This Paranormal Life - #235 Onibi - The Demonic Ghost Fire That STEALS SOULS

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

In Japanese legend there exists a kind of mysterious atmospheric spirit known as Onibi. Ancient texts describe them as “resentful people who have become fire”. But are they friend or foe? And what do they have in common with pumpkins? Time for Kit and Rory to investigate.Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL MerchFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityAdvertise on This Paranormal Life via Gumball.fmEdited by Kami TomanResearch by Amy GrisdaleIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is KFC's secret blend of 11 herbs and spices? If I really tried, could I kamehameha? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Hello, and welcome back to This Paranormal Life. This is a weekly comedy podcast in which, every Tuesday, myself, Kit Grimm-Ovena, and Roy Powers, who's sitting across from me, investigate a different paranormal tale and get to the bottom of whether it's truly paranormal or not.

What's up? We have decades of experience. Are you ad-libbing my introduction? You kind of introduced me, but you didn't do it properly, so I'm just trying to get a word in. Sure. Gentlemen, you have the floor. No, that was it. I just wanted to say hi. Hey, everyone!

I feel like you did that at the top anyway as paranormal investigators we have a lot of experience in investigating the paranormal and we use that right here to investigate a case live for you how are you doing today Roy? stressed I'm a little stressed I'm a little worried there's a bit of a story behind that

which I don't know if I've told you yet so my apartment I don't want to, there's a bit of a story behind that, which I don't know if I've told you yet. Okay. So my apartment, I don't know, maybe this is a little dramatic, so I won't say is overrun, but I will say taken over by moths. Oh. Moths have taken over my apartment and I don't know where they've come from. Taken over is just as bad as overrun, I think. It's a little different. It's not quite as malicious. They have hijacked my apartment. All terrible.

I don't know if I've created some perfect ecosystem where moths are thriving. And it's like a beacon to them in the night to come in my window. But they're everywhere. They're everywhere. You do collect old people's jumpers. Yeah, as a hobby. But I don't want the moth part of it to be a part of my life. The problem is there's a lot of moths that go with those clothes.

And, you know, at the start, it was quite a gentle process, guiding them out the window, you know, using the cup and the sheet to kind of trap them and release them into the wild. Now the slippers coming out. Now you f***ed around and you find out what happens. Oh my God. My Nike slides are being thrown around this apartment like a heat-seeking missile. This audio recording is going to be admissible as evidence in Moth Court

when you're tried for your crimes. Against Judge Mothman. But the funny twist is, I thought it was maybe a problem that I was just having. Maybe I left my balcony door open one night, but recently someone has been moving out of my apartment. And like a lot of apartment buildings, usually what you do when you move out is if there are things that you have that you don't want anymore, you can leave them at kind of a collection area. And it's like an up for grabs thing. Sure. And they had been doing that recently, leaving some stuff in the,

in the foyer for people to take. And I was coming home a few nights ago. And one of the things that they left was a whole box full of moth traps. Wow. So this is a whole box of moth traps. This is endemic. So did you take them? Yeah,

I took every single one of them and I set them up all of my apartment and they didn't catch a single moth. I'm starting to think that's the reason that they gave them away. They gave them away, of course. Not because they caught every moth and thus no more traps were needed because they didn't do a goddamn thing. Now I'm just using the traps to beat the moths to death. I've got moth blood on my hands. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing.

I think I checked back today and I've caught one moth. But I think they have. They're getting intelligent, I think. Well, I don't know what the technology is behind it. I think the traps are supposed to emit some sort of sexy beam that allures the moths. There's no way else with the technology. I don't know. I don't want.

A sexy beam? I'm not a scientist a horny scent that the moths can pick up on and they're drawn to it but i think they like lights apparently these bastards are celibate because none of these f**kers are going into my trap these virgin ass moths they don't even want to f**k they're so lame uh well i'm glad you only have moths because we are in the middle of what Londoners will know as spider season. I'm just saying the insects are turning against me. That's paranormal. That's the episode. This is not the episode.

And we have to get on to the topic of the day. I'm hijacking your episode, bud. No, there's no way. You lost the crowd they want to hear about my moths today we're traveling back to ancient japan in fact in a time of great civil unrest the year was 1580 and three different buddhist sects were at war this sounds like an oxymoron right off the top i I didn't realize Buddhists got into wars. Yeah, I think that means you're not a Buddhist anymore, right?

Isn't that kind of against some of their main beliefs? Well, we have heard at the top of the episode how even a pacifist like Rory can be radicalized into murdering moths left, right, and center. So we don't know what happened to these Buddhists to make them go loco like this. Of course. A couple of moths come in my my living room window namaste brother i will gently guide you out towards the light of the moon a single one more moth comes in three total that's enough nike slide in one hand spray bottle in the other hairspray in the other the only spray you can find these moths have never looked better.

