Previously: Badalisc.

Type: CC (Corporeally Challenged).

Period/location of origin: Late Showa era (1970s-1980s), Japan.

Appearance: Subject, known as Kubinashi Rider (首なしライダー), appears to be — simply put — a headless motorcycle rider: That is, a person riding a motorcycle who lacks a head. Further description is not typically furnished.

Modus operandi: Subject may be encountered by targets driving vehicles down specific roads or in certain areas late at night. Subject may be, but is not necessarily, searching either for its missing head or for the party responsible for the loss of its head.

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According to some reports, targets who witness subject may experience rashes of bad luck or misfortune soon after, including but not limited to engine trouble, flat tires, and other vehicular problems. A small handful of that subject is particularly interested in targets driving white vehicles specifically have emerged over time, although the veracity of these reports remains unknown; it is possible that the preoccupation with white vehicles is hearsay, or perhaps a statistical anomaly.

According to other reports, should subject overtake a target while driving — or should target be unwise enough to let subject pass them — target will expire due to a fatal vehicular accident or collision shortly thereafter.

Whether subject is responsible for the accident or collision or whether they are simply a harbinger of the disaster to come has not been determined.

It is sometimes reported that subject is not singular, but rather a group — that is, targets may occasionally encounter an entire “gang” of headless motorcycle riders.

Containment: None possible. Subject rides where subject rides.

Additional notes: A variety of different backstories have been attached to subject, re: the loss of its head. According to the most common, the kubinashi rider became as such following a run-in with a piano wire stretched across the road, resulting in the forcible removal of their head. The motorcycle, however, is said to have continued traveling for some time, despite its rider’s missing piece, eventually becoming an entity constantly traveling the road on which they expired in search of its head.

Variations on the story include the rider having lost their head not via piano wire, but due to a falling road sign, an accident leading to an encounter with guard rail, or being struck by a truck; the rider appearing only on the anniversary of their death, rather than just generally at night; and/or that the headless rider had specifically been a police officer who lost both their head and their life in the line of duty.

Several different explanations for subject’s origin and/or spread in popularity have been proposed, although whether these explanations truly account for the rise of the kubinashi rider has not been satisfactorily proven.

One such explanation is the Japanese release of the 1974 Australian film Stone. An outlaw biker exploitation film, Stone features a scene in which a biker loses their head after an encounter with a wire stretched across the road while they and their motorcycle are in motion. Stone was released in Japan on Feb. 14, 1981; it is sometimes said that Japanese audiences considered the aforementioned scene to be quite shocking, and might therefore account for the emergence and/or rise of the kubinashi rider legend.

Another proposed explanation relies on an incident that occurred in Mizumoto Park in Katsushika-ku, at the eastern end of the Tokyo Metropolis. On May 24, 1984, a high school student racing his motorbike on one of the roads near Mizumoto Park late at night lost his head due to a rope having been stretched across the road. Police investigated the incident as a case of traffic obstruction resulting in death, though no arrests were ever made. The incident was reported on by the daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun. Some have proposed that this incident resulted in the creation of the kubinashi rider legend, although it not necessarily said that the kubinashi rider is the high school student who suffered this terrible fate.

Interestingly, Mizumoto Park is also home to an allegedly haunted phone booth — although not the phone booth examined in previous Encyclopaedia entry the Hachioji Cemetery Haunted Phone Booth. (Mizumoto Park and Hachioji Cemetery are some 60 kilometers apart.)

It has also been proposed that stories of subject emerged simply due to a misunderstanding of visual stimuli: Some believe that witnesses catching sight of a motorcycle rider wearing a black helmet that fully covered their head and face may have been misinterpreted as a person missing their head; thus, the rise of the headless rider.

Subject does not appear to be tied to one specific area of its home country; indeed, reports from across the entirety of Japan have been cataloged across the decades since subject first emerged. However, two locations do tend to pop up with a greater degree of frequency: The aforementioned Mizumoto Park, and a particularly treacherous stretch of road on Mount Rokko, just north of Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture.

Other locations where subject has allegedly been spotted include: Lake Okutama in Okutama Town, near Tokyo; Usui Pass, between Gunma and Nagano Prefectures; Amagase Dam in Uji-shi, on the southern outskirts of Kyoto; and Mount Hiko, on the boarder between Fukuoka and Oita Prefectures. Reports centered at Mount Hiko tend to feature gangs of headless riders, rather than a singular headless rider.

A possible relationship between previous Encyclopaedia subject the dullahan — the headless horseman of Irish legend — has been proposed, although has not been proven. Given the similarities, however, they do seem to be at least tangentially related in some way, shape, or form.

More relevant are the many headless warrior legends of Japanese folklore, including the legend of the “headless warrior procession” associated with Fukui-shi in Fukui Prefecture. According to legend, the ghost of Sengoku-era samurai Shibata Katsuie leads a headless procession from Tsukumo Bridge to Shibata Shrine on the night of April 24 every year — although typically, it is not Shibata Katsuie who is headless, but the horse he rides. This, it is worth noting, is an interesting inversion of the headless horseman trope.

Subject has made appearances in a number of works of fiction. Such appearances include:

• A special episode of the anime Gakkou no Kaidan (学校の怪談), or School Ghost Stories titled Kubinashi Rider!! Shi no Noroi (首なしライダー!! 死の呪い), or The Headless Horsemen!! Curse of Death. This episode originally aired on Aug. 24, 2001, and features a headless rider who, on the anniversary of his death, takes to the roads in search of more heads — and targets from whom to remove them.
• The Shin Megami Tensei spin-off video game series Devil Summoner, which features an opponent identified as a kubinashi rider in the title Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers. The kubinashi rider also appears in the side game Shin Megami Tensei Trading Card: Card Summoner.
• The light novel, manga, and anime series Durarara!!, at the center of which is the character Celty Sturluson (セルティ ストゥルルソ), also called the “Black Rider” or “Headless Rider.” It is worth noting that this character is explicitly a dullahan; however, given the update from horse to motorcycle, along with the previous note about the kubinashi rider’s possible relationship to the dullahan, the character may be likened to a kubinashi rider.

Recommendation: Stay off the roads at night.

And if you must drive at night… and if you do happen to spot a seemingly headless motorcycle rider as you go…

…Don’t let them pass you.

Just in case.

Resources:

Kubinashi Rider at Wondia. (In Japanese.)

The Headless Rider at i-kyu. (In Japanese.)

Is The Legend Of The Headless Rider True? at LeisureGo. (In Japanese.)

Headless Rider at Occultic.net. (In Japanese.)

Hyogo Prefecture, Mount Rokko, Headless Rider. (In Japanese.)

Tokyo’s Haunted Spot, Mizumoto Park at kaii-shiryoukan. (In Japanese.)

Sankei Shimbun report on Mizumoto Park incident. (In Japanese.)

The Ghost Of Shibata Katsuie And The Legend Of The Headless Warrior Procession on Tsukumo Bridge. (In Japanese.)

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