Ghostly Things (怪しことがたり, Ayashi Kotogatari) is a manga by Shirotori Ushio, which was serialized in MAGCOMI from 2018 to 2020 and compiled into three volumes. It's licensed in English by Seven Seas Entertainment.
The manga focuses on a young girl named Takahara Yachiho, a high school student that moves into a house famous around town for being haunted. Her father researches folklore and is looking for an item called the Book of the Dead, which might help him and his daughter re-connect with her deceased mother, as the book contains information about the afterlife. While unpacking and exploring the house, Yachicho comes across an entire world of spirits that live in the house with her, one of which, Moro, is responsible for helping spirits in the human world cross into the Spirit World. Convinced that by helping them, she might find the Book of the Dead, Yachiho joins Moro in caring for the spirits in the town.
It's edited by Doki Doki in France by the name Mes Voisins les Esprits (My Neighbors The Spirits).
Tropes
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: In Chapter 1, as Hachiho leans at a wall...Moro: By the way, you'd better not sit upon this wall.Eyes pop out of the wall everywhere. Moro grabs her telekinetically to the other side of the room.Hachiho: Er, yes, I will be more cautious...
- Facial Horror: One of the spirits living in the house is some sort of four-armed giant baby with a huge cranium and horns, their face drooling. Hachiho has a close encounter with them when recovering Moro (who she believed at the time to be a strange but cute puppet). Cue the poor protagonist finally giving in to fear and fleeing (good thing they weren't interested in pursuing her).Do you want to play with me?
- Second Day From Hell: For Hachiho, who just moved out in the mansion. The manga begins as she wakes up from her first night there.
- Ghost Fiction: Played with with the
English title. The focus is on spirits who mostly aren't ghosts, but since the mansion's basement functions as a gateway to the Realm of the Dead, some of those spirits are ghosts or are Living on Borrowed Time. - Horror Comedy
- Landing in Someone's Bathtub: A very strange version: in Chapter 1, Hachiho falls into the basement where she was, but water appeared in it because a portal to the Realm of the Dead opened. She gets sucked in but fortunately taken back to the material world.
- Mono no Aware: Hachiho gets many lessons from the spirits about "the impermanency of everything in the world".
- Monster of the Week: At least began as a "one chapter, one "incident" format.
