No. 23 — The child who went on pilgrimage to Ise

Record

A child who had set out on a pilgrimage to Ise stayed the night in an empty house. At midnight a red candle and a red priest, and a black candle and a black priest, appeared and danced. Afterward a beautiful woman appeared and told the child that gold and coins were buried beneath the floor of the sitting room and the everyday room. The child dug up the gold and became wealthy, and at the villagers' request settled in the haunted house and prospered.

Source

Ogasawara Kenkichi (ed.), Shiwa-gun Mukashibanashi-shu (1938) — National Diet Library Digital Collections (Japanese text)

Land

Shiwa District

Type

Yokai and the Uncanny, Death, Ghosts and Omens, Strange Fates

Beings

ghosts

This is an English rendering of our short Japanese summary of the source tale — a summary translated from the Japanese, not a translation of the original text. The summary was drafted and translated with AI assistance, and names and numbers were checked against our records. Tale numbers for this book follow the order in which the tales appear; they are ours, not the book's.