Onryō – This Week’s Monster
A vengeful spirit, a grudge spirit
Catchphrases: Rage is My Superpower. You Definitely Deserve Me. I Don’t Use My Words.
Something pale with dark long hair and a terrifying, bulging eye watches you from every shadowy corner? It creeps behind you when you’re out too late at night? She appears in your bed glaring into your soul when you open your eyes? She is definitely going to kill you and soon? Sounds like you might deserve it. What horrible deed did you commit against this poor spirit, you villain? It sounds you may have an onryō haunting you.
An onryō is a wrathful spirit from Japanese mythology and folklore, a vengeful spirit with unfinished business. An onryō is a spirit that is allowed to stay on Earth because they suffered a great wrong in their human life. Typically, an onryō experienced an unjust death, something that needs the be resolved before they can find peace. They are typically driven by the need for vengeance. The more powerful the wrong that was committed against them, the more powerful they can become.
Rage, Vengeance, and wrath – all terrifying and all-consuming to humans. These abstract concepts can tether a being in one place. If a human is not careful with its wrath, it can get stuck, and in an onryo’s case that could be for an eternity. People holding onto these types of grudges are particularly toxic. Some say that holding a grudge hurts the grudge holder the most. That is mostly true, unless you are one of these wrathful spirits who holds onto a grudge so tightly it binds you to the mortal who wronged you. In that case, an onryō’s grudge might be more toxic to those around them. These spirits go after the one who wronged them with violent and vindictive zeal. Sometimes, they only target the guilty one, but many other times they target those around them as well. They are powerful and can use many tools at their disposal.
They won’t just wreak havoc on the individual who harmed them, but at times, fixate on whole communities. They can cause disease and natural disasters to destroy their target’s entire community. The best part of this type of spirit is typically those being haunted, deserve it. The worst part is that they often inflict a great deal of collateral damage on the innocent.
In rare cases, a wrathful spirit can return because of an intense love that tethers them or jealousy that has poisoned them. In those cases, they haunt an old lover, rather unjustly or at least that is what the lover claims. Mostly, I’ve found, this lover did something worse than just scorn the spirit. He did some dark thing he has kept buried, and she wants revealed.
Yes, she.
Mostly, onryō are depicted as women. Female rage has been greatly feared throughout time. In fact, it becomes clearer with each monster I meet, that women’s rage is much more feared than men’s in the afterlife. I believe, part of that plays into the power dynamics established in the mortal realm between the genders. Because men are often given more power on Earth and many of them abuse that power, most Onryō are women who have been unjustly betrayed and violently killed by these rotten men. They are given this power to balance the scales and deliver justice.
At the very heart of the grudge spirit are the ideas of justice and karma plus the perseverance of the human spirit which are deeply important concepts to the Japanese people. They are important concepts to most cultures. The power of the human spirit to prevail over wrong doings, even in death, is front and center in stories about onyrō. As always, at the heart of any great vengeance story is both retribution and redemption. However, many times, the onryō only claims retribution, and remains stuck in her own painful cycle.
Some very famous onryō include Oiwa, Okiku, and the Yuki-onna. All three stories tragic and terrifying. Definitely worth reading.
One of the most famous depictions of an onryō in modern times is Ringu or The Ring. Most of you will forever remember the long-haired pale-skinned girl, Sadako Yamamura, crawling out of the well and into your living rooms, bringing with her a terrifying and unquenchable rage and launching the West’s obsession with Japanese horror. She is a beauty to behold. If you haven’t watched Ringu yet, you are in for a treat. Fair warning: It will haunt you many weeks after viewing it.
The Onryō spirits in the video game Project Zero/Fatal Frame – Maiden of Black Water are also a terrifying delight, revealing their violent and unjust deaths and binding them to a cursed mountain and dark water perfectly. If you are a gamer, love horror, and haven’t played this game, I definitely recommend it.
One of the newest students at the School for Monsters is an Onryō. Her name is Nari. Our monster rescuing team recently helped disconnect her from her own grudge. Her powers have remained unfocused and unchecked since then, causing more than a little drama with the other students.
When Nari was a human, she lived in a small village in Japan with her loving mother and her selfish father. She was happy for a short time. After her dear mother passed away, a great wrong was committed on this teen. Her father’s mind broke with grief. He had always been a needy man, but with this loss, he became blind to what others felt and only tended to his own pain and suffering. He forced Nari to take on the role of her mother in all ways except in the bedroom. He forced her to become the woman of the house, never allowing her to go to school, have friends, or make a life of her own. She was a servant in their home. A powerful and rich man’s son grew obsessed with Nari after a chance meeting at a nearby lake. He began pursuing her and wanted her to be his wife. Nari returned his affection, and the idea of this union filled her with as much joyful hope as it filled her father with irrational rage. Nari’s father would not let her go but he also knew that he could not deny a proposal from a family of their status, not without great shame. Poisoned by his own selfish grief, he took his daughter out fishing and threw her overboard, leaving her in the depths to drown, ignoring her cries as he rowed back to shore.
The following day, thousands of fish floated dead and bloated in the bay. Her father woke that morning to the smell of fish stew on the fire and Nari’s singing coming from the kitchen. When he stumbled into the kitchen, the icy air chilled him, and he began shivering. The delicious stew aroma transformed to the stench of rotting seafood, burning the man’s nostrils and causing him to dry heave. A soaking wet gown clung to the teen’s skinny frame, and her long, black hair dripped water on the floor as she stirred the stew. She dropped the spoon in the pot and slowly turned toward her cruel father. He cried out when he saw her face. Her skin was bloated, and one bulging eye glaring at him from under her hair. Her lips opened to release a wrathful howl, revealing a mouthful of jagged teeth. She lunged like a leopard, and his pitiful screams echoed throughout the town. Soon, many villagers came down with a horrible virus that slowly drowned them in their beds, punishment for their inaction. This went on in cycles for decades until Nari was captured by another greedy man, once again held captive to do a selfish fiend’s bidding.
Soon, I will share the story of how Nari escaped that fate.
Until then, consider following the pre-launch page for my latest graphic novel - The Killing Stone. Nari will be featured in this brand-new graphic novel where she will redefine what it means to be a more evolved, modern day onryō, and maybe use her powers to help a few monsters let go of their rage instead of killing them with it. Maybe. If she feels like it.
Be sure to check out what’s going on over at
for more horror delights. So happy to be jumping into Spooky Season with you all!
This is a good one. How are you finding these stories?
This sounds like a great read. The character sounds amazing. Thanks for the spooky readings.😀