These words are often translated as "ghost", but primarily they refer to living things or supernatural beings who have taken on a temporary transformation, and these bakemono are distinct from the spirits of the dead.
[2] A bakemono's true form may be an animal such as a fox (kitsune), a raccoon dog (bake-danuki), a badger (mujina), a transforming cat (bakeneko), the spirit of a plant—such as a kodama, or an inanimate object which may possess a soul in Shinto and other animistic traditions.
In common usage, any bizarre apparition can be referred to as a bakemono or an obake whether or not it is believed to have some other form, making the terms roughly synonymous with yōkai.
[3] Due to the influence of a large number of Hawaiians with Japanese ancestry, on the islands of Hawaii the term obake has found its way into the dialect of the local people.
Hawaiian folklorist Glen Grant was known for his Obake Files, a series of reports he developed about supernatural incidents in Hawaii.