Obake Shimeji - "お化けしめじ" - [yokai]

Obake Shimeji - "お化けしめじ" 

•About this Yokai: Ghostly Shimeji mushrooms from an old Japanese folktale of the same title, where a man is haunted by thousands of ghosts that turn out to be delicious mushrooms waiting to be picked... 🍄👻

The full story goes a little something like this:

"Once upon a time, there was an old shrine in the middle of the woods where a monk lived all alone. Autumn had just begun, and each and every night, not just one, two or three ghosts, but thousands of small ghosts flew through the walls, each of them wearing a White Kimono and Kasa. (kasa are umbrella like hats.)

The monk was so terrified, all that he could do was just barely peak from out of the corner of his sheets!! – As the ghosts paraded around his bed, doing an odd dance, they chanted & moaned: "Salt and Miso! Hey! Salt and Miso!!" – the monk was so absolutely terrified that they would eat him!

This lasted all night long for nearly a month...Exhausted, the poor monk had begin to sleep through his morning prayers: soon enough, he vowed to be better prepared: One night, he readied a very long ball of string and a needle, and he waited until nightfall....

As they had the night before, thousands of ghosts cascaded through the walls: terrifying! – However this time: the monk managed to thread a needle through one of their kimonos - and the next morning he followed the string to try and figure out who they might be...

The string led him to a large spooky stump near the back of the temple: much to the monks surprise, there, he found an entire field with thousands of Shimeji mushrooms growing! - Perhaps they where calling out for him to eat them – So! The man began to chow down, using plenty of salt and miso. He brought as many as he could carry home for later and left only a few left to grow for the next year...

From then on, the nightly hauntings stopped & the monk had soup to last through the winter. - He and the mushrooms where very happy from then on!! – The End!"

it seems that The mushrooms where so eager to be eaten that they haunted the poor guy... cant blame him for being scared, white kimonos are generally associated with the dead afterall.

Though you really shouldn't eat Shimeji raw like that, they won't digest well!! – Well, They're not inedible, but they are quite chewy. – Shimeji are much better roasted, cooked in a soup or hot pot!!! The real monster here is perhaps indigestion.

This storys details might change depending where/who you heard it from first, the usual biggest change is the type of mushroom and the song they sing (most frequently changes depending what the teller might enjoys on their mushrooms best)

[art sticker by samkalensky, part of my yokai & japanese folklore collection of stickers. check my shop and follow for many more :)]