Tonight’s yokai is another ghost. However, while yesterday’s was described as a yūrei due to being faint and eerie, this one is much more violent. The story never uses a specific word to describe the ghost; it only refers to her as “the woman” and “the mistress.” Bōrei or shiryō would certainly be appropriate words to describe this ghost, as it is literally a spirit of the dead. Her attachment to her lover brought her back from the dead to be by his side, and he, none to pleased by this, insulted her and tried to kill her. Perhaps if he had treated her more kindly, would he have escaped unscathed?

But we already know this man is a scoundrel, for he has the audacity to bring a mistress into his own house night after night by the side door, with no thought whatsoever to his wife. So perhaps he was doomed from the start…

How the Mistress of a Certain Man in Kii Province Died and Obsession Brought Her Back

A certain man was caretaker of the castle at Matsuzaka in Kii Province. He had a mistress, and every night he would call for her by way of the alley side door. This woman always came to him wearing wooden shoes, but after a few years she fell ill and finally died. Afterwards, the man stayed awake at night, remembering what he and the woman had talked about over the months and years.

Then, late at night, he heard the sound of the woman walking in her wooden shoes from the alley side door. He grew suspicious, and he raised the curtain to see the woman, emaciated, with disheveled hair, entering the tatami room from the alley. He looked at her and rebuked her: “Well, well, what a cowardly creature!” The woman briskly came up to the tatami room and glared at him severely. She was about to cross the curtain into the room, when the man drew his sword and slashed at her, and she disappeared without a trace. After that, the man too fell ill and died.