Yokai 妖怪 means supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore.
There are a million different types of yokai, and all of them survive in the modern day in plushy form.
I have captured 8 of them in this video for you, 8 of the most dangerous yokai that you’ve never heard of,
from creatures that like to lick you to creatures that make you pregnant.
This video is a collaboration with the YouTube channel StoryDive.
He has a related video that you should watch after this one, so stick around until the end and I’ll tell you about it.
Let’s start off with number one, the tsurube otoshi 釣瓶落とし.
Imagine you’re hiking a forest trail, minding your own business, when a gigantic flaming head
drops down to crush you.
Luckily, only your legs are crushed so you haven’t died.
Unluckily, the head proceeds to eat you until you do.
Your last thoughts, as the enormous head is chomping down on your arm is,
“I knew those brownies tasted kinda weird.”
No, they didn’t. You just ran into a tsurube otoshi.
These yokai are just heads. Heads of humans, or even other yokai.
They range anywhere from the size of a normal head to even taller than a person.
They live in tall trees and when they spot some tasty prey below like deer or humans,
they would drop down to crush their prey like they were student loans and their prey were hopes and dreams.
Sometimes they light themselves on fire to be extra scary.
The smaller heads are not great crushers, they’re too small, so you may assume that
they’re not a threat.
But like I told my ex, there are workarounds for being too small.
The smaller heads live in packs and would rain down on their enemies in a deluge of destruction.
Even if they can’t crush a person, they can still trap and eat a person.
Now you could forgive these creatures if they’re just feeding themselves.
Can’t blame something for trying to stay alive.
But that’s not their only reason for killing.
They also do it because they’re massive wankers.
They like to have fun.
Sometimes that fun means dropping down or jumping out at people to scare them.
And sometimes it means murder.
They would throw rocks or buckets and taunt people by saying things like,
“Oh I bet you can’t get past us, you dummy with a body.”
They would crush people for fun and then laugh maniacally like they just made the funniest joke ever.
One of their tricks is to put something shiny at the base of a tree
to trick people into thinking that it’s a coin.
When the victim approaches to pick it up, they would drag him into a bucket and hoist him up the tree.
Among the branches, they would torture him and eat him, or just drop him to his death.
Number 2. Shitanaga Uba 舌長姥.
It means long tongued hag. Here’s a story about this yokai.
There were two people travelling together in the mountains at night.
They came across an old rickety hut with some light inside.
They were tired.
“An old hut is better than no hut at all,” one stupid man said.
When they knocked on the door, an old lady invited them in to spend the night,
and they didn’t mind if they did.
While the household slept, one of the men woke up and saw a strange sight.
The old hag was crouched above his partner, licking his face with a tongue that was way too long.
Was he dreaming?
Startled, he made a noise, and the woman scurried back to work on her sewing as if nothing had happened.
A knock came at the door.
Before the man could do anything, the hag opened the door, letting a demon walk in.
It had one eye and zero empathy.
It lunged at the man.
He scrambled to his feet and drew his sword, then cut down at the creature.
At that moment, the demon disappeared along with the house.
And in the commotion, the hag had stolen the man’s friend.
Without shelter, the man had to sleep in the open forest in the dark.
The next day, he awoke to find the skeleton of his friend nearby.
No flesh, just bone, as if the old woman had licked the flesh clean off the bones.
So shitanaga uba are yokai that look like old ladies.
They live in cabins in the woods to lure weary travellers.
They have a taste for human flesh, and use their long tongues to lick their victims.
It’s not the normal feel-good type of licking, but the aggressive 120Hz type of licking that
tears the flesh off your body.
The shitanaga uba sometimes works with other yokai, like the shunabon, which was the demon
that came through the door in the story.
Number 3. Iso onna 磯女.
It means beach woman, specifically rocky beaches.
These yokai hang around rocky coasts, usually in Kyushu.
They look like beautiful women, of course.
And they’re always wet, with their clothes clinging to their bodies, like they just swam
out of the water to sit on the beach for an Instagram shoot.
They have the body of a woman, but below the waist, they’re blurry and translucent.
Their long hair is always wet.
An iso onna would sit on the beach, staring at the sea.
When a person approaches, thinking he just found Ariel,
she would let out this banshee shriek attack to stun him.
Then her hair whips out to wrap itself around him and pull him into the water.
She sucks the victim’s blood through her hair.
She sucks them dry.
The iso onna also likes to pose on rocky cliffs near the sea.
Sometimes she disguises herself to look like a large rock.
She would call out to people passing by in a ghostly voice that hypnotizes them, making
them walk off the cliff to their deaths.
