Annes Newton- G00378073
World Literature
Assignment: M4 Japan: Ghost Story (Yurei)
1. My story is about Goryo. Goryo is a type of Yurei defined as Vengeful ghosts of the aristocratic class, especially those who were martyred.
Sarah's Nightmares
It was back in the 1970's when Sarah first saw a glimpse of her dead grandmother Agatha. At the
time she was only three years old and did not make much of it as her parents thought that she
was just dreaming. By the age of five it had become a constant thing. Her mom would tell her
"it's just a dream Sarah, go back to bed." Many nights Sarah would sleep with her lights on and
stay up all night because she was so scared to close her eyes or even fall asleep. She mentioned
that every time she closed her eyes at nights, she would see an image of this old wretched
woman clothed in white, wrinkled face with shades of black, skinny, long dark wrinkled hair,
long dirty nails, googly eyes and feet the size of a giant.
It was not until she was ten years old that her parents started to take her serious about what she
was seeing. Her dad started telling her stories about her mother's mother (Agatha). Apparently,
her grandmother was known as a witch in the village. She was banished from the village when
her mom was twelve years old because of her wicked and evil doings. At one point she even
casted a spell on Sarah's dad so that he would die in a car accident just so her daughter would not
marry him and be happy. He was able to escape this accident when his mom had a dream the
night before, told him about it and they began to pray. Of course, prayers trumps any evil, or so
they say. He continued to tell her that both him and her mother would have weird dreams of
Agatha while they were pregnant with her. It was as if Agatha wanted to have her dead or take
control over her. At one point during the pregnancy, her mom almost died and even during birth
the doctors was not sure that she would make it.
house and found blood on her bed. She started screaming and her parents came to her rescue, but
they told her it could be a stain. Of course, she knew it wasn't, but she was so tired that she just
changed the sheets and went straight to bed. She started to feel chilly, so she cuddled up in her
blanket. She began to feel the blanket slowly coming off her, but she kept pulling it back up. The
bed started shaking. "Could it be an earthquake?" Sarah thought to herself. It got worse and she
was now frightened. When she tried to get up from the bed to go to her parents' bedroom, there
were big black snakes all over the floor trying to get onto the bed. She