‘The Ring’ is possibly the most well-known eastern horror with the usual American butchery in the form of a Hollywood remake where all the mains are replaced with white people (because how can you connect with characters if they don’t look and talk the same as you) beats me..

Ranting aside. There’s a real messed up Japanese folktale behind the film. In the movie a young girl gifted with supernatural and telepathic powers is thrown down a well for reasons I can’t quite remember but am sure were unjustified.

The real world folktale tells the story of Okiku, a female servant to a samurai called Tessan Aoyama who died in the well outside Himeji castle. Aoyama ended up falling madly in love with Okiku and told her of his intentions of making her his wife, but Okiku didn’t feel the same way so long story short Aoyama killed her by throwing her down the well. Or in a different version Aoyama hid one of the castle treasures Okiku was in charge of cleaning and keeping safe only agreeing to return it if Okiku agreed to be with him, the alternative being her torture and execution for suspicion of stealing the ornament herself. In this version Okiku throws herself down the well in despair.

(To be honest all of these stories are bringing out my inner feminist because it’s a load of shit that these women are literally turned into demons when the men are being the real monsters. I mean murdering someone because they’re not into you is probably the shittiest thing I’ve ever heard. Why isn’t this dickhead the one who’s sentenced to eternal suffering?!)

Okiku was said to crawl out of the well on a nightly basis and appear in front of Aoyama driving him insane in time… Because murdering a woman who doesn’t like you back isn’t already insane…

Drawings of Okiku are visually very similar to Sadako (the ghost from the Ring) with flowing black hair and a long white dress.

This appearance is the sign of someone who’s died under unnatural circumstances in Japan apparently. There’s even a type of ghost or spectre known as Yūrei, translating to “faint soul” or “dim spirit.”

These spirits within folklore are all in the form of women in white dresses with long black hair flowing over their form. This means that in our firm for example, the ghost played by Karren would also fit into the Yūrei category as those visual aspects are more or less what the whole character is built off.