Then she drains the blood from the fresh corpses.
The iso onna can also be found in the sea, where she pulls people from their ships into the water.
Number 4. Jubokko 樹木子. Jubokko means tree child.
On a battlefield after a battle or at a place where many people died, you may see a type of tree.
Look closer and you may find human bones underneath it, or blood on its bark.
These used to be real trees, but after absorbing all the blood from the battlefield, they turned
into yokai that lived off of human blood.
Vampire trees.
When a person walks too close, the tree grabs the victim with its branches that look like long, curled fingers.
The wooden fingers stab the victim, draining all of the blood through its branches.
This blood drink nourishes the tree.
If you cut into a jubokko with a knife, blood actually spills out.
The victim’s corpse stays in the tree branches, allowing birds and bugs to pick the flesh clean.
Afterwards, the victim’s skeleton drops, adding to the pile of bones underneath.
Number 5. Hari onna 針女.
Hook woman.
These yokai are usually seen in Shikoku.
She roams the streets at night looking for men who are young, single, and thirsty.
She looks like a woman with really long messy hair.
Each strand of hair ends in a barbed hook, though that’s hard to see from afar.
From afar, it looks like she just woke up.
When she finds a victim, she flashes him a smile, a come hither look of death.
If the fool counters with a smile of his own, her hair comes alive and sinks its hooks into his body,
ripping him into little pieces of flesh confetti that she can put in her mouth to eat.
If the man is not into this particular kink, the only chance of escape is running fast
enough home and locking the door.
He better hope it’s a strong door because she will scratch it with her hooks all night.
If the door holds until the morning, she disappears.
Number 6. Akkorokamui アッコロカムイ.
This yokai is actually a god from Ainu mythology.
The Ainu are the native peoples of Japan, who mainly live in Hokkaido.
There’s a bay in Hokkaido called Uchiura Bay, and Akkorokamui is the god of this bay.
It’s a giant red octopus, so big that when it swims near your boat, the sea and the sky
also turn red from reflecting its skin.
It spends its free time grabbing onto ships and pulling them into the depths.
It spends its work time outsmarting scientists.
People who lived around the bay avoided the waters when the sky was red, or if they couldn’t,
they brought weapons on their boats in case they needed to poke ineffectively at a giant octopus god.
Number 7. Bashō no sei 芭蕉精.
It means spirit of bananas, a specific type of bananas native to Okinawa.
These spirits live in banana trees.
Now banana spirits don’t sound so scary, they sound like delightful creatures who would
jump into your vanilla ice cream and tell you to enjoy them.
And yes most of the time they’re not dangerous.
They don’t usually hurt people, though they will scare people just for the lols by showing
their faces on a banana leaf as people walk by.
But sometimes they do attack people, and how they do it is so devastating that it deserves
to be on this list.
Women are warned not to stray near these banana trees in the evening, because a banana spirit
may disguise itself as a handsome young man to entice her to sleep with him.
Or worse, it could turn into a monster and take her forcefully.
Afterwards, the woman would become pregnant, and when she gives birth, what comes out is
not a human baby, but an ugly demon.
That’s terrible, but it gets worse.
What’s worse than giving birth to an evil demon baby?
Giving birth to multiple.
The victim is cursed to become pregnant every year and give birth to a demon every year
for the rest of her life.
They say people had to kill the demon spawn every time by feeding it a poisonous drink
made from kumazasa, a type of bamboo grass also found in Okinawa.
Number 8. Kuro bōzu 黒坊主.
Kuro bōzu means black monk.
This creature mostly looks like a shadow moving in the darkness.
If you can get a good view, it looks kind of like a human figure with a bald head wearing
a monk’s robes, but it’s all black.
Black skin, black robes. It only shows up at night.
You can’t see its face clearly, there seems to be nothing on it except sometimes you can
catch the reflections of two black eyes glinting in the dark.
It likes to sneak into homes at night to find people who are sleeping, usually women.
It comes up right next to the person’s face and sucks the breath from her mouth.
Then it unfurls a long tongue to lick the victim’s face, eyes, and mouth.
The victim wakes up with a face and breath that smells like rotting flesh.
People who the kuro bōzu visit become really sick afterwards, though they won’t necessarily die.
Alright, if you like this list, check out the other video from StoryDive about the
8 most annoying yokai.
And subscribe to his channel, he breaks down a lot of movies and TV shows that I think
you’re gonna like.
Okay we have some new patrons this week, Wyatt and Aliesha.
Thank you so much, it’s because of the support of patrons like you guys that allows me to
make these videos.
Alright, I love you, and spread the knowledge!