And the last entry in this month’s Saturday tale-telling nonsense is a popular Japanese ghost story, which I didn’t realize until looking up the details isn’t actually about a ghost at all. This thing is even sillier than I’d thought it was.<\/p>\n
—————<\/p>\n
this story starts right out with a major spoiler
\nin that it is narrated by the protagonist in the past tense
\nwhich means that
\nno matter how horrifying the events described may be
\nwe already know the dude lives through them
\ninasmuch as he is here to describe them
\nthis is a good way to reduce stress
\nI approve<\/p>\n
so there’s this lonely road
\nthat is very spooky after dark
\nand people go out of their way to avoid it
\nbecause it is reputedly haunted by a Mujina
\nand Mujina-avoidance sounds like a very prudent measure
\nuntil you find out that a Mujina is not
\nas one might suspect
\none of those special ultra-freaky
\ndemonic ghost monsters with extra squick on top and a side order of fangs
\nthat the Japanese seem to excel in being haunted by
\nno
\na Mujina is a magical shape-shifting badger
\nthat likes to play pranks
\nand being afraid of badgers
\nshape-shifting or otherwise
\nis just kind of sad<\/p>\n
although pranky the magical badger
\nwould be an excellent saturday morning cartoon<\/p>\n
so this merchant is hurrying down the spooky dark road
\nand he sees a young woman crouching by a moat
\nhiding her face in her sleeves
\nand sobbing loudly
\nwhich as you will see in a minute
\nwould be harder than it sounds<\/p>\n
and because he is a very kind man
\nthe merchant approaches and asks what is wrong
\nbut she ignores him and continues to cry
\nso he goes nearer
\nand asks if he can help her
\nand she stands up
\nbut keeps her back to him
\nand continues to sob and moan and carry on<\/p>\n
and this merchant has clearly never seen any Japanese horror movies
\nbecause instead of deciding that this whole scenario is way too creepy
\nand running like the wind
\nhe goes up and touches her on the shoulder
\nand she whips around and drops her sleeves
\nto reveal a decided abundance of facelessness
\nwith the front of her head as smooth as an egg
\nso you see how sobbing loudly could be a challenge<\/p>\n
this would be the Mujina
\npretending to be a crying woman
\nand repaying a kindly stranger’s offer of help
\nby scaring the shit out of him so hard
\nthat his intestines unroll like a party streamer
\nso you can bet that the next crying woman
\nthat the merchant comes across
\nwill have to just keep on crying
\nthanks to the Mujina being a dick<\/p>\n
so the merchant screams
\nand runs away down the road
\nafraid to look behind him
\nalthough I would be tempted to look
\nbecause if there was an eldritch horror somewhere behind me
\nI might be interested to know how close it was
\nand also would want to know
\nhow it was following me if it didn’t have any eyes<\/p>\n
but the merchant finally sees a light in the distance
\nand runs toward it
\nto find a noodle-seller who has set up a stand by the roadside
\nalthough a pitch-black road in the middle of nowhere
\nis perhaps not prime real estate for such an establishment<\/p>\n
so the merchant runs up to the noodle-seller
\nwho has his back to him
\nand here I am detecting a theme
\nand yells that he’s just seen something horrible<\/p>\n
and the noodle-seller asks
\nwas it something like this?
\nand turns around
\nto show that he also is entirely faceless
\nand then the lantern goes out
\nboogety-boogety<\/p>\n
and that is where the story ends
\nwith the protagonist in the dark with a faceless noodle-seller
\nwhich sounds like a bad place to be
\nfor one thing he can’t taste his own cooking so the noodles are probably terrible
\nbut
\nwe know that the protagonist somehow manages to escape
\nbecause he is the one telling the story
\nso anticlimaxes all around<\/p>\n
the moral of this story is that badgers are assholes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And the last entry in this month’s Saturday tale-telling nonsense is a popular Japanese ghost story, which I didn’t realize until looking up the details isn’t actually about a ghost at all. This thing is even sillier than I’d thought it was. ————— this story starts right out with a major spoiler in that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-peculiar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12787"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12952,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787\/revisions\/12952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}