Kyonshi

There is a boy. He hears something outside his window. He threw two handfuls of rice there, just before sundown. Will it be enough? Grandma told him about the hopping corpses and hungry ghosts. She told him a body might rise, if a pregnant cat jumps over the coffin. She told him the kyonshi are covered in mold and decay, and rigor mortis forces them to move in hopping motions. She told him that when they see a pile of rice, they are compelled to count every grain. The sound at the window is getting louder. He prays the rice will last till morning.

Sometimes death goes wrong. When a person’s spiritual soul, the hun, leaves their body, but the animal soul, the po, remains, one of the hungry dead can result. The cadavers rise, hunting and devouring the life essence of their living victims. The Chinese call them the jianghsi. The Vietnamese call them gangshi. In Japan, they are known as kyonshi. They are not only found in Asia, sweetling, but have spread to other parts of the world.

We see them in Kaidan. We see them claiming the cemeteries, dislodging the local spectres. These illimitable kyonshi. Kill them, and they rise again. Undying, yet not unstoppable. They can be locked down, transfixed to the the ground and paralysed, if a sacred Ofuda scroll is affixed to their head.