The Johnstown Headless Ghost Cow are a group of bizarre animal spirits that supposedly haunt the city editor for the Pennsylvania Grit newspaper, and he was sure that he had stumbled upon something truly bizarre that was taking place on the outskirts of Johnstown. Those who lived nearby reported being afraid to pass by an old ruined building at night for fear of having to go head-to-severed-head with a ghastly bovine apparition with flaming eyes and a 'hideous' mooing cry.
Description[]
Interestingly enough, the ruined building in question, standing isolated and abandoned for years before the ghost cow was first brought to public attention in 1896 - used to be a slaughterhouse, in which countless unfortunate bovines would've doubtless met their makers. Eventually the facility fell to ruin after the resident butcher decided to abandon the premises for unspecified reasons - leaving it to slowly accumulate an aura of mystery and dread to surround its rickety walls. Children would do their best to avoid the spot after sundown, and many an adult visitor to the area would tell truly petrifying stories about what they had seen.
The Pennsylvania Grit, published in Williamsport city, was lucky to have Elmer Person on its staff. He had been interviewing numerous terrified locals who claimed to have seen a beastly phantom around the old slaughterhouse. These witnesses apparently all corroborate each-other's stories, and Elmer 'vouched for their respectability'. The creature was described as being a truly 'frightful object' - resembling a headless cow with a bleeding stump of a neck and its severed head floating a uniform distance in front of its body. This head was adorned with fiery eyes and jagged teeth, which seem to glow 'like bicycle lanterns' ablaze with greenish conflagration. Its mouth was always gaping open, and yet the awful bellows made by the creature would seemingly emanate from the neck instead of the head. These shrieks could apparently be heard from quite some distance away.
A newspaper article depicting the bizarre entity in all its bovine glory.
Late at night, this horrific heifer could apparently sometimes be seen 'madly cavorting' along the side of the road - seemingly levitating above the ground while it did this and only briefly alighting to continue its cavorting along roadside fences and stone walls before once again taking to the skies. All of the encounters took place at night, and the witnesses would describe seeing a bovine shape dart out of the entrance of the previously mentioned ruined building before dashing past them 'with the speed of an express train'.
One specific encounter, put forward by Mr. Person as being of the most reliable variety, details how the monstrous cow was seen to emerge from the slaughterhouse and follow the road using the stake-and-rider fence as a path - before reaching a stone wall along which it continued to jaunt until it turned back the way it came and took the same route again, returning to the entrance of the slaughterhouse. Just before it went inside, it apparently paused and emitted an even more bone-chillingly terrifying bellow before vanishing for good. The unnamed witness of this uncanny happening has seemingly joined everyone else who has observed the creature in swearing never to travel that specific road by night ever again. One witness claimed that, although the headless spectre may seem amusing during the daytime - it becomes a very different situation when one is faced by the thing under the cover of darkness.
The terrain around the ruined slaughterhouse - although hilly and somewhat treacherous - used to be quite well-travelled until the ghost cow made an appearance. Since then, people have apparently decided to travel around the locale instead of through it for fear of the bovine monstrosity.
Folklore or Phenomenon?[]
Well, I think I'm leaning more towards the former option out of those posited in the above subheading. This strikes me as a bizarre folktale or scare-story built up around a weird abandoned location. I wonder if the location actually ever was a slaughterhouse or if that was just added to the story so that a headless ghost cow could be invented? The host of the Obscure Anomalies podcast did some research of his own into this story, and found that the building in question likely no longer exists - and unearthing the past of an unnamed and no longer existent structure seems like an almost herculean task. Interestingly enough, however, there are some other reports of ghost cattle across the United States. Farm Road 511 in Brownsville, Texas is haunted by a bovine spectre that manifests in the path of oncoming cars, for example.