“The young couple held hands as they walked
through the forest, the only light coming from the full moon which streamed down between
the branches.” The young woman is riveted by her friend’s
story. She’s never been a fan of ghost stories,
she scares too easily, but her friends insisted. “But what they didn’t know was that there
was something else out there in the forest, something watching them.” The young woman can’t help but look around,
scanning the forest to see if there’s anything out there watching her, but it’s too dark
to see anything past the dim ring of light cast by the campfire. “Just then, something emerged from the forest. The couple had no idea that it was just feet
behind them, matching them step for step. Slowly, it began to reach out towards them... “ “What was it?” the young woman instinctually
asked. “It was… THE GASHADOKURO!” The young woman screams in fear as she is
grabbed from behind by a skeleton. But of course the laughing of her friends
clues her in immediately that this is not a real Gashadokuro, it’s just her stupid
friend in a mask. No one can contain their laughter, even the
young woman has to laugh a little. As her friend takes off his cheap, skull mask
she playfully hits him in the arm, “you jerk!” “You should have seen the look on your - “ The gigantic, shrieking skeleton leaps from
the woods and picks up the young man, shoving him straight into his mouth and consuming
him, the boy crying out as his bones are snapped between its enormous jaws. Everyone screams and turns to run, but another
colossal skeleton emerges from the forest, picking up two of the group, one in each hand,
before smashing them together over and over, leaving nothing but a tenderized pile of flesh
between its bony fingers that it then begins to devour. The young woman doesn’t know what to do. She’s petrified with fear, unable to move
or even think. She’s grabbed from behind and turns to see
her friend who was telling the story. “Come on, we have to go!” She still doesn’t move, she can’t tear
herself away from watching the horror that’s playing out in front of her, but he grabs
her hand and forcefully pulls her into the forest behind him. As they run through the woods, they can hear
the sounds of their friends being eaten by the enormous skeletons. There’s nothing they can do to help them
though, all they can do is run. The two sprint as fast as they can through
the thick, dark forest, jumping over fallen trees, hoping that there’s solid ground
on the other side. The young woman’s foot catches in a root
and she falls hard to the ground. Her friend stops and quickly comes back. As he is helping her stand up out of the mud
they both notice something. A sound. The heavy thuds of another giant skeleton. And it’s getting closer to them. “Come on, we have to keep going!” With a loud shriek, a huge bony hand emerges
from the forest and grabs the young man. The young woman watches as he is lifted a
hundred feet into the air and stuffed whole into the gargantuan skeleton’s mouth. She steps slowly backwards, knowing that she
will soon meet the same fate, until the earth disappears beneath her feet. She tumbles down the hillside, somersaulting
end over end, crashing through the brush on the hillside until dropping over embankment. If the fall down the hill knocked her out
then the drop over the embankment was enough to wake her back up. Her wits come back just enough for her to
roll under the embankment’s ledge, and not a moment too soon. She huddles under the ledge and watches as
the two skeletons stride over her hiding place and continue on deeper into the forest. She listens until the sounds of their thudding
steps disappear. She doesn’t know what to do, should she
try to get back to the campsite and see if any of her friends are still alive? If they are, they might need her help. But what if there are more of these… things… out there? What if they come back, looking for her? Her mind races, unsure of what to do, and
she has trouble thinking clearly. Her ears are ringing from her tumble down
the hillside and her teeth audibly chatter in fear. As she debates her next move, trying to make
sense of the nightmare she’s found herself in, she suddenly notices something. A shadow cast by the moonlight begins to grow
on the ground in front of her. That’s when she realizes something else,
it’s not her teeth that are chattering. The sound is coming from somewhere else. She stands up and turns around to see a huge
skull slowly rising up behind her. The giant skeleton, this one even bigger than
the others, reaches out towards her. The girl closes her eyes, preparing to meet
her fate as the skeleton starts to shriek. But it’s a different kind of sound. She opens her eyes and is almost blinded by
the intense white light on the skeleton’s face. It sounds like it is shrieking in pain from
the light being cast on it, and she’s forced to turn away and shield her eyes. As she does so, she sees the source of the
light. It’s a man in a uniform. He looks like some sort of tactical police
officer, but instead of a gun, he’s holding an enormous flashlight that he’s pointing
at the skeleton. More men who are dressed just the same emerge
from the woods, blasting the skeleton with more light. It continues shrieking but seems helpless
to do anything. She watches as the skeleton seems to lose
its form, slowly disintegrating in the light until eventually it disappears completely Later, the young woman is sitting in the back
of a van with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. One of the policemen, at least she thinks
he must be a policeman, brings her a hot drink. She still can’t believe what she saw that
night, the monstrous creatures that killed and ate her friends, it felt like it wasn’t
real, like she was watching a movie play out. “Were those… were those Gashadokuro?” she asks. A man in a white lab coat looks up from a
nearby table where he had been working on something. She thinks he must be a doctor of some kind. “Yes,” he tells her, “or something similar
to them. Maybe they inspired the myth of the Gashadokuro,
maybe the myth inspired them. We simply don’t know.” She asks, “all my friends are - “ “Dead”
he interjects. “I know this is hard for you, getting chased
