You are now listening to Cryptid Cocktail Party.
Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of
Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have
a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive
into the unknown. I'm your host, Dave. Joined,
as always, by my wonderful co -host, Sarge. How's
it going, Sarge? I'm phenomenal. Phenomenal?
I saw a bald eagle. Oh, shit. Yeah, I was just
driving down the street. Like, it was just in
my neighborhood, flying overhead. That's the
most American thing I could ever think of. I
know, right? I was like, yeah, I'm free. That's
awesome, man. I bet it was beautiful. Did it
bring a tear to your eye? Majestic. Of course
it did. Just a single tear. Yeah, America's coming
back. I don't know why. I just picture you taking
your hat off, putting it over your heart, and
saluting it with just a single tear. Gorgeous
motherfucker. Well, that's good. That has to
be a good omen, I think, right? I think so. I
think it's a strong omen. It's got to be. I mean,
too bad it's not a strong open for our technology
because we are running on borrowed time here.
Yeah, I know. Because we could not get this shit
to work for the life of us. Yeah, but with that
said, I'm happy that you're, I don't know, that
the ghost of Thomas Jefferson blessed you today.
I don't know. You've had an eventful weekend.
I did. It's my wife's birthday today, and we've
done literally all the things, so I'm tired.
It was fun. I enjoy celebrating my wife. She's
a great person, so I'll do whatever she wants
to do for her birthday. It's worth the sacrifice.
I mean, I didn't really sacrifice anything. Mrs.
Cryptid Cocktail Party, I hope you've had a wonderful
birthday. Yeah, it's her birthday today, so happy
birthday to my wonderful wife. She's not going
to listen to this. Happy birthday anyway, madam.
Yeah, I'll get it out there. But sorry, since
we're running on borrowed time, you want to just
dive right into this? Let's just dive in. No
lube. Let's go. All right. So again, we are going
to be continuing on our journey, our Yo -Kai
journey. Do you remember the breakdown of Yo
-Kai and all that stuff that we did last week?
So you're good. I don't need to explain anything
further to you, I assume. No, no, we're good,
we're good. I got a pretty good handle on it.
There's nature ones, there's some that is just
objects in your house. I get it. Okay, good.
So, every so often in rural Japan, there are
nights when the landscape seems to fall into
an unusual silence. The wind stalls out, the
insects stop calling, and the stillness feels
kind of weighted, as if something massive is
passing through the darkness just beyond the
fields and just beyond your line of sight. Some
say if you listen carefully on nights like this,
you might catch a faint clattering of something
in the distance, a dry, uneven, kind of like
a rattling echoing through the silence. Now,
the sound isn't tied to any footsteps or movement,
and it kind of comes and goes, drifting in and
out. Sometimes it seems far off. Sometimes you
could swear that it was right behind you. Then,
just as suddenly as it began, it stops. What
follows next is a sudden ringing in your ears,
almost like an internal alarm that something
has drawn near but still unseen to you. Only
after the ringing sets in does whatever is out
there make itself known. An immense silhouette
rises slowly from the darkness. The moonlight
catches the contours of bleached and cracked
bone, its hollow eye sockets glowing with a pale
green flame. The earth just seems to kind of
shrink beneath it. Right now, you are face to
face. with the gashadakuru. Are you familiar
with this at all, Sarge? Not at all. I didn't
think you would be. It sounds like a very fancy
dish that I would get at a sushi restaurant.
Kind of, yeah. I mentioned it briefly on the
last episode of the episode before that. I did
a whole episode on this years ago. before your
time and i kind of feel like since we're doing
yokai i should redo it i realized after reading
through the old script that i got a bunch of
shit wrong and no one called me out for it so
way to go listeners this is on you um yeah you
failed yeah so i figured we'd give it a bit of
a redo uh kind of fit it more into the series
we're doing now and uh just get your opinion
on it i already got the other person's opinion
who cares i need yours now Does that make sense?
