A single OVA that trusts you to sit with dread instead of chasing it. Kyouko Togawa's voice as Oiwa becomes the entire horror, a woman's grief so absolute it poisons everyone around her, and the minimal animation forces you to listen instead of look away. You need to know the legend beforehand, but if you do, this is how kaidan should sound: quiet, inevitable, and impossible to unhear once it starts.

Hino Hideshi Toukaidou Yotsuya Kaidan is a single-episode horror OVA released in 2000. It adapts Kaidan Yotsuya, one of the best-known traditional ghost stories of Japan, and retells that classic tale of the supernatural in anime form. Viewers drawn to folklore-based Japanese horror will recognize the source it draws on.