Quaffs perfectly styled. The battle between the sects had been raging for ten long years, and most of the action took place around the Ishiyama temple in Osaka. Wow. One faction, the Kuki army,

Excuse me? devised a clever scheme to start turning the tide in their favor. I am not, of course, picturing Excuse me? I am not, of course, picturing some kind of Adventure Time Candy Kingdom army of cookies. What is the... Is that a translation thing? Or why were they called the Cookie Army? No, it's not. It's not literally the Cookie Army. It's romanized into K-U-K-I.

Got it. Got it. But the brave milkians would not give up we're losing perhaps now it's time to take extreme measures you don't mean yes we must end this it's time to fight fire with fire they decided to burn the temple and many others in the region to the ground. Wow. Hundreds, if not thousands of lives were lost. Warriors, innocent civilians, and even those of the temple priests. I think they've misunderstood what fighting fire with fire means. It doesn't mean burn everything to the ground, including your own soldiers. It must be a very tricky position to be in when you're uh at a stalemate of battle 10 years into a battle

yeah you really start kind of thinking of 3d chess moves you're really dug in at that point yeah no one wants to just surrender because it's been going for so long so yeah at that point it's probably not even a war you're just kind of throwing rocks at each other because you're exhausted. The survivors called a ceasefire and slowly began to rebuild their places of peace and worship. So I guess something was achieved. The war was not over.

And as time marched on, the conflict was all but forgotten. But almost 100 years after the start of the war, in 1868, locals began to notice something strange. Flickering lights suddenly appeared in the hills where the Ishiyama Temple once stood. So bright they could be seen from miles around. One night, a local cried, Look! Atop the mountain! A fire is burning! People of the town hurried up to quench what they were certain were roaring flames. But when they arrived on the hilltop, there was nothing to be seen.

No hint of a raging inferno or even a single crumb of ash. Ooh, phantom fire. I don't think we've come across this before. No, this is very unique. Confused but relieved there was no fire to extinguish, the villagers headed home to get some rest. But the very next night, the same thing happened. And the evening after that.

It became so frequent that people were beginning to tear their hair out, frustrated at the mystery of the lights. But before long, the heavens opened and the region was pelted with a torrent of rain. That'll do it. The residents of 1868 Osaka were thrilled. At least tonight, there will not be any sign of fire in the mountains. But they were dead wrong.

Once again, the grass in the hills seemed to be going up in smoke despite the downpour. Wow. They decided something must be done. They had to investigate. What do you do? How do you investigate fire? I've only investigated fire with marshmallows. Yes.

That's the lengths of my research. I think, weirdly, people back in the day were better equipped to investigate the paranormal this way because that was more the way they thought. These days, you would, like, I don't know, call the forest services. They would send some researchers up there. Right, right. These people are taking it into their own hands. That's right. A few men trekked up the mountain with shovels to see if there was something underground causing the bizarre disruption. You know, that's actually pretty smart. I wouldn't have thought of that. But, you know, we've had it before where it's either a coal mine

or some sort of natural gas leak that could be causing a flame to burn even when it's raining outside. So true. Yeah. Fair play. That's pretty smart of them. I think we've briefly talked about in Turkmenistan, there's a fire. There's just a

fire pit that's been burning for like a hundred years. Yeah, yeah. For the same kind of reason. Before long, they find something pretty disturbing. What's all this armor doing here? And is that a sword? My god, look at all these bones! What in the hell happened here? The guys realized they must be standing on a burial ground left over from a horrific battle, and that the lights they were seeing were actually the spirits of the dead,

a kind of atmospheric ghost that exists in Japanese legend known as Onibi. They did what they thought was the right thing and unearthed every remnant of bloodshed from the mountaintop. That's not the right thing. That's not the right thing at all. Digging up the dead? What do you mean, Rory? Just to make sure this would never happen again, they disturbed every grave possible. No!

The fire is going to be bigger now! To put out the fire, they pissed on the bones of the dead and fallen. This is why I'm starting to think that whatever they would have dug up, they would have said was the reason behind the fire. They could have found like fossilized dog shit

and be like, this is it. Well, the spirit of this beast roars for a thousand years. I think there's quite a leap between dog and uh an ancient army okay that had died on that hill of course literally died on that hill to be fair uh this is probably a kind of cultural um breakdown point for us where you know obviously in this part of the world we largely either cremate or bury our dead. And I don't know, we might think you want to leave

those remnants in the ground and not disturb the remnants, but I really don't know how they do things in Japan. I know you today can't bury people because they literally don't have the space. Back then, I don't know what it was. So I don't know if they have the same concept of like, maybe they would see that as extremely respectful to kind of show respect to those fallen people. I don't know what it was. So I don't know if they have the same concept of like, maybe they would see that as extremely respectful to kind of show respect to those fallen people.

I don't know. Give it, right. Make some sort of ceremony or fanfare around their deaths rather than just leaving them there. Yeah, because presumably that's just where they were struck with a sword and just remained forever. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. And you mentioned some sort of specific creature as well. Some sort of specific spirit. That. Okay. And you mentioned some sort of specific creature as well. Some sort of specific spirit. That's right. These men already knew about what I've described as an kind of atmospheric ghost in Japanese legend called Onibi. Rory, have you ever heard of Onibi? Never, never before in my life, which is quite rare and interesting because, you know, for the most part, it sounds like similar to just a spirit or a ghost. But for them to confuse it with fire raging on a mountaintop, it's got to have a pretty unique appearance. You're damn right. I hadn't really come across it.