Fuck that guy. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. All
right, so you're not familiar at all. Nope. Okay.
So the Gashatakuru is what you would call a composite
yokai. It's a single monster formed from the
combined spirits of many. It isn't the ghost
of one person, and it isn't a creature with any
sort of personal identity or motive. Instead,
it takes shape when large numbers of people die
violently or miserably and are then left unburied.
Because in Japanese belief, the spirits of the
unburied, known as the muen butoke, they hang
around in a state of frustration, hunger, and
resentment. And when all those neglected souls
accumulate, like after wars, famines, or plagues,
their collective rage can merge into one unified
force. That is the... Gashadakuru. Now this gives
the Gashadakuru traits associated with a bunch
of different traditions. It's got the bitterness
and rage of the onryo, the neglect tied to those
spirits, and the destructive power of the goryu,
which are the spirits of like wronged warriors.
So instead of a single ghost with a story, the
Gashadakuru embodies collective suffering. It's
quite literally a mass grave given a body. And
you're probably wondering, well, what does that
look like exactly? Maybe. I'm guessing it doesn't
look like Voltron. It does not look like Voltron.
But it is a Voltron -like ghost of many parts
becomes one. Kind of, yeah. It's weird that that's
immediately where my mind went. No, that's actually
kind of a good way to describe it. Or like when
the Power Rangers, they all turn into one. Yeah,
it's kind of like that. But you're with me so
far as to kind of the vibe this thing's given
off. Yeah, it's a very cool idea, actually. I
like it a lot. Yeah, so the Gashatakuru can only
be described as a big fucking skeleton. It stands
anywhere from 30 to 90 feet tall, built entirely
from the bones of people who died violently or
miserably. So this is like soldiers left to rot
on battlefields or victims of famine and plagues
that no one bothered to bury. and it's their
bones and the souls inside them that merge and
fuse into a single, starving, and very pissed
-off monster. The skull is massive, has hollow
eyes with pale green flames flickering in its
sockets. Every movement this thing makes, its
ribs grind together with a dry scraping noise
that was once described as sounding like teeth
chewing on teeth, which is such an awful sound.
And since it's a skeleton, There isn't any like
muscle or sinew to hold it together. Instead,
the rest of the body is held together only because
of pure hatred and spite that is holding the
joints in place. It's kind of like your average
MAGA voter. True. I was going to say not on like
me, but. The one thing that we share is that
we're both held together by spite and anger.
Now, despite its size and general unnervingness,
the Gashadakuro doesn't stomp around destroying
cities and villages like Godzilla. This thing
stalks you. It hunts people traveling alone on
dark, quiet roads, usually after midnight, and
it can move in total silence, slipping through
the darkness without so much as a snapping of
a twig underfoot. Except for the grinding ribs.
Well, you only hear that when it wants you to
hear that. It's pretty much virtually unseen.
You don't know it's near you until it's a little
too late. Okay. Yeah, so people only realize
it's near because their ears will suddenly start
ringing, and that's accompanied by a sharp, painful
pressure, like something invisible is trying
to pop your skull off your neck. And it's in
that moment. like that ringing, that's when it
has chosen you to be its next victim. And once
it chooses you, it's not good because the gashat
accrued doesn't just kill people. It's actually
way worse than that. Older accounts say it just
scoops you up like that lady in the King Kong
movies, but instead of being kind and gentle
with you, it just crushes you. It just squeezes
the life out of you and then just tosses your
limp body. Like a toothpaste. Yeah. Then it just
drops your limp body on the ground like a used
napkin. More modern retellings go even further
and say that this thing will pick you up by your
torso. bite your head clean off and then proceed
to squeeze your blood down his throat like a
human Capri Sun it's uh it's not great I mean
given the alternative of being like squeezed
until your head pops off yeah at least it's biting
your head off first so that like you don't feel
a lot of pain that's true either way it still
sucks it's not Yeah. It's all bad. Yeah. Then
once it's finished feeding, it just tosses whatever
is left of you aside before disappearing back
into the darkness. Weapons are useless against
it and it feels no pain. There isn't much you
can do to stop this from happening, which sucks.
