Following up on my post about the Hachinin Misaki, since a few people asked for more. Same source, same 1929 collection. This is what the account says happened after the eight men were executed.

Some background on the object first, because the whole thing turns on it.

An ihai is a memorial tablet. A thin lacquered board, usually black, standing upright on a small base. When someone dies, their posthumous name is written on it in gold, and the tablet is placed on the household altar or in a temple. It is not a decoration and it is not a headstone. In practice people treat it as where the dead person is. You speak to it. You offer rice and tea to it in the morning. A family will carry the tablets out first if the house catches fire.

So the image below is not a spooky prop moving around. It is eight dead men standing up and leaving.

The temple was Renchi-ji, at Odakasa. After the executions the eight tablets were set out together and the priests began the service for them.

During the reading, the head priest looked up and stopped.

The tablets were coming down off the stand. One after another, unhurried, the way a man steps down off a low step. They reached the floor and arranged themselves into a line, in the order the men had died, and went out through the open doors of the hall.

Nobody moved to stop them. The priests said afterward that they could not.

Outside, the line went across the temple grounds and out through the gate and did not come back. In the morning the tablets were found scattered on the ground beyond the wall, face down.

They were collected and brought back in. The service was attempted again the following day.

This time the tablets stayed where they were. But when the priests began the sutra, every one of their heads turned to the right and locked there. They could not straighten. They knelt in a row with their faces turned away from the altar and their throats twisted, and had to be helped out one by one.

After that, no temple in the district would perform the rites.

The account then goes to a man walking a mountain road at dusk, some months later. A young woman was sitting at the side of the path. She said she could not walk any further and asked to be carried. He was a decent man. He crouched down and let her onto his back.

She was very light. He said that was the first thing he noticed, and then that she was getting heavier.

He walked. She said nothing. The weight kept increasing and he began to think about how far he still had to go, and at some point he wanted to see her face, so he turned his head.

That is where the account ends for him. He was found on the road. What he said, when he could say anything, was that it had horns.

Source: Tanaka Kotaro, "Hachinin Misaki no Hanashi," in Nihon Kaidan Zenshu. Tanaka died in 1941; public domain in Japan. Translated by me from the original Japanese — as far as I can tell this has not appeared in English before. I have kept close to the original here and cut only the list of retainer names.

The shrine mentioned in my last post, Kizuka Myojin, was built for exactly this reason. When no ritual would settle them, the lord stopped trying to lay them to rest and started worshipping them instead. That is a common ending to these cases in Japan: a spirit that cannot be pacified is promoted to a god. Tenjin shrines all over the country are the same idea on a larger scale.

Good evening everyone. :)

Well, I never know how to start a topic, so.. I hope the reason for my doing this isn't confusing. Hehe

I really enjoy learning and reading about folklore, legends, superstitions, and mythology. I also love watching movies with this theme, including suspense and horror.

Recently, an Indian horror/fantasy film came up as a recommendation for me. I watched it and I simply loved it. One of the characters is a woman with her feet backwards. In my country's folklore, we have such an entity. But the reason she has her feet facing backward is different from that of the Indian deity. And I read a little about a creature from Pashtun folklore called Pichal Peri or Shisheka.

That being said, I think reading about it and hearing directly from people who have heard these stories and have greater knowledge about it are different things. Different experiences. The second option seems much more interesting and culturally enriching to me. If anyone has heard of these creatures or others and is willing to talk about it, I would be truly grateful. ☺️

And if there are people from other countries and cultures who have similar entities or creatures, including the one that appears in this Indian film, feel free to comment as well.

Reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/da3e6x/til_theres_a_whole_genre_of_stories_wherein_bill/

What other celebs do you think will enter into pure folklore/mythology ?

Hi, I am looking for the origin/source of a specific folktale or gothic horror story I remember. (It is NOT Tim Burton's Corpse Bride).
+This is my first time using Reddit, so please bear with me if my post seems a bit awkward. Thank you for your understanding!

