Hey, you guys wanna hear about something super creepy? Of course you do! To that end, let’s talk about noppera-bō.

Noppera-bō are yōkai, or Japanese folkloric creatures that are often very, very weird. How are these weird, you may ask? Why, they have no face, of course! So, that’s fun. Thankfully, they’re one of the more mischievous yōkai, so they’re pretty much harmless. They just like to scare people.

Hell, it’s not really clear if noppera-bō are even their own thing, as most stories about them are as disguises for shapeshifting animal spirits like tanuki, kitsune, or especially mujina.

Either way, here are how most people encounter noppera-bō: imagine you’re walking on an empty road, at night. Suddenly, you see a person standing in the road, with their back turned to you. They turn around, and you see that they have an empty expanse of skin where their face should be. Remember that episode of Doctor Who where TVs were stealing people’s faces? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. So that’s fun, and not absolutely terrifying at all.

Like most folkloric creatures, there are numerous tales of noppera-bō. One of the more well-known stories is related by author Lafcadio Hearn in his book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In this story, a man is heading from Akasaka to Edo when he comes across a young woman crying. Being an empathetic young man, he goes to see if he can help her when she turns to him and reveals that she has no face.

Naturally, he nopes the hell on out of that situation, and eventually comes across a soba vendor. Still pretty freaked out, he tells the vendor what just happened to him. The vendor then wipes his own face away, which freaks the guy out even more. It should be noted, however, that both noppera-bō are actually mujina in disguise.

There have been tales of noppera-bō outside of Japan too, most notably in Hawaii. This makes sense, since Hawaii has a fairly sizable Japanese population. Anyway, one of the more well-known sightings was in 1959, in a Kahala drive-in theater. The witness in question reported seeing a woman in the restroom brushing her hair. Then, when the woman turned to them, they saw that she had no face. The witness was then reportedly hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. Which is a perfectly rational response in my opinion.

So that, my friends, is the noppera-bō. You’re welcome for the nightmare fuel!

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