The samurai holds his sick wife.
You can tell by her pale face that she is on the verge of death.
“I am not afraid to die,” she says.
“But I wish I could see who will replace me in my home.”
Her husband, in his grief, says he will never remarry,
and even promises so on his samurai honor.
His wife is relieved.
“I would not have asked for this if you were to remarry, because it would be inappropriate
for you to have my grave so near.
But since you will not marry again, I request that you bury me in the garden
after this illness takes me, so that I may see the flowers in the spring,
and hear your voice once in a while.”
The samurai immediately agrees, but his wife asks for one more thing:
to bury her along with a small bell.
It’s such a small request that of course he agrees.
She thanks him for being so good to her, and closes her eyes forever.
True to his word, the samurai buries her in the garden, with a small bell.
For a year, the samurai keeps his promise not to remarry.
But then his friends and family start pressuring him.
He is still young, and he’s an only son.
It’s his duty to continue the family line.
And so the samurai does marry again, a very young bride this time.
To his surprise, he does fall in love.
For a week, life is fantastic for the newlyweds.
One day, the samurai gets a message saying that he’s needed at his lord’s castle
for the next few nights, and he leaves his new wife to spend the night alone
for the first time since they married.
That night, the girl tries to sleep but can’t.
Something strange is in the air, making her uneasy, but she doesn’t know why.
She can hear the dogs outside faintly whining and howling, as if they can feel it too.
And then she hears
the ringing of a small bell.
The girl wonders who it could be at this time of night. The bell rings louder, closer.
Someone is coming towards the house.
The dogs howl even louder.
She’s confused because the bell sound is coming from the back of the house,
where there is no road.
With a start and a chill, she realizes that the ringing is not coming from outside the
house, but from the garden.
She tries to get up and wake the servants, but she can’t move.
She can’t even speak.
The ringing is very close now, just outside the door.
The dogs are going wild.
And then a female figure dressed in white enters the room,
carrying a bell, its face in shadows.
The door never moved.
Fear grips the girl’s heart.
She doesn’t even breathe.
As the figure creaks closer, the flickering lamp light reveals the face of a woman,
a face with empty sockets instead of eyes.
The woman opens her mouth, speaking even though she has no tongue.
“This is my house.
You shall leave, and tell no one why.
If you tell HIM, I will tear you into pieces!”
Then she vanishes.
Silence.
Frozen with fear, the girl stays still until morning.
That morning, the image of the face without eyes still in her head, she waits for her
husband’s return and tells him she wants to go home.
Her husband is surprised, of course, and disappointed.
He asks her why, but she doesn’t give him a straight answer.
This goes on for a while until he finally declares that he will never let her go unless
she tells him the reason.
And so she does.
She tells him about the bell, about the woman without eyes or tongue, and about the warning.
After hearing the entire story, her husband smiles and tells her that she just
had a bad dream, and that he would instruct two men to protect her
before he leaves for the castle that night.
He is so loving and caring that she agrees.
Maybe it was a dream after all.
That night, she goes to sleep as the two guards play go in the corner.
But soon she wakes up to the sound of the bell.
This time, she can move.
She screams, but the guards in the corner do not rush over to help.
They are just sitting there, frozen, with eyes fully open.
She shakes them and screams, but they still do not move.
At early dawn, the samurai returns from the castle.
He enters the bedroom and sees the body of his wife on the floor, in a pool of blood,
her head missing.
It looks as if her head was ripped off her neck.
He screams at the sleeping guards, and they wake up astonished at the gruesome sight.
No one knows what happened, but they do see a trail of blood leading out of the room.
The samurai and his two men follow the trail to the garden, where they see the samurai’s
former wife, eyeless and tongueless, holding a bell in one hand, and the new wife’s
dripping head in the other.
They all stared wide-eyed.
Finally, one of the men runs up and slashes at the thing, and the bell drops to the ground
with its last ring, and the ghost collapses into a pile of rags, bones, and hair.
But its hand remains, still gripping the girl’s head, tearing at the skin of her face.
Alright, today’s quiz question is this.
Who is Hōjō Masako’s second son?
Answer in the comments and tomorrow I’ll choose a winner from among the correct answers.
Winner gets one of these babies. Good luck!
For more Japanese folktales, check out these videos on the right.
And Happy Halloween everyone!
Hope you like this ghost story.
Hope your Halloween is full of fun and terror and beheadings.
Alright I love you, and spread the knowledge!