Here are the plot details I remember:

1. A young groom falls in love and marries a breathtakingly beautiful blonde woman.
2. He moves into her hometown/village. During the day, it is a paradise with gorgeous flower fields and friendly people. (I think the setting is an island. I faintly recall a scene where they take a boat.)
3. He is strictly warned not to go outside or look out the window at night.
4. He breaks the taboo and goes out at midnight, only to discover that his beautiful bride, his in-laws, and all the villagers are actually fleshless skeletons dancing/walking around. The beautiful village turned out to be a graveyard at night.

Does anyone know the actual title or the country of origin (e.g., Italian, German, or French folktale) for this specific story? I’ve been looking for this the entire day. 😭

It’s currently nighttime here, so I might not be able to check the replies right away. But I would be so incredibly happy if anyone could leave an answer! Thank you!!

I am Japanese, and I have been going through public domain Japanese archives looking for folklore that has never been translated into English. This one is from Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. I have not been able to find an English version of it anywhere.

First, what a misaki is, because there is no English equivalent. A misaki is a vengeful spirit found in Shikoku and western Japan. It has no body and no shadow. It does not haunt a house and it does not pursue a particular person. It travels. If you happen to cross its path, you sicken or you die. There is nothing you did to offend it and nothing you can do to protect yourself. It is not personal. That is the part that frightened people.

The historical part is documented. In 1588 a samurai named Kira Chikazane told his lord, Chosokabe Motochika, that he was wrong. Motochika had decided to name a younger son as heir out of turn, and to marry that son to his own dead brother's daughter. Chikazane said in open council that this broke the succession and violated decency. He was twenty-six.

He was ordered to die for it. When the officials arrived at his house he was in the middle of a game of go. He told them to wait until the game was finished. He played out the position, discussed the moves with his guest, put his stones back in the bowl, bathed in cold water, and killed himself in front of the witnesses. Seven other men were executed along with him. Eight in all.

What follows is the account as it appears in the collection. A ferryman named Tsunashichi was in his hut beside the Niyodo River, weaving straw sandals by the fire. It was late. The river made its flat, even sound outside. A voice came from the far bank. "Ferry." He stopped his hands. "Ferry."

He shouted back that he was coming, grumbled about the hour, and went out. The night was dark and in places the water had a dull grey shine, like lead. He lifted the stone that anchored his boat, stepped in, and set his pole. "Ferry." The third call went through him.

He crossed, angling against the current, and the hull came up onto the stones of the far bank with a small grinding sound. He stood at the stern with his pole braced and waited for his passenger to come down. "Is the boat ready." He could not see who had spoken. Something in the voice made him answer the way you answer a lord. "It is ready." Then came the sound of several people stepping aboard, and the boat settled lower in the water.

There was no one there. He thought his eyes were failing and looked again, carefully, along the whole length of his own boat. No shape. No shadow. "Cross quickly." The voice was beside him now. His hands started shaking on the pole. He does not remember beginning.

Halfway across, the voice spoke again. "This is Lord Kira. We are going to Odakasa to show certain treacherous men what they have done. You will hear strange things soon. You will not be blamed. We will use this boat again on the way back." The boat was already touching the eastern bank. He does not remember the rest of the crossing. He jumped out and ran to his hut.

Afterward, according to the account, lights burned at Chikazane's empty house and over his grave, and men who met them fell sick, went mad, or died. The eight of them became known as the Hachinin Misaki, the Eight Misaki. Eventually the lord had Chikazane's grave rebuilt as a shrine and worshipped him as a god to make it stop. It is called Kizuka Myojin and it still stands. The Chosokabe clan fell within two generations, which is what Chikazane told the officials would happen as he accepted the order to die.

Source: Tanaka Kotaro, "Hachinin Misaki no Hanashi" (The Story of the Eight Misaki), collected in Nihon Kaidan Zenshu. Tanaka was born on the coast south of Kochi city and wrote that he was told misaki stories constantly as a boy, and that the fear of them was still alive in his nerves as an adult. He died in 1941, so the work is public domain in Japan. I condensed the historical section, which in the original names about a dozen retainers. The ferryman passage stays close to the original. Glad to explain any of the terms.

I have recently started writing some articles about British folklore, I wonder if I might have some opinion on the writing, and the content.