I've seen Onibi described as resentful people who have become fire. Whoa! And in ancient Chinese writings, they say, from the blood of humans and animals, Onibi fire comes. So these ghosts don't just resemble fire. When they die, they become a f***ing Zippo lighter. They are flames. They are fire emoji.

This is wild. This is really cool. I think this is pretty neat. This is an illustration of Onibi from a Japanese text that's like a couple hundred years old. I don't know what this originally was, like a woodblock print or something or a painting, but it is an illustration of, I don't really know what I'm looking at here, a mountaintop, some leaves, but then balls of fire that are kind of on the land, but also in the sky Yes, kind of floating. Yeah, maybe that light is implying they're ascending to heaven It definitely could be I mean, I don't think there's any wrong answers here. I interpreted that as rain to be honest

Oh like even in the rain. Even in the rain, the fire keeps going, takes different forms. And as you can see, there's like kind of flames in the background. It seems to be a large flame floating and then lots of tiny ones in the background. So here's another one. And here you can see it takes a pretty different form, but in the same kind of rough vein. Oh yeah. A little more detail in this image. We see kind of like a landscape with some trees and birds, a river. Then above it is, I'm not going to dance around it, a flaming skull firing itself through the skies like a meteorite.

Yeah. A bit more of an obvious ghost here. It kind of looks like an enemy from Ocarina of Time. I'm not gonna lie. You know those skulls that float around with fire on them? Oh yeah. That's relevant. Yeah. So other translations of the name Onibi are Will-O-Wisp and Jack-O-Lantern. Ah. Onibi were written about by name as early as the Edo period, 1603 to 1867. According to their original description, they're orbs of blue light. Ooh. Now, this is interesting because we did cover jack-o'-lanterns in last week's episode.

Another very important pivotal episode that, you know, carries the same gravitas as this one does. Sure. Two important cases. Jack-o'-lanterns came up a disappointing amount. Of course. For how little they had to do with the case. Well, it was pretty pivotal to the descriptions of the craft. I think one witness said briefly that it looked like a jack-o'-lantern floating in the sky

and you decided that it was like a jack-o'-lantern floating in the sky and you decided that it was literally a pumpkin? I just, I mean, this is the big question that we have to ask ourselves today. These Onibi, are they possibly pumpkins? No, we have to, I'm gonna, I need to nix this. I need to put a pin in this right now. We're not bringing back the pumpkin chat. You know, as you said, when the wars are raging

for that long, you'll start playing 3D chess. Are these pumpkins. No, they're not. They're not. I'm not going to hear it. You're telling me those warriors died a hundred years ago on October 31st. They did not die on October 31st. Dressed as a sexy nurse.

No, they did not. And you don't think that a pumpkin's involved? They were monks. They were monks. They were not sexy nurses. Sexy monks? It's got to be a Halloween costume. I'm like trying my best to avoid all the pumpkin research.

Like I can't give him this. I'm not giving him this. The men claimed they saw a gourd floating above. A gourd or a pumpkin? Fine, it was a pumpkin. The whole thing is pumpkins from beginning to end, which is f***ed, because they don't even have pumpkins in Japan.

Not in the Edo period. That's the most paranormal bit about it. These onibi can be blue, blue-white, red, or yellow. Orange. They range in size from... With a f***ing weird crooked little smile. They range in size from a couple centimeters to several times the size of a human.

Whoa! And according to sources, they float in the air one to two meters off the ground. Does their size have to... Is their size relative to anything? You know, if you were a very evil person, maybe you're a huge raging fire, you know, because you have that unfulfilled anger burning inside of your spirit.

It could be. It could also be the type of being it came from. We know it comes from humans and animals. Maybe a little flame is a mouse. Right, a little lizard. An angry mouse. Yeah. And then a massive flame would be an angry elephant.

Interesting idea. And then a massive flame would be an angry elephant. Interesting idea. Sometimes the Onibi zoom around in the sky solo dolo, but they can gather together in groups of around 30. Weirdly, a lot of the descriptions around them kind of describe like they can interact with each other. It's funny you mention it because what immediately came to mind for me

with this blue orb is Navi from Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Right. God, we're nerds. A kind of mini blue spirit. And as I say, I wasn't able to find too much evidence, but there has to be enormous Legend of Zelda inspiration from Onibi because you have flaming skulls. You have hoes, which appear as flames until you get close to them and then they turn into ghosts and you capture their fire in a bottle yeah yeah that's really cool be interesting to to look that up and see if there is a connection i just play ocarina of time again yeah doing some research

for the podcast interestingly onibi are most frequently cited in bad weather. Like in our story from the beginning, even then, the rain doesn't extinguish their ghostly flames. There are also mixed reports on whether they're hot or not. Some say they burn completely cold. Others say that they can choose to burn stuff with immense heat. Crucially, there are tons of accounts of people citing Onibi, particularly back in the day. For example, the Okunoen Temple in Wakayama is also home to Japan's largest cemetery. It's an active place of worship, and monks and residents have rituals that they complete. They fast for seven days, abstain from making any kind of fire,

and walk between the trees and the grounds from midnight to 1am the monks claim that when they're performing these rituals sometimes they are stopped in their tracks by ghostly animals and on occasion they're attacked by floating balls of fire oh my god now just to clarify these are the monks who haven't eaten in seven days. Sure. Yeah. And I've stayed up until 1 a.m. walking in the forest. Very rarely do the bulls show up on day one, but towards the end of the week, they actually get pretty ferocious. They're attacked by floating cheeseburgers.

