Another story of the _tanuki_ is more like a ghost story than that of a wer-animal, and concerns a captain of the guards called Sukeyasu. When he was hunting in the province of Tamba he passed the night in an old chapel which the villagers warned him was haunted by a monster. As a snowstorm was raging he preferred to face the strange risk inside the chapel to a certain wetting in the open.
He was half asleep when he heard a noise outside the chapel and peeping through a chink in the sliding door he saw a pitch-black priest, so tall that his head appeared to reach the eaves. The priest stretched a thin hairy arm through the chink in the door and stroked Sukeyasu's forehead, afterwards withdrawing his hand. The captain was too frightened to move, but when the same thing was repeated he plucked up courage to grasp the hairy hand and hold it firmly. Then ensued a struggle and the door gave way. Sukeyasu came down on the top of the priest and as he pressed upon him with all his might he found his opponent growing smaller and smaller, and his arms thinner and thinner. The captain called his servants to his assistance and when a light was obtained it was found that the huge spook was in reality a _tanuki_. Next day the animal's head was shown to the villagers, and from that time the chapel was no longer haunted.
An unsuccessful transformation into animal shape is the subject of another wer-fox story. A man left his house one evening in order to do some business in a neighbouring city, but to his wife's surprise he came back accompanied by a servant long before he was due, saying that he had accomplished his business satisfactorily. He was very tired and went to bed at once, but an old woman-servant in the house warned her mistress, saying that she had noticed something odd about the returned traveller, who was blind in the left eye, while her master was blind in the right eye. The wife then called to the sleeping man, saying she was ill, and asking him to get her some medicine. He did so, grumbling, and to the wife's astonishment, she saw that what the old woman said was true. Then when he lay down to sleep again she stabbed him to death, and he cried out like a fox, "kon, kon, kwai--kwai." Then they beat to death the servant the wer-fox had brought with him, and found he was also a fox. The one who had taken the shape of the master had not trained himself carefully enough in the art of transformation.