Spooky Season greetings from a starlit night in Joshua Tree, among the coyotes of California’s high desert. 120 countries and counting . . . welcome, fellow traveller, fellow drifter across this Dark Earth.
Tonight: a devoted nurse strikes a bargain with a temple deity, offering her own life in exchange another – and a cherry tree keeps her secret in blossom for 254 years.
‘Ubazakura’ is tale one of my ‘13 Japanese Tales Spooky Season Countdown’ – thirteen ghost stories and tales of dark folklore from my former home of Japan, as we approach Halloween. I invite you to join me on the road this month and beyond, as I record them from a haunted house near Sleepy Hollow, and whilst journeying through New York City, the Hudson Valley, Sonoma’s Russian River, San Diego, and Joshua Tree National Park.
I selected tonight’s tale, and several others, from the collected stories of Lafcadio Hearn – or Koizumi Yakumo, as he is known in Japan. An Irish-Greek author, Hearn lived and died in Japan, but was also said to have been a friend of an ageing Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, when he lived in the demi-monde of New Orleans. In Kumamoto, Japan, several years ago, I lived near Hearn’s former home, a Meiji-era residence which I often visited, and which is now a museum dedicated to his life.
‘Ubazakura’ comes from Hearn’s collection Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, published in 1904. Some of the collection’s tales were also adapted for the 1964 film Kwaidan, by director Masaki Kobayashi.
Please note: these are my own retellings. I may sparingly edit elements of vintage tales to suit a contemporary audience, as part of my work to research, narrate, and compile these often lost stories for collections I plan to publish at a future date.
Dark travel journals, true crime, and creatures of shadow. Welcome to 15Minutes2Kill.
‘In the hunt for a serial killer nicknamed the Gay Slayer, the UK’s top crime show outed me to the entire country. They then doubled down, comparing me to a gay teenage street prostitute. Everyone has their own path to the world of true crime. That was mine . . .’
Author D. J. Swales, international tumbleweed of 120 countries and forty-five US states, invites you to explore the Dark Earth. Discover a new perspective on true crime, dark travel journals, serial killers, twisted history, mysteries, cryptids, and terrifying folklore. Bonus episodes include selected short fiction and little-known tales.
See the Dark Earth through the eyes of someone who has lived it. His only constant companion: a huge suitcase called Letitia.
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