Another tale is about the river Chikumagawa in Shinano. A long time ago, two young boys fell in the river and were swept away by the current in a rainstorm. Every night ever since, two Onibi were seen hovering above the stream. Wow, that's cool. So you can, it almost marks a grave. Yeah. You know, people who have died out in the world, their flame burns at the spot in which they passed away. Which is kind of nuts when you think about the significance, even in this part of the world of like candles that we burn candles at funerals. And yeah, there's so much like we wouldn't think of having anything close to that in terms of. But like, yeah, we absolutely represent spirits as flames.

Yeah. I wonder where that imagery came from. Is that biblical or. Probably right. You know, like the that imagery came from. Is that biblical or? Probably, right? You know, like the fire in my soul, all that jazz. At least in this part of the world. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's kind of funny, isn't it? When you hear about these, these stories and these myths from other cultures and you're like a flaming skull floating above the spot where someone passed away is like, I don't know. It sounds kind of crazy. And they're like, don't you guys all get together and light candles when someone passes away and it's like well the candles represent it's beautiful like we do the same nutty shit over here so yeah i love it i know like no y'all are the weird ones uh don't you guys go to church and literally eat the flesh of your God? Well, that's enough. We drink his blood too.

Once I get enough strength from the Lord, I'm going to kick your ass. I saw someone, which was, I think someone maybe posted it on the This Paranormal Life Facebook group. Somebody had worked out how much communion you would have to take before you would have eaten the entire body of Christ.

Okay. So they were working out, you know, let's assume he was like 5'10". Sure. 200 pounds, whatever. He definitely wasn't 5'10", either. It was a long time ago. Have you seen him up on that cross? Dude was shredded.

I think he was like 6'5", lean muscle, chisel-ass jawline. There's nothing to base this on it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what he looked like well he's our lord and savior so actually talk about him with a little gosh darn respect sure but they were working out look let's say that's what he that's how much he weighed that's how big he was how many crackers would it would? I think they referred to it as Jesus. How many Jesus would it take? Okay, that's very insensitive. I mean, the concept was insensitive enough. I don't think it's insensitive.

I think it's interesting. And then also, well, this is maybe a little insensitive. How much blood would you have to drink? I think calling the body of Christ Jesus is plenty insensitive. I like to think he would have a giggle at that. When I get up there to the pearly gates, he's going to be like, that f***ing Jesus bit slayed me.

Here, have a nibble. And he just held his arm out. Have a GZit. Yeah, they worked out how many, I think it was, God, I don't remember how many it was, but it's a decent amount because those wafers are not very dense.

No. Physically or nutritionally. So it would take a fair few crackers to um to to fill out the whole dude yeah yeah i thought it was quite interesting but i guess people have some people are probably on like two and a half jesus jesus at this point yeah i mean if you've been doing it since you were a baby people do it every week for decades and decades i feel like i got scammed because um yeah anytime the the the church that i go to back home they do it like diy so instead of like the cool bread and delicious

bible wine i think i get a corner of a cracker and some vimto oh really little glass yeah it's not oh i see gotcha gotcha gotcha yeah Yeah. Is it actual wine in some churches? Like the Catholic Church, they have like... I think so. Wow. I mean, not everyone gets to drink the wine, so I've never had it. But I thought it was wine. Yeah.

Oh, that's interesting. What a wine it is. Is it Fimto? Yeah, yeah. What a niche product. People definitely don't even know what that is. What is it, like blackcurrant juice? It's like a blackcurrant dilutant juice, you know?

So it's those kind of squashes that you mix with water so that they become drinkable. I don't know if ours are mixed with water. Maybe it's like, you don't dilute the blood of the Lord. You don't. You absolutely don't. You don't dilute his blood. You don't dilute his words, you little sinner.

You're giving a PowerPoint presentation about why Jesus looked like Michael Phelps. You mean to tell me that he went traveling and he didn't swim three times a week? Now drink your Vimto and eat your cheese puff. This is the worst church we've ever been to before. The priest whose robes you stole stumbles out in his underwear get him absolutely get him you're you're scarfing down as many as many crackers as you can this is my calories for the week uh yes we were in the middle of a story uh yeah the the two boys onibi were floating in the middle of the river right where they had passed away. Like in our earlier story, no weather or conditions ever made a difference to these flames.

