The Hyakumonogatari is originally believed to have stemmed from samurai tests of courage and magical rituals. People in the Edo period genuinely believed that "speaking of the mysterious invites the mysterious" (telling scary stories draws real monsters). Therefore, it was rare for all 100 stories to actually be told, and it became an unspoken rule (or the limit of terror) to stop at the 99th story and wait for dawn to disperse out of sheer terror. Consequently, there are almost no concrete records of what the Ao-andon "actually did," reigning purely as the "premonition of terror."

Furthermore, in recent studies of folklore and yokai paintings, it has been pointed out that a deep hidden meaning lies within the iconography of the "Ao-andon" drawn by Toriyama Sekien. Around the feet of the demoness, everyday items such as a "sewing box," a "comb," and a "half-read letter" are scattered suggestively. This is thought to metaphorically represent the raw human emotions of love and hate, such as the "jealousy" and "obsession" of a wife suspecting her husband's infidelity. In other words, the Ao-andon is not an unknown monster arriving from the outside, but rather the "mirror of human karma," an entity where the "dark passions and malice" lurking in the hearts of the people gathered for the ghost stories (or the storytellers themselves) materialize through the medium of the dim blue light and the 99 ghost stories.