Scary Mary and Ichabod Crane

This is pretty clever:



I admit, not only do I like the film Marry Poppins, but I also got into watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by the third year. This is a featurette on perhaps my favorite self-contained episode that can be enjoyed without being a Buffy fan:




It's an incredible tv episode, where the plot is moved along with the absence of spoken dialogue.

I'm not too keen on slasher films with gratuitous gore and sadistic violence; I think it's not too healthy for one's soul. But I do like a good ghost story. The kind that puts a chill up your spine.

Growing up, some of my favorite ghost tales came out of the Japanese tradition. One of the well known ones is the story of Okiku. Folk version:

Okiku was the beautiful servant of the samurai, Aoyama Tessan. She refused his amorous advances so he tricked her into believing that she had carelessly lost one of the family's ten precious delft plates. She recounted the nine plates many times but when she could not find the tenth, Aoyama offered to overlook the matter if she became his lover. Again she refused and he threw her down a well to her death.

She became a vengeful spirit who tormented her murderer by counting to nine and then making a terrible shriek to represent the missing tenth plate. In some versions of the story, this torment continued until an exorcist or neighbor shouted "ten" in a loud voice at the end of her count. Her ghost, apparently easily satisfied, haunted the samurai no more.

I tried finding other tales, but didn't have much Google luck. Other stories I vaguely remember, is a samurai who had been sleeping with the skeletal remains of a ghost, without knowing it. Another one has a strange woman who always bought milk at a strange hour; finally, a couple of the townsfolk followed her and saw her disappear into a grave, from which they heard a baby's cry. They dug it up, to find a newborn. The mother had been killed while pregnant; her spirit continued to bring nourishment, until the baby was given birth.

See also:
Yotsuya Kaidan

I also like Edgar Allen Poes, some E.T.A. Hoffman, and folk tales like the story of Bluebeard, and non-sugar-coated Grimms Fairy & Folk Tales.