Goryo.

Goryō (御霊, ごりょう) are not defined by one fixed monster body. In the classical court imagination they are known through effects, sudden illness, lightning, crop failure, ominous dreams, and waves of disorder that seem to radiate from an offended dead noble or prince. When later art gives them a visible form, it usually borrows the language of aristocratic ghosts, robes, pale faces, and a presence tied to rank rather than bestial strangeness.

That lack of stable anatomy is important. A goryō is feared less as a creature to be seen than as a political and ritual force. The danger lies in grievance that survives death and spreads outward into the body of the state, making the spirit visible through catastrophe instead of through claws, fangs, or animal features.

People do not usually fight a goryō. They appease it. Court ritual, Buddhist services, shrine dedications, posthumous rank, and public ceremonies all aim to transform dangerous resentment into a settled and honored presence. The classic response is therefore liturgical and political at once, because the same government that fears the spirit must also acknowledge the wrong that empowered it.

This sets goryō apart from many other ghostly beings. A roadside ghost may need burial or prayer, but a goryō can demand state-scale action. Its haunting reaches beyond one household and into epidemics, storms, and repeated misfortune at the center of power, which is why pacification rites become one of the signature religious technologies of the Heian court.