Japanese Urban Legends

Gozu (Cow Head)

Apparently, the story that goes with this legend is so scary and haunted, that no one can ever tell it without dying. In fact, this legend talks about the story, but doesn't actually tell the story. 

 According to legend, a horrific short story called "Cow Head" was discovered in Japan in the 17th Century. Nobody really knows the origin of the story, but the story has been mentioned a few times in several written accounts. These accounts are from a long time ago, but they all note that it is a tale too terrible to tell.

Rumors state that upon hearing the dreadful tale, listeners were overcome with a terror so great that they trembled violently for days until they finally died from fright.   

After some time passed, the Cow Head story was deemed too dangerous, and most existing copies of it were burned years ago. The few copies that survived were cut into sections and distributed across the country.

For me, I'm baffled at why they'd do that. Is it as a souvenir or something? Maybe they want to brag about it and say something like, "Hey, you know that story that killed people named Cow Head? I got like three sentences from the story." It seems a bit odd. I guess they might have done this to keep the story living somehow, even with how curse-ridden it is.

Anyways, it's believed that the only thing that is left of Cow Head are just fragments, and most of the actual details of the story are unknown. And for the people that did actually read the real thing, they didn't live to tell their tale.

One recent rumor tells of an elementary school teacher who somehow came into possession of some fragments of the original "Cow Head" story. According to the rumor, the teacher was taking his class on a school trip. He loved to entertain the students on the bus with ghost stories. The students, who were completely bored, became interested in the teacher's horrific tales. Many of them seemed truly frightened. After some time, the teacher announced he would tell them the legendary forbidden tale called "Cow Head."

Before he could finish the first sentence of the story, however, the children began to panic. "Stop!" they cried. "Don't tell us!" One child turned pale and covered his ears, and the others began to scream in terror. But the teacher refused to stop and believed that they were all being cowards.

But soon enough, the story took a darker turn.

As time went on, they say his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he proceeded with the story as if something had taken over his mind. Almost an hour later, the teacher finally came his senses and found that the bus had crashed into a ditch. Every student had fainted and was frothing at the mouth. The bus driver lay slumped over the wheel, sweating and shivering. The police found the bus and were able to shake all of the children and bus driver awake. 

When asked what had happened, no one could remember how they ended up there, including the Cow Head story. Even the teacher was confused and didn't know where the fragments he read from were.

Some believe that they didn't die because they couldn't remember it. Other say it's because the teacher may not have finished the story before he came to his senses. Either way, the beginning of the story was leaked to the internet, with something involving a man with a cow head going into a village suffering a famine. When the man arrived, they tore him apart and ate every part of him. From the meat to the bones, the villagers ravaged and gnawed at every part of his body. As soon as they were finished, the village was put into a deep curse. That's all that was leaked from it.

Maybe one day we'll learn the tale- or maybe there isn't a tale at all. Either way, maybe it is better left untold.