Freaky Friday: Kitsune

As many of you know my first YA horror gets released in a couple of months (getting excited), and people always ask me how I come up with my ideas... A simple answer, listening to stories. I absolutely love ghost and ghoul stories from all around the world (especially if they're supposed to be 'true'). So each Friday I've decided to share a different story, a different ghoul, a different legend that I've come across with you. Some of these will seem rather familiar, but I have found some really weird ones that you won't believe are actually legends.

The first one, in honour of Shinigami Eyes, I have chosen is a legend from Japan. The Kitsune!

The word kitsune actually means fox, and they're actually known as messengers as well as the deity of rice, which is why if you walk around the temples of Japan you'll often find statues of foxes guarding the doorways.

Several foxes are considered to have supernatural powers, but one kitsune in particular the Ninko (the demonic man-fox). This fox likes to take the figure of a beautiful woman to deceive its victims. It is said that these foxes are never at a loss for disguise as they can make their victims hear, see, or imagine whatever the fox wants them to.

Kitsune have been popular in TV shows, especially anime, with one of the most popular being the demon spirit within Naruto (the nine-tailed fox). Other manga that kitsune have appeared include Inuyasha and Digimon.

But Kitsune haven't just been popular with Japanese manga and anime. Several US TV shows have decided to use the kitsune (whether an accurate portrayal is still to be decided). Teen Wolf, deciding to move away from the western legends, ventured into the Japanese myth of kitsune when they introduced Kira in season 3. Supernatural is another show that tackled with the kitsune, even though this version of a kitsune just
had claws and fox eyes, nothing else changed to signify they were even related to a fox.

 The one thing I have learnt from looking into the kitsune legend is that you really don't want to piss off a kitsune. Moral to the story: Be kind to foxes because you never know what mystical powers they might hold.