These are just some of the haunting tails called by distinguished American scholar, translator, and journalist Lafcadio Hearn during years of travel and study in his adoptive land of Japan. The 20 “ghostly sketches“ Hearn gathered for his classic collection, Kwaidan, or “strange stories“, span the supernatural spectrum from grizzly accounts of revenge from beyond the grave, to haunting visions of beautiful snow spirits, who bring quiet death in the night. Strange and wondrous creatures, abound in these tales, including human faced Heiké crabs who embodied the spirits of dead warriors, and the jikininki, or man-eating goblins, that feed nocturnally on funeral offerings. And Hearns vivid retellings of classic Japanese folk tales further enhanced in these gorgeous, heavily illustrated gift, edition, the spirit, world swirls frighteningly close to human reality, the border between the two often being no more than a thin fog of dreams.