And like earlier, the locals knew exactly what to do. All the villagers came together to hold a service for the youngsters' souls. And after that, the Onibi were never seen again. Wow, I like this. You know, it is kind of a mystery, but there's a way to resolve this. And if the implication of these flames is that, you know, similar to spirits, there's some unfinished business or it was an untimely demise. It's cool to know that there's a way to, I don't know, let them be at rest, let them be at peace to resolve that conflict. Absolutely. That was my first thought we never

actually come across ghost stories that are as kind of textbook movie examples like this yeah where you can literally make peace with the ghost and then it passes on to the next realm because i feel like even in uh you know western culture you could go to a haunted house where there's this ghost who died there 100 years ago and every night he gets up at midnight and f**k shit up throws things around the house uh even if you knew who he was how he died and on the anniversary of his death lit a bunch of candles and said i acknowledge your death may your soul be at peace i hope you find satisfaction and salvation in the afterlife. The next day he's up throwing shit around. It doesn't work like that. No. You know, I think he gets off on it. Yeah. I think Poltergeist's whole thing is they're having a bloody laugh.

Yes. They don't want to go. It's not sad. They love earth. So it's cool to hear these stories where yeah as i said you know the issue can be resolved peacefully yeah all right i've kind of been beating around the bush of um the darker side of the onibi and i feel we got to get into it before we go any further um because i was just saying how beautiful it was and how much i really enjoyed it they absorb souls if you get what do you mean if you get too close they'll absorb your soul uh and the more onibi in one location the quicker your soul will be absorbed in some cases super groups of onibi in in groups of we'll be seeing burning all night long.

Thankfully, they don't spend too much time in cities and towns like you might have seen in our kind of prints from earlier. They are almost always seen

in all natural settings. Yeah. Especially wet areas like marshlands but also forests and graveyards. And it turns out life absorption

only scratches the surface of their ghost powers. Why? What's the point in absorbing a soul? If what you want is for someone to acknowledge and forgive maybe your earthly sins. We might be giving them too much credit saying that they want anything. Maybe they're thirsty for souls and simply praying for them banishes them. Right. Yeah, that's it it they're not resolving the conflicts on

earth you're damning them to hell finally it's like once the uh once the anibi have passed on to the the next realm you can tell because they explode in a ball of screams it's like all right did they want that to happen? It sounds like they are not enjoying it. Gallons of blood gush out of the ball of fire like in the f***ing Shining. Onibi have been known to have all of the following abilities.

Life force absorption, as described. Elemental swarming. I don't even know what that is. Confusion inducement. Onibi uses to draw people close enough to gank their soul. These all sound like Pokemon moves. Illusion manipulation. Again, they can manipulate illusions and hallucinations to trick people.

I think my Darkrai can do that. They have avian magic, the power to control birds. They can dimensional travel, which makes sense they kind of straddle dimensions if you can control dimensions you don't need to be able to pilot a crow like a drone there's no need for that it's a pretty good at this dimension you're the only ones in this dimension that can master flight well them and bugs planes i guess the most worrying bit about that is apparently they can make you dimensional travel and can put you in i didn't need to know about this but they can put you in a pocket dimension i don't i don't know

if i want to know what this is a pocket dimension is a small personal world in which the user has absolute control over its aspects. So it's a kind of Yu-Gi-Oh! Shadow Realm that the Onibi can send you to. Oh, right. Think of it as like, imagine you could put someone in your pocket. Oh, okay. And you control. Yeah, got it. You've got complete control over them. God damn, they have genjutsu, basically. I'm fighting Itachi Uchiha.

One key way that Onibi differed to ghosts that we are more accustomed to in the West and something that makes them feel a lot more real is just how many types of Onibi have been classified and that have different abilities. I'm really not going to get into them because there's too many, but they have names such as Shiranui,

Koemonbi, Janjanbi, Tenka, Sarakazoi, Asobibi, Inka, Kazedama, Sogenbi, Hidama, Watari Bisiaku. Wow. And these all have translations like shadow fire, wind balls, fire spirit, traversing ladle. Oh my God. Traversing ladle uh all with different abilities it's very

very kind of head spinning but one of the ones i will tell you about is kitsunebi rory i'm testing your japanese here can you guess what that might be kitsu is that fox ding ding ding ding ding this is a mysterious fire spirit that's said to look like a fox with a glowing bone in its mouth. Wow. It appears in places where fire would be impossible to start. It flickers on and off and flees when chased. Kitsunebi tend to show up on hot summer's day when the weather starts clouding over. Here's again one of these kind of old school block prints illustratingrating what a kitsunebi might look like

wow they're not uh they're not quite as cute as i thought they were going to be uh this thing kind of looks like a weasel like a very very large weasel uh and one of them has its neck kind of craned up towards the sky and And let's not dance around it. It's breathing fire. It is breathing fire like a tiger. It's a fire weasel. It's absolutely a fire weasel. Now, I know we said that there's all these different types and this is kind of one of them.

