1
Science lights up the world, and while we say this is the age of science, I still wish that ghosts, spirits, and creatures from folklore existed. Inspired by the invisible microscopic world and the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy always increases, I imagine that “Ghosts” might exist as scattered fragments or wave, where the forces within their elements are broken. When we tell ghost stories, and our information creates meaningful patterns, entropy decreases just enough for these scattered pieces of Ghosts to momentarily gather together.
When a new ghost story becomes popular and many people talk about it, the tiny scattered particles could gather to form new shapes, influenced by our imagination.
This idea, however, brings up two problems. First, there’s the saying, “If you talk about ghosts, they come to listen.” If that’s true, even ten bodies wouldn’t be enough for a ghost to handle all the attention, especially in the summer, the peak season for horror films. My artwork Bikini Ghost shows ghosts who always look alike—sad and covered in white sheets—enjoying the summer in colorful clothes. The primary material, wax, reflects a childlike idea: a ghost’s freedom begins once the candle, often seen as a spooky prop in ghost stories, melts away.
The second issue is: what do we do with ghosts that were once briefly popular but then forgotten? Do they disappear like extinct animals if we stop talking about them? My works are an attempt to call these forgotten spirits back into the world. Through my drawings and sculptures, I bring back mysterious beings that were once popular but are now rarely spoken of.
My Ghost-Furniture series, for example, features strange-looking furniture and objects, altered with hands, feet, or tentacles. This work is an attempt to create mutations by blending discarded furniture with forgotten creatures like ghosts, monsters, or spooky noodles. The series began with the question: Do these beings, forgotten or worn out, disappear like extinct animals? I believe they inhabit abandoned furniture, much like the idea that ghosts dwell in old objects. Though the transformed objects are no longer functional, the ghosts and abandoned furniture become art, mutants adapting to the world in new forms.
2
In 1927, Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer conducted a double-slit experiment with electrons, showing that both particle-like and wave-like properties could appear simultaneously. Interestingly, when we observe an electron, it behaves like a particle. Yet when it remains unobserved—when no light touches it, when no interactions occur—it behaves like a wave. This result challenged the prevailing belief at the time that particles and waves were fundamentally incompatible.
This raises the question: might ghosts, too, exist in a wave-like form when they are not being perceived?
3
It is said that death is not complete disappearance from a physical perspective. This is because the elements that once made up a being still remain, scattered somewhere as components of other beings or worlds. Memory is a vital factor that makes a particular existence what it is. If memory could be stored at the level of cells—or even smaller units like particles or neutrons—then perhaps existence does not entirely vanish after death, but instead remains, dispersed throughout the universe.
The Earth, for the most part, is considered a closed system. Changes in its mass or elemental makeup are thought to be minimal. It could be that things we believe have disappeared are still present in some dispersed or altered form. Death, perhaps, is not complete erasure, but rather a reconfiguration of elements, scattered across different patterns. When we speak of the dead, or devote attention and emotion to them, perhaps we are, in some small way, weaving their traces back into the fabric of the world.
4
According to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy tends to increase. Disorder, randomness, and uniformity are the directions the universe generally follows. However, when we focus our will and effort on something, entropy can temporarily be reversed, creating pockets of meaningful pattern within chaos. If certain entities were somehow able to exist through these patterns, it might help explain why beings often spoken of or remembered seem to linger, while those that are forgotten gradually fade from perception.
5
There are particles that pass almost entirely through matter—ghost particles, so to speak. Even today, science continues to encounter mysteries it has yet to fully understand.
6
Questions such as “What existed before the Big Bang?” or “What lies beyond our universe?” are considered beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. They concern realms that cannot be observed, calculated, or meaningfully interacted with. Yet this does not necessarily mean that nothing exists beyond what we can measure. It remains a possibility—however faint—that some form of existence, perhaps even spiritual, lies beyond the boundaries we know.
7
In Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, when speaking of spiritual beings such as goblins, fairies, and spirits, there is a line:
“It’s not about believing in what you cannot see. If there’s no room for doubt, you can see, feel, and touch it yourself.”
8
Many old tales of monsters and spirits were, perhaps, created to highlight the heroic nature of human characters.
9
The mutant-humans who did not feel fear have disappeared. Modern humans, by contrast, tend to experience fear toward the unknown, imagining superstitions and supernatural beings when faced with surfaces and phenomena that resist immediate or physical comprehension. Perhaps it was this very capacity to imagine monsters, to feel fear, that gave humans an evolutionary advantage — and this trait has been passed down to the present. Fear, by itself, is often beneficial for survival; it does not inherently seek to harm humans. While panic can sometimes lead to fatal outcomes, moderate fear frequently serves as a protective mechanism.
With this in mind, it is intriguing to consider that the figure of the Eoduksini — the shadowy monster embodying fear itself — might not actually possess any intent to harm humans. As observation technologies have advanced, many things once explained as mysterious beings are now often understood, even by those with little interest in science, as natural phenomena. For example, the Hidarugami, a yokai said to appear in remote mountains and bring people to their deaths, could be driven away by licking rice (written as the character “mi” on one’s palm) or by eating wild plants — actions that, from a modern perspective, closely resemble responses to hypoglycemia.
If forgotten beings gradually lose their power and fade away, then monsters too, over time, must transform. In the past, dragons were regarded as mighty divine creatures, able to bring rain and change the weather. But as meteorological technologies progressed — even if fluid dynamics still makes future weather prediction impossible — people no longer leaned on superstition to explain unpredictable weather. Consequently, the dragon’s mode of survival has shifted: it has become more romantic and humanized. Beginning perhaps with figures like the Dragon Youth in Princess Maker, the romantic dragon has since thrived as a beloved supporting character in many romance-fantasy light novels. In this way, it continues to live on in the world of media — no longer as a fearsome force of nature, but as a fascinating unknown adapted to new times.
10
The real engine — the dimension of physical laws — that governs the universe I live in does not easily accommodate spiritual entities that do not belong to its system. To haunt such a dimension is, by its nature, a temporary act. Just as spiritual beings that are no longer spoken of, remembered, or woven into patterns begin to experience a kind of “disappearance” from our world, so too is there an inherent fragility and impermanence in any haunted object or vessel within our reality.