sukima onna

隙間女

隙間女 (Sukima onna, literally "gap woman") is a Japanese urban legend, and also the name of the entity itself.

A woman (there’s also a male version) was living alone, and when she was in her room she sometimes felt like someone was watching her. This room was on the third floor so it was hard to believe anyone could be looking in from outside. She searched the house but of course she didn't find anyone hiding in any of the rooms, and didn't see any holes in the walls either. And then one day, she found the person who had been staring. It was a woman standing in the several-millimeter gap between the drawer and wall in her room, and she was still staring at her...

The Japanese comedian and actor, Sakura Kinzou, is also known for telling ghost stories; this story is his representative work. His version is the following kind of story.

Kinzou's coworker didn't come to work so he visited the house and asked his coworker what happened. He said “I was told by ‘her’ not to go." When the narrator asked where ‘she’ was, he pointed towards the kitchen. And when the narrator looked into the kitchen, he saw a woman with a flattened body standing in the small gap between the refrigerator and the wall.

Mimi-bukuro, a collection of pieces written in the Edo period by Negishi Shizumori, contains a similar story:
A successful wagashi storekeeper moved into a new home. After that, something was wrong with the sliding door on the second floor. When a servant tried to open it, it only opened halfway for some reason. When the storekeeper tried the door opened without any problem. The next day it wouldn't open, so one of the servants forced it open. Suddenly a woman appeared from the tight space for containing the door and grabbed at the servant. He panicked and forced her back, and she vanished.

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