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In Japan, ghosts belong to summer - and this book is not a collection. It is a game. Kaidan revives hyakumonogatari kaidankai, the Edo-period gathering of one hundred weird tales, as an illustrated book of 100 Japanese ghost stories that you play by candlelight.

The rules open the book: light one hundred candles, read one story, put out one flame, and let the room grow darker ten stories at a time, until a single candle stands between you and the hundredth tale. Edo tradition holds that when the last flame dies, something arrives. Most players stop at ninety-nine.

Inside are one hundred tales in ten chapters, retold in new words from the classic sources - Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan, Ueda Akinari's 1776 Ugetsu Monogatari, A. B. Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Richard Gordon Smith's folklore notebooks, the kabuki stage - alongside original stories in the traditional voice and modern urban legends retold as the folklore they have become. The famous yurei are here: the faceless mujina of the Akasaka road, Yuki-Onna the Woman of the Snow, Hoichi the Earless, Okiku counting her nine plates, the Peony Lantern, the vampire cat of Nabeshima, the returning bride O-Tei, the Boy Who Drew Cats, Aoyagi of the willows. So are the yokai - kappa, tanuki, tengu, the corpse-eating jikininki, the house-child zashiki-warashi - and their modern heirs: Hanako of the Third Stall, the Slit-Mouthed Woman, Kokkuri-san, and the taxi ghosts of a seaside town whose late-night fares vanish from the back seat.

A visual edition designed as part of the game:

Sixteen full-page ink illustrations in a modern manga style, from the faceless woman by the moat to the last burning candle

Ten framed chapter openers that count the candles down - 100, 90, 80 - to the last ten

A small candle glyph on every story, counting the flames down from 100 to 0 as you read

A closing plate of a hundred lit candles in a temple courtyard, and an afterword naming every source

A How to Play page with the original Edo rules, for reading alone or aloud around a circle of friends

The stories run one to two pages each, plainly told and never explained - weird tales in the old sense, quiet enough for a first-time reader of Japanese folklore, uncanny enough for longtime fans of J-horror and folk horror. For adult and teen readers (14 and up), it is a natural companion for Obon, Japan's festival of the dead in mid-August, and an obvious dare for Halloween night (October 31), when one hundred candles start to sound like a good idea.

Read ninety-nine stories and stop, like everyone else.

Or don't.

Phantom Press is an independent imprint dedicated to illustrated books of folklore, myth, and the pleasantly strange. Its Japanese folklore line retells classic kaidan, yokai legends, and modern urban legends in new words; Kaidan: 100 Japanese Ghost Stories revives the Edo-period parlor game of hyakumonogatari as a book.