“I lived in a haunted apartment.” Davisson opens this definitive work on Japan’s ghosts, or yurei, with a personal tale about the spirit world. Shifting from anecdotes to deep research to translation of ancient ghost stories, he explores the persistence of yurei in modern Japan and their continued popularity throughout the West.
Yurei, a Japanese word that literally means “faint soul,” refers to a kind of ghost. The word is now sometimes used to indicate any kind…
shape-shifting (metamorphosis) The transformation from one body into another, such as humans into the bodies of animals and birds. A human who transforms into an…
Possession is the takeover and control of a person’s mind and body by a Demon, condemned soul, ghost, spirit, or deity. There are different forms…
The American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) is an organization dedicated to education and research in parapsychology. The ASPR was founded in January 1885, in…
Shinto Japanese religion of the indigenous gods of the country. The word Shinto means “the way of the gods.” This is to distinguish it from…