When I was a child, my mother used to read me bedtimes stories by the cool glow of my bedside lamp. This lamp was styled as a Chinese lantern, a light bulb covered with a tissue paper frame, painted with koi fish, that changed the light to my favorite sea-green.
It was by this lantern that my mother read me my favorite stories. Tales of adventure and conquest that I fondly acted out when playing with my sisters, Ashley and Samantha, and my brother, Taylor. But most of all, we adored ghost stories. My mother refused to read them to us, as she though it was evil and warned us that “there was some truth to every story.” But my father enjoyed the horror as much as we did.
When Dad read to us, we would gather in Taylor’s room, since he was the oldest and had the largest bed. My father always read to us from an old book of ghost stories his grandfather bought him during a trip from Japan nearly a half century earlier.
“Our American remake horror films aren’t nearly as scary as the actual stories,” Dad would brag.
And from that tattered and worn leather bound book, he read about Chinese dragons and demons that would suck the soul from your body. He read of old hags that ate naughty children who wander from home and other wild, but thrilling tales.
One of the most terrifying stories was the story of Kuchisake-onna, or the Slith-Mouth Woman. The Kuchisake-onna was allegedly a beautiful, but vain young wife of a samurai. When the samurai suspected she was having an affair, he attacked her and slit her mouth from ear to ear, screaming, “Who will think you’re beautiful now?!”
It was an urban myth that the spirit of the woman haunted Japan. The vengeful spirit was said to approach the youth in the form of a beautiful woman, wearing a surgical mask and ask, “Am I pretty?” If one were to say yes, she would reveal her mask, expose her grotesque face and ask, “How about now?” At this point, a variety of possibilities could occur. If one answered no, the Kuchisake-onna would give her victim a matching Chealsea Grin with a pair of scissors, after killing them. There were also lingering rumors that she would take her victims to the area of her own death before slaying them.
“If one said yes after she removed her mask,” Dad said, “the spirit would follow the victim home and murder them there. And if one were to say she was “average”, she would leave the victim alone. Or one could confuse and evade her by asking, “Am I pretty?”
In my research, every resource described the Kuchisake-onna as one thing: inescapable. No matter what direction you ran in, she would appear before you.
The myth of the Slit-Mouth Woman was always my favorite. Not only was it so terribly violent and frightening, but because of the options. Every choice had a different result. A different risk. And it was the risks that enthralled me. The exhilarating adrenaline rush of making a dire decision captivated me like nothing else. And it was that concentrated interest that attracted her.
