Perhaps at the beginning, on Coffin Slope, a female craftsman truly was beaten to death by her peers, but the reason the rest of the coffin craftsmen killed her was merely because her skills were too good, which stole everyone's orders and led to jealousy and resentment.
As for things like cursing and murdering fellow villagers, those were nothing more than fabrications by others to make their own motives for murder seem justified.
Afterwards, the real events and the false fabrications became intermingled and were passed down together.
Kamiya has now acquired commendable research and insights into folklore, and to his knowledge, many folktales and anecdotes are composed of such mixtures of truth and fiction.
Of course,
it's also possible that the entire story of the coffin craftsmen is just a horror tale passed down by the older generation at Iwaki Mountain, with no corresponding real event.
