An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.
The Botan Dōrō or Tales of the Peony Lantern is a ghost story told since the Ming dynasty in China to today. Most popular through the Kaidan theater plays, it is now one of Japan’s most well known ghost stories.
The Botan Dōrō or Tales of the Peony Lantern is a ghost story told since the Ming dynasty in China to today. Most popular through the Kaidan theater plays, it is now one of Japan’s most well known ghost stories.
Another dark, yet poetic love story of a ghost. The Botan Dōrō, or, the peony lantern was a story that became popular in Japan during the 17th century in the Edo era. It was really a Chinese tale, but the Japanese adapted it as their own with the writer Asai Ryoi.
The story is set during Obon, a three day festival of the dead in the late summer, and the living pays tribute to their ancestors. Kaidan (ghost stories) was immensely popular during this era, especially during Obon.
The Story
A long time ago in the Nezu district of Tokyo, the first night of Obon was upon them. This is when the spirits are welcomed back into our world and guided home, a man named Ogiwara was out walking. In some versions he is a student, in others, he is a widowed samurai. He noticed a beautiful woman carrying a peony lantern by his house.
Her name was Otsuyu. Over the festival the two fell more and more in love in the light by the lantern. And every night she came back to him.
A neighbor however was growing worried for the young man. One night he visited the boy, peeping through the window. There he saw the man in the arms, not of a young and beautiful woman, but a skeleton.
Almost fainting of shook, he got on his way, running to get a Buddhist priest to help the man. When the priest and the neighbor came the following day, they told the man about this and decided to throw a protective spell over the house. Not really believing until he saw it with his own eyes, he waited to the following night.
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When Otsuyu together with her servant came to the door crying, banging on the door, he understood that it was all true. She was indeed dead. She reminded him again and again for their love for each other.
The mans health grew worse and worse, he only felt sorrow and a longing for the thing they had. One night he couldn’t resist his longing anymore. He lifted the protection charm and let them in.
When the neighbor once again came to check on him, there was not only one dead person in the room, but two. His soul taken away at the end of the Obon festival, back to the spirit world.
Another Haunted Play?
The story was based on the Chinese book Jiandeng Xinhua (New Tales Under the Lamplight), a collection of ghost stories from the Ming Dynasty (1378), telling of Karma and Buddhist traditions.
But just as in the Kaidan theater play of Yotsuya Kaidan, there is said to be a curse on the ones playing the parts. This is from an events in 1919 when the play was set up in the Imperial Theater. The actresses playing Otsuyu and her maid both became sick and died withing a week of each other.
The haunted rumors of the haunted cemetery in Caldwell, Idaho includes everything from a female jogger to an old lady. So much so that it even draws paranormal investigators inside the graveyard.
Through the power of spiritualism, the bereaved father built a castle designed by the ghost of his dead daughter. And today, the Iulia Hasdeu Castle still stands as a mysterious and haunted place.
In the secluded and mountainous streets in La Paz, Bolivia, the ghosts of the past are still roaming the streets. Both dangerous widows and Bolivian freedom fighters.
‘Koi Koi’ goes the sound of high heels in the hallways. And this sound is terrifying for students at the schools in Nigeria. Because Madam Koi Koi is after them as she is haunting the schools.
In the 70s, a deadly fire broke out at the Joelma Building in São Paulo, Brasil, killing many people. Later, the building is reported haunted, and the ghosts of the victims are crying for help from beyond the grave.
The spirit of the girl so disappointed in her life on earth she can never move on, continue to echo through time together with the Maidens of Uley in Sibir, Russia.
Chosen as Hitobashira, a human sacrifice to ensure the construction of Maruoka Castle, O-shizu were promised a bright future for her children. But when the promise were not honoured, her ghost came back to haunt the castle grounds.
What would you have wanted as an offering after your death? According to this Singaporean legend, this young girl wanted a Barbie doll to appease her spirit in her afterlife. This is the story of the haunted Barbie doll in the shrine.
Haunting the iconic Agua Caliente Casino and Hotel in Tijuana, the performer known as La Faraona remains like a ghost from the Golden Age of the Sin City.
This haunted forest with its eerily coiled trees and whispers of local legends reminds us all that Transylvania is not only haunted by the legend of Dracula and vampires. Take a walk in the Hoia Baciu.
Cambodia is a land with a lot of hauntings. One of them being in the old prison known as Tuol Sleng or Security Prison 21 where almost 20 000 people were tortured and killed during the Cambodian Genocide. And even today, the building is known for its ghosts.
Malayan ghost lore is deep and it is ancient. And something leaves more questions than answers. Such is the case of the mysterious Kinarut mansion in Sabah and what became of it.
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