It only stops hunting when the rage of the spirits.
burns out or when the dead are finally given
the funeral rites that they didn't get when they
died. But until that time, it just kind of wanders
around hungry and relentless, guided only by
the fury of hundreds of forgotten souls. How
are you feeling so far? Not great. No? No, it's
a little sad. Yeah, it is kind of a bummer. Yeah.
That's all you got? I'm just thinking of all
the things that have happened to Japan. In, like,
the last hundred years. And how many of these
giant skeleton guys they probably got walking
around? Probably more than you'd like. Yeah.
One is too many. One is too many, but a bunch
of them, that's kind of sick. Yeah. You know,
if they weren't so pissed off, I feel like that'd
be kind of rad. But they are. I wonder if they
fight each other. Like Pacific Rim style? Yeah,
like a bunch of emo kids arguing about who's
sadder. I don't think they're sad. I think they're
angry because they were just left to rot in a
field somewhere or they were just completely
forgotten. All right, so like a bunch of hardcore
kids arguing about who's angrier. Yes, sure.
Now, the origins of the Gashatakura were tied
to a very real fear in Japanese history. What
happens to the dead when no one is left to care
for them? Now, traditionally, the spirit of a
person who dies without burial or memorial rites
become a moen botoke, a restless, neglected soul
that is unable to move on to the afterlife. Now,
when this happens on a small scale, they become
just your normal run -of -the -mill boilerplate
wandering ghost. But when it happens to hundreds
or thousands of people all at once, the consequences...
are far bigger. Periods of war, famine, and plague
often left bodies unburied, scattered across
fields, riverbanks, or whole villages that were
abandoned. Now, without funerary rites, those
spirits linger in states of hunger, frustration,
or just straight -up rage. The gashadakuru emerges
at the moment when that collective resentment
reaches a breaking point, when the spiritual
weight of so many neglected dead fuses into one
massive, overwhelming entity. Now, this would
explain things like its size, its aggression,
its hunger, and its persistence. It haunts at
night because the unburied dead were believed
to rise in the hours when the boundary between
the living and the supernatural were at its thinnest.
It cannot be harmed because there's no single
body or spirit to destroy. Like I mentioned previously,
it only disappears when the energy animating
it finally burns out or when the spirits that
form it receive the rites they were... previously
denied so in a cultural sense the gasha takuru
is a reminder of the burden the living oh the
dead you don't want a 90 foot tall bloodthirsty
bone monster eating you at night just bury your
dead that's all you need to do yeah yeah no no
sounds like a lot of work though like after a
war or a famine yeah but i mean maybe it's a
bigger thing you know war is bad don't let people
have i don't know i don't know dude yeah like
don't wage war i guess would be the the lesson
you learn yeah um but uh i think we solved war
man god damn i think did we just solve war fuck
dude do you want a gasha decorum because because
this is how you get a gasha decorum Now, even
though the Gashatakuru is a relatively modern
yokai in terms of its official name, which I'll
explain what that means later, the image of a
massive skeleton monster has deep roots in Japanese
art and storytelling, especially during the Edo
period. Now, if you haven't picked up on this
during our last few episodes, artists of the
time were obsessed with ghosts, vengeful spirits,
and all sorts of supernatural shit, and skeletal
figures appeared all the time in woodblock prints,
illustration, and even in, like, kabuki theater.
