and they found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of the river. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman's hut, -- thinking themselves lucky to find any shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place in which to make a fire: it was only a two-tatami hut, with a single door, but no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door, and lay down to rest, with their straw rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel very cold; and they thought that the storm would soon be over.

The old man almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Minokichi, lay awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual slashing of the snow against the door. The river was roaring; and the hut swayed and creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible storm; and the air was every moment becoming colder; and Minokichi shivered under his rain-coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep.

He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (yuki-akari), he saw a woman in the room, -- a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath upon him;-- and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful, -- though her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at him;-- then she smiled, and she whispered:-- "I intended to treat you like the other man. But I cannot help feeling some pity for you, -- because you are so young... You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody -- even your own mother -- about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you... Remember what I say!"

With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway. Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out. But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had blown it open;-- he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and might have mistaken the gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku, and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku's face, and found that it was ice! Mosaku was stark and dead...

By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferryman returned to his station, a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also by the old man's death; but he said nothing about the vision of the woman in white. As soon as he got well again, he returned to his calling,-- going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped him to sell.

One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way home, he overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the same road. She was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered Minokichi's greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The girl said that her name was O-Yuki; that she had lately lost both of her parents; and that she was going to Yedo (Tokyo), where she happened to have some poor relations, who might help her to find a situation as a servant. Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether he was married, or pledge to marry; and he told her that, although he had only a widowed mother to support, the question of an "honorable daughter-in-law" had not yet been considered, as he was very young... After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without speaking; but, as the proverb declares, Ki ga areba, me mo kuchi hodo ni mono wo iu: "When the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as the mouth." By the time they reached the village, they had become very much pleased with each other; and then Minokichi asked O-Yuki to rest awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation, she went there with him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her. O-Yuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi's mother took a sudden fancy to her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo. And the natural end of the matter was that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She remained in the house, as an "honorable daughter-in-law."

O-Yuki proved a very good daughter-in-law. When Minokichi's mother came to die,-- some five years later,-- her last words were words of affection and praise for the wife of her son. And O-Yuki bore Minokichi ten children, boys and girls,-- handsome children all of them, and very fair of skin.

The country-folk thought O-Yuki a wonderful person, by nature different from themselves. Most of the peasant-women age early; but O-Yuki, even after having become the mother of ten children, looked as young and fresh as on the day when she had first come to the village.

One night, after the children had gone to sleep, O-Yuki was sewing by the light of a paper lamp; and Minokichi, watching her, said:--

"To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me think of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now -- indeed, she was very like you."...

Without lifting her eyes from her work, O-Yuki responded:--

"Tell me about her... Where did you see her?

Then Minokichi told her about the terrible night in the ferryman's hut,-- and about the White Woman that had stooped above him, smiling and whispering,-- and about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said:--

"Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was afraid of her,-- very much afraid,-- but she was so white!... Indeed, I have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of the Snow."...

O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi where he sat, and shrieked into his face:--

"It was I -- I -- I! Yuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill you if you ever said one work about it!... But for those children asleep there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!"...

Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of wind;-- then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hold... Never again was she seen.

Under the Peony Lantern – A Cautionary Tale of Sex with the Dead
Long ago, on the first night of Obon, a widowed samurai named Ogiwara Shinnojo sat on his porch, watching the day fade into night. To his surprise, a beautiful young woman and her maid, who was carrying a lantern emblazoned with a peony, walked near. The pair paused to speak with Ogiwara, and he found the young woman's name to be Otsuyu. An instant attachment was formed, and Otsuyu promised to return the following night, at the same time.

From that night onward, always at dusk, she would arrive with her maid, carrying the same Peony Lantern. Ogiwara and Otsuyu rapidly progressed in their affair, and she took to sleeping with him, always leaving before dawn. This relationship continued for some time, and both were happy.

However, a suspicious neighbor, wondering at Ogiwara's new habit of staying awake all night and sleeping the day away, hid outside his house, peeking through a small hole in the wooden wall in order to observe the old man's nighttime shenanigans. Much to his surprise, he uncovered the widowed samurai passionately entwined with a skeleton, packing only scarce, clinging bits of rotting flesh and cobweb-infested long black hair. Half-mad, the neighbor fled screaming from the scene.

The next day he confronted Ogiwara, bringing with him a Buddhist priest who warned of the danger facing his soul. One cannot dally with the dead. Ogiwara took this to heart, and vowed to free himself from the spell of Otsuyu. With the priest's help, he surrounded his house with ofuda, strips of paper upon which are written Buddhist sutras, offering protection from the supernatural. That night, Otsuyu and her maid came as always, but they cried at the steps of his porch, unable to enter the house.

Night after night she returned, begging Ogiwara to remove the ofuda so that they may be lovers again. Slowly, the lonely old man's resistance slipped away, and one night he left his house to join his beloved.

The next morning, he was nowhere to be found. His friends looked far and wide, until the neighbor suggested they search the cemetery. At long last, they found the graves of Otsuyu and her maid, emblazoned with the same peony pattern. Opening the crypts, no one was surprised to see the corpse of Ogiwara, still passionately entwined with his skeletal lover.

tales from HYAKU MONOGATARI KAIDANKAI

Gee, I don't remember any of these things being mentioned in the Earth travel brochure. It's a good thing that I crashed ...err... landed in the USA.

If daisuke88 were not such a cutie*, I would be freaked out by her documentaries about Japan.
I just hope that daisuke88 isn't really O-Yuki.

(*Her face is adorable, and anyone would want to kiss it. )