A classic collection of spooky stories about spirits and goblins from ancient Japan.In the late 1800s, Lafcadio Hearn collected and retold strange and wonderful ghostly tales from old Japanese legends. In these stories, a blind poet must perform for members of a dead royal family, an old man gives up his life in exchange for blossoms on a wilting cherry tree, a man trying to comfort a strange woman crying in the dark recoils in horror on seeing her face, and a mandarin duck haunts the hunter who shot her companion.These are timeless and hair-raising stories in which humans and ghostly creatures co-exist. This new edition, with an introduction by Ruskin Bond, will leave readers spellbound.