Japanese Urban Legends

Gashadokuro:The Starving Skeleton

Gashadokuro are skeletal giants which wander around the countryside in the darkest hours of the night. Their teeth chatter and bones rattle with a "gachi gachi" sound which is yokai namesake. If they should happen upon a human out late on the road, the gashadokuro will silently creep up and catch their victims, crushing them in their hands or biting their heads off.

Soldiers who bodies rot in the field and victim of famine who die unknown in the wilderness rarely receive proper funerary rites.Unable to pass on, their souls are reborn as hungry ghosts, longing eternally for that which they once had. These people die with anger and pain in their hearts, and that energy remains long after their flesh has rotted from their bones. As their bodies decay, their anger ferments into a powerful force a grudge against the living, and this is what twist them into a supernatural force. When the bones of hundreds of victims gather together into one mass, they can form the humongous skeletal monster known as gashadokuro.

Too large and powerful to be killed, gashadokuro maintain their existence until the energy and malice stored up in their bodies completely dry out. However, because of the large amount of dead bodies required to form a single one, these abominations are much rarer today than they were in earlier days, when wars and famine were apart of everyday life.

Legends:The earliest record of a gashadokuro gies back over 1000 years to a bloody rebellion against the central government by a samurai named Taira no Masakado. His daughter, Takiyasha -hime, was a famous sorceress. When Masakado was eventually killed for his revolt, his daughter continued his cause. Using her black magic, she summoned a great skeleton to attack the city of Kyoto. Her mother is depicted in a famous print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.