Japanese Ghost Stories

About Lafcadio Hearn

The improbable life story of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) included a peculiarly gothic childhood in Ireland during which he was successively abandoned by his mother his father and his guardian; two decades in the United States where he worked as a journalist and was sacked for marrying a former slave; and a long period in Japan where he married a Japanese woman and wrote about Japanese society and aesthetics for a Western readership. His ghost stories which were drawn from Japanese folklore and influenced by Buddhist beliefs appeared in collections throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He is a much celebrated figure in Japan. Paul Murray is the author of biographies of Lafcadio Hearn and Bram Stoker and the editor of collections of Hearn's work. He is a former Irish diplomat whose posting to Japan in the late 1970s first ignited his interest in Hearn.