She Told Her Husband Microfiber Towels Make Faucets Shine. Four Days Later He Was a Yokai.

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Someone mentioned an ordinary cleaning tip to her husband: rub a faucet with a microfiber towel and it comes up shining. Four days later she reported back. Every faucet in the house was done. He had moved on to the mirrors. He was doing this in the middle of the night.

The word she reached for was yokai. Yokai are the creatures of Japanese folklore, and the useful thing to know about them is that most of them are not monsters in the dramatic sense. They are ordinary things that have drifted slightly out of true — an umbrella that grew a leg and started hopping, a spirit whose entire occupation is licking the grime off your bathroom floor. Naming something a yokai is less an accusation than a diagnosis: this is no longer a person doing a chore, this is a small local phenomenon.

Once she put the frame there, everyone else stepped straight into it. Half the thread wrote horror-movie trailers. The other half started leaving their doors unlocked, listing the mirrors and stainless bowls they had available, and asking, politely, whether the yokai does neighborhoods.