Kubikajiri (Japan)

There are two versions of kubikajiri, and both incline towards yurei, a term used to describe ghosts of deceased humans, in contrast to yokai, which refers to all supernatural entities, including goblins, demons, and other non-human creatures.

The first version describes a headless ghost obsessed with searching for its lost head. In life, it was a person who died by decapitation and was buried without their head. As a ghost, it relentlessly hunts for the heads of both humans and animals—whether dead or alive—devouring them in the desperate hope of claiming a new head for itself. How it manages this without its own head remains a mystery.

The second version depicts kubikajiri as ghosts born from the resentment and sorrow felt by the victims of starvation, particularly older adults who met such a fate. These ghosts lurk in graveyards and hunt for freshly buried corpses to eat their heads.