The most influential of these images comes from
a 1844 woodblock print by the artist Udagawa.
kuniyoshi titled takayashi the witch and the
skeleton specter the print shows like a massive
skeleton forcing its way through the ruined interior
of soma castle summoned by princess takayasha
daughter of famously executed rebel leader tayara
no masakado as she confronts like a like a government
sorcerer now obviously i can't tell you the whole
story of the rebellion and all that stuff, but
obviously like the real rebellion led by Tarano
Masakado or what happened after his execution
had nothing to do with sorcery or giant spirits,
but in these, in these Edo period retellings,
she calls, she calls forth the bones of her father's
fallen soldiers to avenge his execution and the
men who were left to rot on the battlefield after
the rebellion was crushed. So like artists and
storytellers of the day reshaped this legend
into a quote unquote, like. Based on a true story.
Supernatural fiction. And it's this depiction.
Of that. That Koniashi came up with. That becomes.
One of the era's most iconic images. And it's
this image. A giant skeleton looming over the
characters. It's ribs stretched wide. Skull pressed
against the rafters. That would pretty much become
the visual blueprint. For how these skeletal
apparitions. Would be portrayed going forward.
And even though. Konoyoshi's creature wasn't
called the Gashadakuro at the time. Its appearance
strongly informed the design of what we know
it as today. That's so badass. Yeah, like there
were other earlier Edo period artworks that featured
like skeletal ghosts, skull spirits, and other
types of like bone -based baddies. And it's these
older depictions combined with Konoyoshi's depiction
that laid down like the entire aesthetic foundation.
that the gashadakuru will like eventually inherit
are you with me so far yeah like all i keep getting
this like almost intrusive thought about like
a gashadakuru that's that's mostly just the spooky
scary skeletons guys okay so you just hear like
xylophone music it's coming again it's like a
like a circus burndown What's wrong with me?
I don't know, because this is kind of like a
serious thing. It's like famine and plague victims.
You're like, yeah, but what if it was... That's
what I said. Like, if a circus burned down, it
would be better. Yeah, I guess. God damn it,
I'm a terrible person. No, I love it. It's great.
When you were talking about how if they fight
each other, it's just two emo kids. And then
I had to go right into what it actually is. I
was like, oh no, Sarge is going to feel real
bad about that. Just a big slap fight. So how
and when did the Gashatakuro get to be the Gashatakuro?
Well, like I said a few times now, this thing
is a... The Gashiro as a named yokai is a modern
creation. The name doesn't show up in classical
folklore at all. It actually made its debut in
the 1960s when there was a huge renewed interest
in the supernatural in Japan, especially post
-war. Folklorists and writers around the time
began publishing these large encyclopedias of
all the different yokai and supernatural beings.
One of the... Clearest early written references
comes from the modern folklorist Morihiro Saito,
which includes the creature in his yokai guides.
He, along with other authors, pretty much standardized
the gashadokuro, not only in name, but in its
traits. Like a skeleton 10 to 15 times the size
of a human, formed from people who died violently
or were left unburied, silent until it decides
it doesn't want to be, the ear ringing, the hole
turning you into a human gogurt, all that stuff.
And by giving this thing a name and a consistent
pattern of behavior and a clear origin, these
20th century folklorists took what had just at
that time been kind of imagery and art and turned
it into a fully realized yokai. And the people
fucking loved it. This thing very quickly became
a staple in modern yokai guides and museum exhibits
standing right alongside all the older creatures,
despite it being a very recent. So basically,
even though the imagery of a giant skeleton has
existed for God knows how long, the Gashadakuru
that we know and love today was really only born
just a few decades ago, which is crazy. Yeah.
Yeah. So now that this thing's got a name. Thanks,
Home Depot. Dude, I was trying to find a way
to fit in a Home Depot skeleton joke in here
somewhere. And I couldn't figure it out. This
whole time, that's all I could think about. Yeah,
and then I just forgot about it and didn't even
come back to try and attempt it. But yeah, no,
that's... The thing is, the Home Depot skeletons
are just built out of the shattered dreams of
all its minimum wage employees. Yeah, if a Home
Depot burned down, that's what... So now that
this thing's got a name, it's got defining characteristics,
it's a nightmare, and it didn't take very long
for it to break free from folklore books and,
like, museums into mainstream pop culture. The
concept of a giant man -eating skeleton powered
only by unbridled rage is too good to not try
and make a quick buck off of, you know what I
mean? One of the most famous nods to the Gashatakuru
appears in the Ghibli film Pompoko, where the...
