The Watchers in the Fields: Scarecrow Gods, Haunted Fields and Strange Encounters

From Kuebiko, the ancient Japanese scarecrow god said to know everything in the world, to harvest rituals, rice-field spirits and the one-eyed Dorotabō rising from the mud, scarecrows have long occupied a strange place between the practical and the supernatural. We also visit Nagoro, where hundreds of life-sized scarecrows now outnumber the living, before turning to reported encounters involving scarecrows that appear to move, watch, multiply overnight and, in one modern case, vanish from a field altogether.

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Research Links:

https://kojiki.kokugakuin.ac.jp/shinmei/kuebiko/

https://d-museum.kokugakuin.ac.jp/eos/detail/?id=9009

https://d-museum.kokugakuin.ac.jp/eos/detail/?id=9973

https://d-museum.kokugakuin.ac.jp/eos/detail/?id=9970

https://yokai.jp/en/yokai/dorotabo

https://www.japan.travel/en/japans-local-treasures/nagoro-scarecrow-village-tokushima-2024/

https://miyoshi-city.jp/2022/07/15960/

https://miyoshi-city.jp/2022/08/15981/

https://miyoshi-city.jp/2022/08/16008/

Production:

Researched, written and produced by Sarah Powell and Roger Hinchliffe. Hosted by Sarah Powell and Tobie Jones. Stories are sourced from historical records, folklore collections, newspaper archives, contemporary accounts and listener submissions. Sources and acknowledgements are provided where appropriate.

Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch up with you again on tomorrow.

Sarah and Tobie xx

"Spacial Winds," Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licenced under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licence

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

About The Whispering Woods

The Whispering Woods is a UK paranormal storytelling podcast exploring true ghost stories, unexplained mysteries, haunted history and folklore from around the world.

From firsthand paranormal encounters to historical hauntings and centuries-old legends, we bring you atmospheric stories of the strange and unexplained.

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