Even though they all have different appearances and abilities, is the understanding that they all kind of have the same origin? It's all people who have passed away and they're just kind of taking different forms. I believe so. Okay, that's interesting. Granted, I did say earlier that it could be animals or people. So this could literally be the spirit of a fox.

As we know in Japan, foxes do kind of have a spiritual significance. Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't even think about that. Because all of a sudden you're like, all right, you see this little tiny little mischievous fire breathing fox. Maybe it was like a little little scamp in his lifetime, a little pickpocket or something. Could just be the ghost of a fox. Don't overthink it, bud. I saw the other day in Hagerston Park at night, like something i'd never seen before a little chubby fox oh what really it was very cute oh what do you take any pictures i was like oh he just ran away too quickly but uh but i was like how did you get chubby yeah he's he's like he must be like living out the back of a fucking starbucks just eating cinnamon scrolls every day like he's found a source of food because city foxes are

generally um gaunt little uh ghosts of foxes dangerous little critters i i'm not surprised that one hasn't just mugged me on my way home they are they're pretty much as close to a little demon as you could probably get in london Have you seen that viral video of the Fox stealing a guy's wallet? He had the dude at gunpoint on the underground. No, I haven't seen it. So it's possible. Yeah.

Shit. Yeah. Well, there you go. I think, I think to be fair, the wallet fell out of his pocket or something. And then the Fox ganked it.

Right. The Fox wasn't like kicking him on the ground and grabbed his wallet um yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of foxes in london it's a real thing but there's not a lot of chubby foxes and not a lot of fire breathing ones either that i've seen and there's one more type of oniwi that's quite creepy called called Hitodama. And it's believed that if you haven't seen one by the time you turn 28, it will come to you and say, I'm a shou, I'm a shou. Let's meet, let's meet.

And in the areas where people believe this, before you turn 28, you have to pretend you've already seen one to try and trick the Hitodama into staying away. Right. Wow, so you have a couple different options. If it's coming up to your 28th birthday, you've already seen one to try and trick the Hitodama into staying away. Right. Wow, so you have a couple different options. If it's coming up to your 28th birthday, you can either be like,

doesn't bother me because I've already seen like six of them. Whatever. Yeah, I see them every other day. Or you got to be roaming the streets, hunting this thing down. Yeah, it's a fun one. Yeah, so true. It said they may also appear right before a baby is born, which I think in video game terms is called camping by the spawn point.

Which is totally unfair. They're waiting for the babies to come out. But, Rory, we can't talk about Onibi without bringing up what is fair to call the British equivalent. Like I mentioned earlier, Will-O-Wisp. Yeah, so Will-O-Wisp actually came up for me when I was researching the episode on Banshees, I believe. Oh, yeah. I don't know how similar the crossover is in terms of their lore or appearance, really. But it's interesting that this is a creature that has almost seeped into

episodes before yeah we've definitely skirted around it for sure is it irish willow wisp celtic maybe i don't know i think it's it's definitely european uh whether it's british or irish or whatever um i actually don't know it. I won't get too deep into it because it probably is somewhat two different things, but it does bolster the believability of this case to think that there are other examples of it. Like Onibi, this is visibly seen as a flickering lantern or a flame.

Right. And a bit like Onibi, they are seen in natural settings like bogs, forests, and places like that. There's even bodies they find preserved in bogs hundreds or thousands of years old that they think are perfectly likely to be victims of will-o'-wisps,

people who saw flames, wandered into bogs, and got stuck. Yeah, because from the limited amount of research I did on the Willow Wisp, that seemed to be the vibe was they, it's for travelers who are lost in the woods. They see this lantern, assuming it's either another stranger that can help them or some sort of tavern or rest spot. They chase after it. The lantern keeps moving, leading you in the wrong direction.

I forgot that bit, tavern. That's a great point because you in the wrong direction. I forgot that bit. Tavern. That's a great point. Because back in the day, houses would have been lit by lamps. Yeah, on the front. So, yeah, you think you're going somewhere safe. And there are little tricksters. They're going to get you killed.

And now you're their lantern buddy. There's two lanterns now. You're in their pocket dimension. Consider your soul absorbed. That's not what you want to hear right when you're dying it's like oh i guess there's nowhere to go in this bog i'll just rest here till morning consider your soul absorbed it's like that's that's not jesus jesus didn't say that that's worrying consider your soul sore no one good ever said those words it's so rude it's like all right well now i'm not gonna rest i'm gonna get back up i'm gonna keep walking till

the sun rises no no no wait no you really should nap regain your strength rest your weary, weary soul. No, I'm not going to. Rest your weary soul. You rest your eyes again for another second. Consider your soul. I can still hear you. I have to say the words before I do it. That's how the spell works. It's a terrible spell.

