Monday, August 15, 2011

Hidemi's Rambling No.350

The time for scary tales and ghosts is Halloween in the U.S. but in Japan, it’s summer. In my hometown, there used to be a night for a test of courage for kids in summer when I was a child. It was a small neighborhood event that an adult volunteer set up a sign saying ‘A Test of Courage’ at the entrance to a narrow lane between the neighbor houses. Except for the entrance, the rest of the lane was left as it was, without any special scary decorations or surprising effects. Enough nature still remained in my neighborhood back then though, and a ditch, bushes and shrubs along the lane had sufficient effects in darkness to scare kids. One summer dusk, I heard my grandmother call me urgently when I was playing in the yard. She grabbed me and ran into the house, escaping from something. It was a ball of fire drifting above us. That was the first time I’d ever seen a will-o'-the-wisp, and I haven’t seen one since. But to my family, seeing a will-o'-the-wisp wasn’t so rare. My grandmother once saw it perch on a side mirror of a parked car in front of our house. Scientifically, it’s said that a will-o'-the-wisp is some phosphorus-related phenomenon. Near our house, there was a graveyard where we had buried the deceased from generation to generation, which is now banned by law requiring cremation, and we believed it had to do with a will-o'-the-wisp. I had plenty of natural scary materials in my childhood…