Japanese Ghost Stories - Mujina and the Faceless Ones

Ghost Stories kept the people cool back in Old Japan before electric fans and central air.

Cold sweats, icy fingers down the spine, and blood turned to ice in the veins by chilling stories of the supernatural were just the thing for hot summer nights.

Here I retell a story called "Mujina and the Faceless Ones." This story is one of the collections of ghost stories in Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaiden.

I goofed up and called the man in the story Mujina but in fact this is what Hearn called the ghoulish antagonists in this short story.

Mujina is actually the name for badgers who in Japanese folklore could play tricks like the one in this story. However, the type of yokai (Japanese monsters/ghosts/devils) is Noppera-bo - humans (if you can call them such) with no faces who delight in scaring people.