I can't believe i'm saying this um sadly jack-o'-lanterns do come up again in my research hello because i don't think i realized where they came from and how it relates to this case do you know the origin story of the jack-o'-lantern no i don't actually i think it was like a ufo it wasn't that they saw one night and then they were like, hey. That doesn't even make sense because the man said the UFO looks like a jack-o'-lantern. Yeah, you're right. So it's completely backwards. The Irish legend at least tells the tale of a ne'er-do-well named Drunk Jack,

who, when the devil came to collect his soul, Drunk Jack tricked him into turning into a coin so that he could pay for his last drink on earth. Wow, that's really cool. When the devil obliged, Jack placed him in his pocket next to a crucifix, preventing him from returning to his original form. The f***ing pocket dimension! He put the devil in the pocket dimension! Goat move. That is cool. In exchange for his freedom, the devil grants Jack 10 more years of life. When the term expires, the devil comes to collect his Jew. But Jack tricks him again by making him climb a tree,

and then he carved a cross underneath it, preventing the devil from climbing back down. In exchange for removing the cross, the devil forgives Jack's debt. However, no one as bad as Jack would ever be allowed into heaven. So Jack is forced upon his death to travel to hell and ask for a place there. The devil denies him entrance and revenge, but grants him an ember from the fires of hell to light his way through the twilight world to which lost souls are forever condemned wow jack places the ember in a carved turnip to serve as a lantern oh oh that's really cool i didn't know the devil was that easy to trick he sounds like a bit of an idiot i don't know if it's good or bad publicity for the irish that an irishman managed to put the devil in a pocket dimension and was too evil to go to hell.

I mean, even 10 years after the initial trapping of the devil, when the devil comes back to claim his soul, I don't know why the devil's like, all right, let's no more shit. Like, let's do this. You're a bad man. You should have died 10 years ago. Let's go. And Jack's just like, all right, all right. I'm'm going just would you go climb that wee tree there for a minute why why would i possibly climb that wee tree i've got places to be souls to gather friend oh saint no would you give me a minute though i've got a bit of a bit of my point left you call me satan satan satan i've got a bit of me point left let's just polish it off in the meantime why don't you climb that wee tree there? You've drank 53,000 pints in your life.

You don't need the end of that pint. Why don't you hop in me pocket? Why don't you hop in me pocket? No, that's what I did the first time. I'm not doing that again, obviously. Obviously, climbing the tree is a trick. Jack is blackout drunk. He's forgotten he already did that one.

Get in me pocket. Get in me pocket. Get in me pocket, you wee horny bastard you're not the only little horny bastard in the tavern tonight satan all right come to hell i think i hate drunk jack i think i want him to go to hell get me back it he was saying that the bartender's like he's been saying that to people all day you're not the the first one. When I asked him to pay for his pint, he told me to get in his pocket. Can we do a bit of merchandise? It's like those t-shirts, but it has the pocket.

Just get in me pocket. Get in me pocket. And if you open it up, there's a little devil print. There's a little devil on the inside. That'd be pretty good. A pocket dimension tee. I like that. So Rory, like I say, maybe the most convincing thing about Onibi or Will-O-Wisp is that there's pretty much a famous example of it in almost every country in the world. In Saskatchewan, they have the St. Louis light. In Missouri, the spook light. Texas has the Marfa lights. Thailand has the Naga fireballs.

Michigan, the Polding light. Norway, the Hestalin light. Somebody really phoned it in with spook light. In Missouri. In Missouri, they were like, we don't have time. It's the f***ing spook light. The Naga fireballs

is like wow what is going on in Thailand it's like dad what's that in the mountain I don't know spook light clearly

something is going on here whether it's paranormal or not I do think our best paranormal explanation is the Onibi origin story yeah that people or animals who die in a certain way become light spirits.

Not so sure I'm buying the jack-o'-lantern story. What do scientists have to say? There's only a couple of possibilities. Something called St. Elmo's fire has been suggested. This is, I'm kind of too dumb to understand this. It's basically ball lightning, some kind of weird atmospheric effect. Right. Some say that the gases from bodies in graveyards

can catch fire and cause flames. Oh my God. That could explain why it's happening in certain areas, like these bog lands, like graveyards. Yeah, that's interesting. And why we never see them in cities. Others simply say that this shit only happened before glasses were invented all right i don't understand that oh right because people are blind because people

couldn't see shit right which is sounds like a joke but is kind of true yeah you have to kind of remember that um well actually i don't know i i assume eyesight has probably gotten progressively worse uh throughout the years because of the use of screens in everyone's lives um maybe years ago eyesight was a little bit better for the general public but then you must yeah just get people who are just like yep i can't see shit from the day i'm born and i won't till i die there's nothing to fix that yeah and i never really thought about that's a lot of our witnesses over the years are people that probably needed glasses oh yeah especially when we're talking about salty old pirate legends where they say they saw Cthulhu on the horizon. And it's like, well, you're drunk,

blind. And ignorant. So this is not a good combination for a paranormal witness. What you saw was a seagull, sir. It was three seagulls in a row and you said it was Nessie herself. Rory, it's been a bit of a scattergun of various flame spirits and uh historical legends do you think there's paranormal truth behind the concept of let's just focus in on onibi the fire spirits for now good choice good choice yeah you know i always love a case that can be backed up with a variety of different examples from different cultures uh i always love it when we have a case that's based in uh japanese lore because the lore of those spirits is always really rich yeah you know it's not there's never a boring origin story it's usually pretty comprehensive and uh pretty interesting so even though the onibi are kind of similar to ghosts or you know spirits that we have uh over here it's a very different imagery

