Suchandra
MOMO. No, I’m not talking about one of your favourite foods. It’s all about “MOMO CHALLENGE”, the terror game. Yes, we are all acquainted with the online gaming terror “MOMO”. Most of the children and adolescents became the victim of this terror. It appeared as an internet hoax in July 2018. A spooky image hunted the teenagers on WhatsApp. Many online gamers fell in the trap and they were forced to harm themselves by performing dangerous tasks which finally led them to attempt suicide.
A news agency reported that the eerie image of MOMO was an incorrect Japanese sculpture made by Midori Hayashi. Later, we came to know, a Japanese special effect company named Link Factory made the correction of that sculpture. The sculpture further looked like a small, bald, chicken-like body with avian feet and human breast and it was exhibited publicly and photos were uploaded on social media in 2016. That scary image became the infamous “MOMO”. Even adults are also feared with the photo of that horrible slit-mouthed woman. Did you know the story behind this slit-mouthed woman?
Let’s time travel to the past. In the Heian period, there was a beautiful woman in Japan, named Kuchisake-Onna. She took pride in her beauty. One day she was caught red-handedly by her husband while she was having an affair with another samurai. He cut her mouth from ear to ear and asked: “ Who will think you are beautiful now ?”
That mutilated woman returns as a malicious spirit in the 20th century. According to the legend this panic was spread throughout Japan in many towns. She roamed about in lonely streets wearing a surgical mask and asked the school going children “ Am I pretty ?” If they answered “No”, She killed the victim with scissors. If they answered “Yes”, she took off her mask and repeat the question. If they said “No”, she cut her victim in a half and if they said “yes”, she slit their mouth from ear to ear so that they could resemble her.
Later, In 2007 a Japanese horror film Carved: A Slit-mouthed Woman was released based on the very Japanese urban Legend of Kuchisake-Onna or “Slit-mouthed Woman”.
