Just before dusk, a mysterious figure appears in a childrens playground. He is an old man wearing a yellow mask, and his true name and origin are unknown. He carries with him a small wooden box that he sets up on the back of his bicycle to form a small stage. This is a kamishibai, a traditional Japanese paper-scrolling device, and he uses it to tell sinister tales to any child who will listen. These are not ordinary ghost stories. Each short narrative is drawn from Japanese urban legends and folklore, depicting curses, vengeful spirits, and the darkness that lurks in everyday life.

Each episode of Yamishibai runs only about four minutes long, and the animation style mimics the jerky, static movements of paper cutouts, giving the series a distinct, eerie atmosphere that feels like a living picture book. The setting for the frame story shifts subtly over the course of the series. In early seasons, the yellow-masked Storyteller simply performs in the park at dusk. In later seasons, he tells his tales in different locations, such as a forest, a dark apartment, or a busy city intersection, but he always remains the enigmatic central figure who opens and closes each horrific vignette. For the third season, the narrator takes the form of a young boy who draws the monsters that appear in the stories, only to eventually don the yellow mask himself.

The stories themselves are standalone and feature a rotating cast of ordinary people who encounter the supernatural. One of the earliest episodes follows a bachelor named Ito who moves into a new apartment and removes a protective talisman from his ceiling, only to discover it was the only thing keeping a horde of ghosts at bay. Another tale involves a man who wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how he arrived, only to find that the other patients are performing a reversed banzai ritual called Zanbai to ensure he can never leave the village alive. The series explores many classic fears, from cursed objects and haunted apartments to strange family rules that must be followed to survive the night. As the seasons progress, the series continues to find new settings and themes, from stories told to the animals of the Chinese Zodiac to tales about the dangers of obsession and the horror of losing ones identity, all narrated by the unchanging figure of the masked Storyteller.