They are portrayed with ""one eye, and a long tongue protruding from an open mouth"". Although they are a famous yōkai, it is said that there are pretty much no legends in any area that are about this, so in yōkai-related literature, they are classified as a "yōkai that exist only in pictures.". There is also a theory that they were created as a kind of fiction for entertaining children. The yōkai comic artist Mizuki Shigeru published a story about how a chōchin-obake would surprise people and suck out their souls, but it did not cite any primary sources. There is the following legend that has been confirmed. Yōkai considered to be chōchin in the legends are often told to be atmospheric ghost lights like chōchinbi rather than as the tool itself. In an old story from the Yamagata Prefecture, at a shrine with an aged chōchin, a chōchin-obake would appear and frighten humans, and the obake would no longer appear after the chōchin was put away.。