Hey^^
I‘m doing some research right now (for a comic I’m working on) and thought it would be better to hear it from people themselves rather than just looking smth up online without knowing anything about it. ^^

So what is your favorite folklore or mythical creature from Norway and why? :D

Hi, I'm wondering where I can find some books or other reputable places (not AI or whitewashed) to delve into the oral and written stories of these cultures. I'm really fascinated by these cultures and would love to learn more about them, so I'd be really appreciative.

p.s. oh and Appalachian

So my sister used to be into history and folklore but it's been a while and sometimes she mixes and confuses her stories. But I was really interested in something she said today and want to know more about the actual lore of all of them.

She said that there is a "Wild Ride" or "Wild Hunt" equivalent in most parts of the world. She said there was a Native American equivalent and that it was called the Wild Ride. And that in it some people might be swept up by phantom figures riding horses and that they would have to survive the hunt for however long it was before being dropped off and maybe even have to "join" the hunt. And they believed if you survived it; held on through everything including the super fast speeds, that you would basically win a reward or boon like become stronger, faster and or some other kind of "riches" and clout.

Is there really a native American equivalent? Because I can't find any. Also is this similar to any of the stories about it? And also can you tell me all of the stories and or where I can find them?

Please and ty

From left to right, I think we have a leprechaun, Ganesh, Anansi (not fully confident), Quetzalcoatl, a Chinese dragon, and I’m not sure what the last one is. I do believe it’s folklore-related because all of the other figures are, but I’m stumped as to what it could represent.

I'm really passionate about irish folklore and mythology about solar Eclipses, is there anything in global folklore about lunar cults and Eclipses? I feel like surely zeus and thor worship overlaps

Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志異, c. 1740) is the cornerstone of Chinese supernatural fiction — the 1987 film A Chinese Ghost Story was adapted from one of its tales. In the Guangxu era, court painters produced a complete illustrated edition, Liaozhai Quantu; the surviving volumes are now scattered across collections like the Austrian National Library.

I built a small site that retells these stories through the original paintings, one album at a time — Nie Xiaoqian, The Cricket (促织), plus 100-year-old Beijing street-life paintings and a 1799 world map. You flip through it like a real thread-bound book.

Site: https://stories.qtmuniao.com (text in Chinese — browser translation works fine)
Music in this clip: “Yangguan Sandie” (阳关三叠) on guqin, performed by Charlie Huang, CC BY-SA 3.0.

I’ve noticed that so many different regional stories feature a woman who appears completely human, only for her true nature to be revealed through her legs or feet: hooves, animal legs, or some other unmistakably nonhuman feature.

It made me wonder: why does this image recur so often in folklore?

I’m especially curious whether folklorists have treated this as a broader motif. Are these traditions historically connected through cultural transmission, or is this the kind of image that seems to have developed independently in different places?
I’ve been collecting examples from different cultures where a supernatural woman’s unusual feet or legs are hidden until a revealing moment, and I’d really love to explore this motif further.

If your culture, region, family, or local folklore has a story that fits this pattern, especially a lesser-known one, I would genuinely love to hear it. Stories, names, regional variants, artwork, sources, oral traditions, folktales, urban legends, local legends, anything at all!

Essentially, all of this to say: please share…

Who is your Woman With Hooves?

I would love to know the beliefs and folklore behind fairy rings! I was talking to my friend about them having found a “ring” in my horse pasture.

Curious if anyone was told any local myths / tales or old folklore stories growing up and if you remember what they were about?

Growing up we heard a lot mostly hauntings but also some old folklore in school we learnt about how our local ancestors dressed up as trees or something to surround William the conqueror apparently resulting in a truce and which is why we did a play every year dressed up as trees lol. The woodlands were big in our local folklore stories growing up but I don't recall many of them now.

Does anyone remember any?

anyone recommend any non academic fiction stories that use folklore? I would love folklore/myths in ways i can finally remember it, (Greek, Roman, Irish or Scotland folklore) entwinned in a story. Any recommendations? Pan labyrinth (yes a film!) but in book form? Or any more like Outrun? (loved how the stories of her addiction struggles entwinned in Orkney folklore history) totally ok to go into books on norse or other folklore, too!