The shape -shifting tanuki create a massive skeleton
illusion to terrify humans. And this is far from
the only anime to reference this thing. Probably
the most famous would be in Naruto. Sasuke has
the Sasano ability. It is one of the forms of
a skeletal Sasano, which is literally just...
The Gashatakuru. Video games also embrace this
thing as well. It appears as a boss in Nioh,
and variations of it pop up in franchises like
Castlevania, Dark Souls, and The Legend of Zelda.
Dungeons & Dragons also borrowed the concept
and features a big ol' skeleton guy known as
the Otakuru. I don't know if you're familiar
with that at all. No. I didn't know D &D picked
that up. Oh, yeah. That's very cool. Yeah. So,
yeah. Once given a name and a proper identity,
it was like the perfect blend of old folklore.
and modern horror aesthetics and it's now one
of the most recognizable creatures out there
like you may have you may not have known its
name at the time but you've definitely seen this
before and now you know when you see it what
it is so there you have it sarge that is the
gashatakuru a yokai that somehow manages to be
both modern and ancient as hell simultaneously
how you feeling about it you good I have to wonder,
like, I know we just joked about it, but I have
to wonder if that's kind of where the allure
came from for Home Depot to get the, like, 12
-foot skeleton. Maybe. I mean, it's not as big
as the Gashatakuru, but... Yeah, but I've actually
seen bigger. I've seen ones that are, like, they
look like they're about 20 feet tall. Maybe.
It'd be cool... cool halloween decoration it's
an awesome halloween decoration and i couldn't
figure out why they did it i was like why what
no one is that tall so like why would you have
it the bible not that i have a problem with it
i was just like i don't understand like it's
cool that it exists but like where did the idea
come from and maybe in some small way it was
uh inspired by this It could be. I have no idea,
but a cool idea would be to get one of those
giant things and then just at its feet, just
put like a miniature replica of like Kyoto or
something. Tokyo. Yeah. Like really put it to
scale. You know what I mean? I think that'd be
really cool. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't,
I probably, like I said, this, like the concept
of a giant skeleton. has been around forever
so i'm sure it's partially inspired by that or
just people are like a big skeleton spooky i
have no idea yeah i'm thinking like maybe they
saw a picture yeah maybe they saw a picture or
something we're like oh that's a cool idea let's
do that guy it could be um yeah but how you feeling
about this you got any thoughts questions concerns
um i honestly like this is uh like i keep saying
this but like this is probably the coolest one
we've talked about yet It's one of my favorites
for sure. I just like the idea of it. Yeah. I
like the, I like the, like the concept behind
it. I like, it's just sorrow and rage and like
an amalgamation of all that. That's what I mean.
Yeah. It's such a fucking cool concept. And then
like the, the reasonings behind it are cool.
Cause it's not like, this one's not really like,
it's a cautionary tale, but it's not really a
cautionary tale. It's just like, Hey, yeah. Just
respect the dead. Exactly. I think I watched.
