Problem with the Matilda Hair

brownedave2

So, i've been trying to make a small alteration to this hair by way of a slightly altered cutout mask.  Funny thing is happening though.  If I set all of the surfaces of the hair to 0% cutout, which I understand to make the surface invisible, I am still seeing some stuff show up.  What is this? How can I get rid of it?  Specifically, I am trying to reduce the length of the bangs by a small amount, and modifying the cutout mask of the bangs does this just fine -  but this strange artifact shows up underneath.  It must be present in the hair normaly as welll, just hidden by the bangs.

I've tried going through just about every slider in the surfaces tab on each component of the hair, nothing controls this.  When I make the hair invisible in the scene tab, it goes away as i'd expect.  It is a part of the hair object, but not assosicated to any of it's surfaces?  Screen shot included:

 

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

 

brownedave2

So, in the interest of problem solving I loaded the hair up on a fresh project, on Kayo.  Same situation.  It looks like the surface is casting a shadow on the skin?

Strangest off all, I don't see a texture in the folder for the hair that resembles the shadow being cast.  There are some various hair colours and some masks that look nothing like the kind of shape I am seeing here.