Fuji TV, who owned the series' Western distribution rights, approached ADV Films to produce an English dub. Fuji TV allegedly gave the ADV Films staff very few constraints when writing the new version; the only rules were "don't change the character names (including the ghosts); don't change the way the ghosts are slain (a reference to Japanese folklore) and, finally, don't change the core meaning of each episode".[6]
The English dub deviates significantly from the original script. While preserving the basic plot structure and storyline, the new script revolved around topical pop-culture references, politically incorrect gags, and fourth wall breaking jokes about the original show's low animation quality, anime clichés, and poor lip-sync.
The English script was written by Steven Foster and Lucan Duran, but hardly used or followed in the actual production. Instead, the dialogue was almost entirely improvized by the English voice actors, who were told that the plot must hit the same major beats as the original version and the characters and world must remain internally consistent, but otherwise were allowed to say whatever they pleased.[7][8] According to Foster, whoever showed up to the recording studio first for any given episode could improvise anything they wanted, those that came later had to build upon the tone and jokes established earlier.[6]
On the weekend of 19 August 2005, at the 2005 Otakon anime convention, ADV Films announced a North American DVD release of Ghost Stories for the following October.[9] The original Japanese audio and literal subtitle translation are also included. Volume 1 was released on 22 October 2005.
On 28 August 2013, Discotek Media announced that they acquired the series' license and would release it in 2014 with the ADV dub and the Japanese audio with English subtitles.[10] The complete series was released on a three-disc set on 25 March 2014.[11] Ghost Stories and its dub were also released on the anime streaming platform RetroCrush in February 2021.[12]
