S T A G E D
Cow Head
Everyone loves a good scary story; that false sense of fear that fills you with adrenaline. Of course, once the story is over and you've succeeded in giving your younger sibling bed-wetting night terrors, everything should go back to normal. Unless it doesn't because you've apparently died of god damn fright.
The story of Cow Head is apparently so terrifying, so horrific, so psychologically soul-wrecking, that the exact details of the tale have long since been lost. To hear it would leave you a violently trembling mess for days until you eventually died of fright. However, due to what Cracked assumes must be its Ringu-like superpowers, no full variation is known today, though mention of it can be found in various written accounts dating back to the 17th century. We must assume it is hard to recount a story to anyone if you're...you know...dead.
As the story itself remains largely unknown, there is little threat that you will hear Cow Head being passed around your cub-scout campfire any time soon.
According to legend, a horrific short story called �Cow Head� was discovered in Japan in the 17th Century. The actual origin of the story is still shrouded in mystery.
Several written accounts from this era make reference to the awful story, but they only mention its title and describe it as a tale too terrible to tell.
Rumours 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.
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. Today, it is believed that only fragments of the original story remain in existence.
Most of the actual details of the story remain unknown to this day. The unfortunate people who read the story never lived long enough to repeat it.
One recent Rumour tells of an elementary school teacher who inexplicably came into possession of some fragments of the original �Cow Head� story. According to the Rumour, the teacher was taking his class on a school trip. He was in the habit of entertaining the students on the bus with ghost stories. The students, who tended to become unruly on long trips, grew remarkably subdued as they listened to 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. But the teacher refused to stop. They say his eyes went blank and he proceeded with the story as if some unseen force had taken over his mind.
Almost an hour later, the teacher regained his senses and found that the bus had crashed into a ditch. The students had all fainted and were frothing at the mouth. The bus driver lay slumped over the wheel, sweating and shivering. It is unclear what happened next, except that the teacher never told the �Cow Head� story again