A final reading about butterflies is an interesting treatise in the voice of Lafcadio Hearn himself in which the cultural spirituality of butterflies is discussed. Our first story, “Jikininki” is about a type of man-eating goblin be forewarned – Japanese ghosts are not the flimsy apparitions that only rustle curtains and go bump in the night-Japanese ghosts will tear one to pieces or pull one’s head off! Our second story, “Mujina” has a surprising and frightful end, and our final story, “The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi” is a tale about a blind poet and biwa player who performs for ghosts in the moonlight. He is a former Irish diplomat whose posting to Japan in the late 1970s ignited his interest in Lafcadio Hearn. Today’s stories come from a new book edited by Paul Murray, who is one of the biographers of both Lafcadio Hearn and Bram Stoker of Dracula fame. Best remembered for his collection and translation of these traditional Japanese ghost stories, he has presented stories that are so dearly loved by the Japanese that they have come to be regarded in Japan as classics in their own right. If you’ve never read or heard of the Japanese ghost stories of Lafcadio Hearn, you are in for a real ghost story lover’s treat.
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