you know i really like that idea of fire fire being the the symbol of the spirit and uh i like that there's a kind of a way to resolve them as well when we start getting into the list of abilities that's when things get a little wilder like the pocket dimension um jack's favorite and to be fair i get the sense that those theories about their abilities they have quite a modern flair to them i don't think that was written in ancient japanese texts yeah because because even the the part about them being able to absorb souls yeah it's like okay well did anyone see that did anyone see a dude like just drop to the floor dead in front of a raptured uh yeah that that's when it becomes a little bit harder to prove with all of these kind of older stories that are based in folklore like we've had before with

dragons fairies you know even though there's a there's a lot to talk about there's not a lot of hard-hitting evidence not not a lot of facts, documents. I don't know. What are your thoughts? Like you say, an incredibly rich lore. I think where this case struggles is in the modern day. It's not like some of our other kind of,

let's say, other ghost types we've talked about, say poltergeists or whatever, where even with banshees, there are people who claim to see and hear them today. I've seen much less of that with Onibi. It seems to be more of a historical legend. I'm certain there are more modern cases occasionally. Maybe that is, like I said earlier, the language barrier, that's harder to research because, well, we can't necessarily troll like Japanese forums to hear people's first-hand testimonies. We might just never see those stories. That's true. Yeah. So I would love to know more if anyone has ever heard. I think we've got a handful of listeners over in Japan. If anyone has heard these things,

even from their family or anything like that, we would love to hear about them. But I don't know that today we have enough evidence to say that Onibi are verifiably, tangibly real. That's why we're going on an all expenses paid, totally expensed work trip. Can't express the expensed bit anymore. To Tokyo, Japan for a solid month, I think of investigating would probably do it.

Granted, the Onibi have never been seen in a city. Of course. They famously avoid cities. And yet we're going to look for them in karaoke bars. Of course. Golden Gai,

the bar district. Asakusa. Maybe one or two love hotels. We'll find out. We're bound to find something paranormal in there. There's got to be at least one jack-o'-lantern floating around the hotel from Lost in Translation. I just found out that there is a Jurassic Park themed love hotel in Japan, which I don't really understand how those concepts merge. Unless you find dinosaurs sexy.

Yeah. I don't. Yeah. What are you doing in that place i guess it's just jeff goldblum's pretty sexy so yeah i guess that's it maybe you could do something with that velociraptor claw uh what like a scratch sexy scratches i don't know i'm pulling the threads here it's gonna be it's gonna be a fun trip lots of investigating sure maybe a little partying in the nighttime because uh you know you gotta let your guard down that's how the anibi come to you gotta bear your soul so there's something to absorb exactly exactly i think we're beating around the bush here and what we're coming down on today is am i right saying rory a double no it's a double no uh but i would i plead ignorance here and i would love to know more so please educate us

if you know more about all things on eb i hope you enjoyed our investigation into this phenomenon nonetheless despite its double no ending thank you so much as always to cammy toman for editing and to amy grisdale for researching this case. Thank you, Kip, for hosting that episode. That was fantastic. I really enjoyed myself. Arigato, Rory-san. Damn, I love This Paranormal Life.

What a great show. I love it, and I wish I had a way to physically show the people of the world how much I love this show. Interesting concept, Rory, because we do have a merch store over at thisparanormallife.com. We've actually got two merch stores depending on where you are in the world. So you can get the lowest prices and the best products shipped the fastest to you by picking the right store. Get in me pocket. I'm going to start using that as like a get out of here type phrase. So I'm going to be saying that. Give me a f***ing pocket. We don't yet have the pocket dimension tee,

but watch this space. Watch this space, because there's stuff, we do add new designs to the store quite often, and hopefully even more often. So always be checking back. Granted the wait time

from the inside jokes creation to the merchandise creation the pipe that pipeline has been about two years so sure look forward to wearing your pocket dimensional t in 2024 baby uh but we do have fantastic designs up there at the moment we recently launched our beautiful galactic 12 t-shirt design complete with eben language printed on it uh we have original tpl classic logos yeah chompy shirt designs and more www.thisparanormallife.com to pick up your official tpl merch the link is in the bio no it's not the link is in the description of course the home of this paranormal life is always on patreon.com forward slash this

paranormal life where from just five bucks you get access to over 45 full length bonus episodes get in me pocket claim that tree 45 bonus episodes get in my pocket i can't get used to it it's still so it's a little jarring it is very jarring yeah i'm hoping if a bunch of us kind of bring it in we can make it a thing but at the minute it is very it makes me uncomfortable so reach in your pockets and pay for this paranormal life bonus episodes on patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life we want to turn you into a coin. All of our listeners. So we can continue to make this show. Like I say, hope you enjoyed this week's investigation.

We will, of course, be back next Tuesday with a brand new paranormal tale. And until then, remember to live fast, investigate, and die. Get in my pocket. it in my pocket in my pocket