by giant anomalous skeletons and watching your friends eaten alive would be tough for
anyone to deal with.” The young woman starts to sob, the weight
of the moment finally hitting her. “But I have some good news” he tells her. She sniffs and looks up at the doctor. “Believe it or not, I’ve seen this thing
happen a lot, and you don’t have to worry, because you’re not going to remember any
of this.” “Ouch” the young woman cries, and looks
down to see that he has jabbed her in the thigh with a syringe. She tries to push him away but she’s already
feeling weak and disoriented. She sways a little before her eyes shut and
she passes out. The young woman wakes in the cheery morning
light of her own bedroom. She yawns and stretches, the strange dream
about skeletons in the forest already drifting from her mind. Konnichiwa! I’m Dr. Bob and today’s file is a terrifying
anomalous entity referred to in Japan as the Gashadokuro, but known by the SCP Foundation
as SCP-2863… the Starving Skeletons. SCP-2863 is not just one, but an entire population
of entities that resemble gigantic human skeletons. These enormous, bony creatures’ size can
vary, but on average they are approximately 30 meters tall. While their exact number is unknown, over
200 separate individual instances have been identified and catalogued, with each having
distinctive markings such as their bones having different types of damage or burn marks present. SCP-2863 instances are currently found exclusively
in Japan, where they will appear only after sunset. It is still unknown if the skeletons are sapient,
though they do appear sentient as they engage in their primary behavior of hunting down
and consuming humans. Despite their enormous size, they are capable
of moving very quietly when they want to, though there have been reports from survivors
of their appearance being preceded by a rattling like sound, which may be their own teeth or
giant bones hitting against each other. Once they have caught a human, they will immediately
devour them, with the human’s blood appearing to be absorbed directly into their bones,
since they lack any digestive organs. It is unknown if they require the blood of
humans for sustenance, or if their predatory behavior is motivated by something else. Monitoring and control of SCP-2863 instances
was previously the responsibility of the Imperial Japanese Anomalous Matters Examination Agency. The IJAMEA, which as the name suggests, was
Imperial Japan’s answer to the SCP Foundation, tasked with investigating the strange anomalies
within their own borders for the benefit of the empire. Several of the IJAMEA agents who had been
investigating the Gashadokuro at the end of World War 2 transferred to the SCP Foundation
when the Anomalous Matters Examination Agency was disbanded and continued their work on
the anomaly. They also provided their original files on
the anomaly, which gave the Foundation their first information on the giant anomalous skeletons. According to the IJAMEA’s translated file: “Gashadokuro are created by mass death,
by the concentrated suffering of hundreds. While the Gashadokuro will eventually fade,
they remain for centuries after their creation, lingering until their sorrow has diffused
and faded. There is no way to hasten this process.” The IJAMEA file also explained that while
conventional weaponry is useless against the anomalous skeletons, light can be used to
banish the creatures, and either natural daylight or manmade light will suffice. When exposed to light, the skeletons will
start to lose their corporeal form until they fade away completely. This doesn’t kill instances of SCP-2863
though, it only temporarily neutralizes them, and appearances of the same instance will
often be reported the very next night. Just as the IJAMEA had noted in their file,
the SCP Foundation also made the connection between SCP-2863 and locations of mass suffering. While Imperial Japan’s anomalous investigation
unit identified 203 instances of SCP-2863, the Foundation has since become aware of three
others, each of which were found at sites connected to death and destruction. The first new instance was found near Nanjing,
China, the location of an especially brutal massacre during the second world war that
may have resulted in as many as 300,000 deaths. It’s believed that the entity first appeared
in this location in 1938, just after the massacre, while the city was still under the control
of Imperial Japan. This has led some to speculate that the locations
where Gashadokuro appear are inherently tied to the borders of Japan as a nation, and have
fluctuated with geopolitical changes. The second was discovered several kilometers
from Fukuoka City in Japan, a city that saw heavy firebombing by Allied Forces during
the war. The third was identified in 2011 in the Tōhoku
region of Japan, which is where the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred. Each of these new instances appeared to bear
injuries consistent with someone who suffered through the nearby tragedies, with the first
showing evidence of crushed bones, the second appearing to have suffered intense burning,
and the third missing teeth which is common in cases of extreme radiation poisoning. These specific injuries add further evidence
of the connection the Gashadokuro may have to human misery. The impermanent nature of SCP-2863 and their
ability to manifest even after being neutralized has made long term containment of this anomaly
all but impossible, and they have been classified as Keter. In the event that an instance is spotted,
Mobile Task Force Omicron-3 is dispatched to the area where they will attempt to neutralize
the entity through the use of high-powered floodlights. Any civilians who are exposed to SCP-2863
and survive are given Class-A amnestics so that they can hopefully move on with their
lives and forget their horrifying encounter with the Starving Skeletons. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, like SCP-966 Sleep Killer, for another anomaly who has decided to make humans
its preferred prey. And make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications,
so you don’t miss a single anomaly, as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s
classified archives.
