お化け (obake) Ghosts

I watched a short television program with my host mom last week about ghosts in Japanese culture. According to this program, in the Western tradition, there is a distinct divide between the spirit world and the living world, and entities of one world cross into the other, whereas in the Japanese tradition, there is no clear divide, and the entities of the two worlds coexist.

I was walking up the Stairs of Doom II to my room, and when I reached the top of the stair case, the stair light went on “by itself.” There’s a light switch both at the top of the stairs and the bottom, and I wasn’t near the top one at all. When the light went on, I spun around immediately and saw no one. There is mosdef an obake in my side of the house.

Obake in the Staircase (Artists’s rendition)