Gashadokuro

Origin: Japanese Mythology 
Habitat: Countryside
Behavior: Aggressive

Description: 

• Gashadokuro (translated to "Starving Skeleton") are skeletal giants fifteen times taller than an average person 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 this yokai’s namesake. 

Facts: 

• The Gashadokuro are created from the amassed bones of people who died of starvation or in battle, without being buried. Soldiers whose bodies rot in the fields and victims 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 grudge is what twists 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 the gashadokuro.
• These Yōkai roam after midnight, grabbing lone travelers and biting off their heads to drink their blood. 
• There is a way to know of their approach, as the victim would hear the sound of loud ringing in the ear. The Gashadokuro are said to possess the powers of invisibility and indestructibility; though Shinto charms are said to ward them off.
• The Gashadokuro maintains its existence until the energy and malice stored up in their bodies has completely burnt 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 the earlier days, when wars and famine were a part of everyday life.