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Jikininki - Japanese Human Eating Ghost's Urban Legend

Aug 17 (Haunting Tube) - Jikininki (食人鬼, "human-eating ghosts") appear in Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904) as corpse-eating spirits.

In Japanese Buddhism, jikininki ("human-eating ghosts"; pronounced shokujinki in modern Japanese), are similar to Gaki/Hungry ghost; the spirits of greedy, selfish or impious individuals who are cursed after death to seek out and eat human corpses. A similar story can be found as "Aozukin" in Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari from 1776.

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