“Yokai Hunters” in Intercity Illusions
“Yokai Hunters” started with a Drawlloween prompt of “yokai,” which are spirits or entities from Japanese folklore. Many of them might be viewed as “monsters” from a Western perspective, and the one in my story certainly falls into that category. In fact, this was a story that I wasn’t entirely sure if I should classify as urban fantasy or horror-adjacent, though I ultimately came down on the side of urban fantasy. Because even though the yokai in this story is dangerous and sneaky, my protagonists are clever and surprisingly good at hunting yokai.
The critter in the story is a yatsukahagi, a giant spider-like creature, which is sometimes also called tsuchigumo or simply ogumo. The various names have a long history, which you can read about on Wikipedia. In the case of my story, the yatsukahagi has been drawn to an unnamed area of the United States where a large number of Japanese families now live. I didn’t really have a place in mind for the location, other than an area with many barren outskirts, where the yokai hid out.
I also wrote this story at a point when Pokemon Go was fairly new, and tied in the idea of hunting yokai with an app that looked basically like a “monster catching” app. Mix that up with a bit of YouTube fame for my protagonists, and I had a story that wasn’t quite like anything else I’d read!
“Yokai Hunters” is only available in Intercity Illusions.
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