An Illustrated Book of Apparitions at Inou’s House
Copied in the late Edo era

　This is the story of strange phenomena experienced over the course of one month by a boy, Heitaro Inou, who lived in Miyoshi in the Bingo area. The various ways the apparitions attacked became popular and many picture books, picture scrolls and storybooks were made.
　Heitaro and his friends tried to test their courage with many ghost stories and as a result, every night from the night of July 1st, various mysterious phenomena occurred. On the first night, something like an ogre wandered around the mosquito net and the one-eyed giant grabbed Heitaro. When Heitaro cut off the hand with his sword, the evil spirit disappeared at once.
　On the second night, the fire of the lamp suddenly flared up to the ceiling and water sprang up in the living room and nearly suffocated him. On the third night, the upside-down and severed head of a woman came out from a small hole in the wall, rested on Heitaro’s knees and licked his neck. This kind of strange phenomena continues every night.
　The face of a huge old woman appeared and blocked the doorway on the sixth night. Heitaro threw a small knife that passed through the forehead of the woman but she seemed uninjured and unchanged, so he gave up this absurdity, left her alone and went back to his room. The next morning when he checked, she was gone and the small knife was stuck in the place where her head had been.
　On the tenth day, while Heitaro talked with a friend who visited, the friend’s head split open and many babies crawled out. And on the thirteenth day, a clothes box made of bamboo transformed into a huge toad.
　On the seventeenth day, a wooden tub was chasing a female servant, who misunderstood and thought Heitaro had thrown it at her. After midnight, many skewers with the heads of children stuck on them jumped all around his futon and were very troublesome.
　The shadow of a person appeared on the wall and kept murmuring incomprehensible things on the twenty-first day. When Heitaro went to the garden on the twenty-fifth day he stepped on a corpse and the rotten flesh stuck to his foot and was unbearably cold.
　At last, on the night of July 30th, a man in his forties dressed in excellent formal wear appeared and claimed to be the demon king Sanmoto Gorozaemon. Then the demon king praised Heitaro’s courage to overcome all the various apparitions and declared this night to be the end of the appearances and returned through the garden. Heitaro watched as the demon king was carried in a palanquin by the apparitions and disappeared far off into the clouds.