Spooky season has begun, so let's take a look at a haiku by Nozawa Bonchō (c. 1640–1714), a Kyoto doctor and one of Bashō's star pupils.
物の音ひとり倒るる案山子かな
mono no oto / hitori taoruru / kagashi kana
The sound of something!
All by itself has fallen
That tattered scarecrow.
In the poem, something goes thud, and the scarecrow has fallen over all by itself. Or did it?
Translator Daniel C. Buchanan reads it as fear turning into a nervous laugh. Let's not be too quick to laugh and shrug off this occurrence though! In Japanese mythology, scarecrows had supernatural associations including Kuebiko, an 8th-century kami who happens to be a scarecrow and knows everything under heaven.
Edo-period Japan was full of this kind of fun fright. People held ghost-story gatherings where guests told a hundred spooky tales by candlelight, while audiences packed kabuki theaters for ghost plays.
Poem and page photo from One Hundred Famous Haiku, selected and translated by Daniel C. Buchanan (Japan Publications, 1973).