One of the most fascinating topics in literature, I think, is ghosts and the supernatural world. There is something about their eerie mysteriousness that really grabs at your attention, don't you think? As a child I always preferred reading ghost and horror tales over any other type of stories. It may have seemed like just a trend that comes and goes with age (a lot of kids at that time enjoyed scary stories), but such was not the case for me. To this day I still hold equal (if not more) enthusiasm for this topic.
The reason I'm still so interested in the supernatural things is very much related to my fear of death; I get seriously disturbed when I think about the possibility of sheer "emptiness" after death. I like to console myself with the thought that there is in fact consciousness after a person dies, and hence I'm interested in supernatural beings.
Most people I know do not believe in ghosts, or if they do it's because they've experienced paranormal events. Despite not having any personal experiences with such events myself, I would like to believe in them. Their presence would prove that there is something beyond death to look forward to. Unfortunately, I am nervous about such encounters because in most literature, everyone either comes away harmed or doesn't come away at all. Thus my fear of dying is in juxtaposition with my curiosity about life after death. So, I have not encountered ghosts myself, but that fact alone is not enough to convince me that they do not exist.
Every culture has its own stories about ghosts and spirits, so the genre is very large. I have decided to concentrate only on ghost stories originating from China and Japan. The stories I chose to include are those which painted vivid pictures in my mind: basically, those that scared me the most. I have changed and highlighted certain parts of the stories to further darken the atmosphere when you read them. One of the stories is "The Priest Who Lost His Soul." It is a story from ancient Japan about a skeptical priest's terrifying experience with a restless spirit in an abandoned temple. The bold priest did not heed the landlord's warnings about the dangers of the temple. Wanting to study the ghost himself and hopefully take over the temple for himself, he spent the night there. What he saw was so chilling that even I got a little scared while reading it in the evening.
Another story is "A Coffin on the River" This one
is from ancient China, and it tells the tale of a
greedy man's encounter with a ghost. I enjoyed the thrill of reading
this because
the majority of the story involved a chase scene of the man and a
corpse. I
emphasized this scene even more in my retelling to convey the intensity
of the terror in the scene.
The third story, "Amidst the Cherry Trees" is from
Japan. It tells about a sacred cherry tree which seemed to know
retribution. This is a tragedy as much as a horror story because one
can easily sympathize with several of the unlucky characters. I also
found this story interesting because there is some irony in how the
beautiful and poignant elements hold equal weight as the scary and evil
ones.
The final story is another one from China. "The
Unfinished Battle" is based on a strange story whose surprising details
I found very creepy. In the story, an unsuspecting merchant spends the
night at an inn hoping to escape the storm. Instead, he encounters
something even more frightening inside the inn.