I don't remember what it was on, but there was
some kind of documentary -style thing on the
wandering spirits after the tsunami. And how
there's this guy who tries to provide comfort
to the spirits. And that's what I was thinking
of when you started talking about this. I was
like, oh man, I wonder if they've come up with
one for that. I don't know. Because that would
be an understandable... yeah outcome my only
my only thought when i was writing this and i
was reading about it and stuff like that is uh
it says that it can only be quelled like it'll
only be stopped when the rage that the spirits
feel burns out or when they're given their funerary
rights and i was just thinking like what if only
like 12 got their funeral like what what if not
all the spirits got up it just loses the leg
like it's just a chunk of it's got like it just
like it's coming to get you and its arm falls
off yeah like a few ribs like a few ribs go missing
or something like it's lower jaw falls like that's
because at that point like it's not all the spirits
or does it get replaced by other spirits like
they're like they're gonna be one gashatakuru
at a time so as some go away right but then maybe
it gets replaced by spirits that really don't
really have that much business being mad like
One spirit just had a really rough day. Yeah,
they're just indifferent spirits, I think. Yeah,
that leg's just a little skinnier than the others
because it's just made up of kind of pissed off
spirits. Yeah. I don't know. That's just a thought
I had. Now I need to know the answer to that,
and I'll do some digging. I highly doubt there's
an answer, but I want to know. We need to find
another folklorist. We need answers right now.
Exactly. All right, yeah, that's it, Sarge. That
was a good one. It's a fun one. It's a fucking
badass. It's not a long story because, again,
it's like a newer yokai. Yeah. It's only like
60 years old. So there's not many stories involving
the Gashatakuru because it wasn't around at the
time when these stories were being told. There
are stories of, like I said, skeleton creatures
and big skeletons, small skeletons, just skulls,
but they're not really Gashatakuru stories, if
that makes sense. Right. So I didn't want to
spend time. So when we began this journey, the
name Yo -Kai was very familiar to me and I couldn't
remember why. Okay. And why was it? There's like
an anime when I was a kid called Yo -Kai Watch.
Okay. And apparently it's a watch that this kid
wears and it's basically like a ripoff of Pokemon.
Okay. But it's Yo -Kai instead. And I thought,
how fucked up is this? If I remember correctly,
all of these things have some weird sexual fetish
part to them, like the three buttholes on the
kappa, or the one we did last week, which is
just like a hot lady who turns into a spider.
They're not all sexual. Well, yeah, this one,
that's why I didn't bring it up before, because
this one's not sex at all. It's just anger. But
also, I mean, some of them can be horny. Yes,
that is true. Yeah. They're not all horny. Obviously,
the horny ones make for better stories. But also,
the cap is not horny. I mean, yeah, it is. It
kind of... It is. He's got three buttholes and
he puts his fist up your butt. Yeah, and it's
known to assault. Yeah, you're right. God damn
it. So then I was like, man, that fucking cartoon
is really fucked up. Well, some of those older
animes from like the 80s are pretty horny. And
they were meant for children. No, I think it
was like the 90s. It was like the late 90s. Oh,
God. I'll have to look into that. It was called
Yo -Kai Watch. So was the watch a Yo -Kai? No,
I think the watch summoned the Yo -Kai. So it
was actually more of like a ripoff of Ben 10
and Pokemon. All right. Hell yeah. I'll do some
digging on that and see what I can find. Maybe
my wife's seen it. She's seen a lot of fucking
weird anime. Yeah. It was like a kid's show.
I remember it now. Yeah. I don't remember what
we were talking about, but I think that's all
we got. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, shorter episode.
Because again, there weren't that many stories
because it didn't exist and I didn't want to
tell stories that were just kind of loosely related
to it. I thought that'd be weird because we can
cover some of the other skeleton ones later and
tell the stories in the actual context that they...
should be told and not in relation to something
that is newer. But yeah, that's it. Sarge, you
got anything you want to say to the audience
before we do all our normal stuff? Yeah. Follow
me on the interwebs. Just Google Sarge the Destroyer.
I'm on all the socials. You'll find me. Yeah.
And if you can't find him, most of the links
to his stuff, I believe, are in the link on our
Instagram, which is at cryptic cocktail. You
can follow us on TikTok, Crypto Cocktail Party.
Please leave us a rating and review. It definitely
helps get the show in people's ears. Share anything
you can. If you got a favorite episode, make
sure you share that. Make sure people are aware.
And I think that's all I got. With that out of
the way, Sarge, would you like to say goodbye
and I love you to the audience? Goodbye and I
love you.