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Beneath the runway of Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido runs a road tunnel locals call the “Obake Tunnel” (お化けトンネル, “Ghost Tunnel”) — formally the Danjo Road Tunnel — and unlike most haunted tunnels on this site, it's not abandoned. It carries live traffic every day, directly under an operating runway.
Correction
An earlier version of this article described the tunnel as an abandoned 19th-century railway line closed in 1975, haunted by a soldier from either the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) or the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima. We could not corroborate that account against any documented source, and it does not match the tunnel most consistently identified locally as running beneath Hakodate Airport. This version replaces it with the legend that is actually documented for this location: a road tunnel, still in daily use, tied to a mother and child rather than a wartime soldier.
The Mother and the Tricycle
The most consistently told version of the legend involves a mother walking her young child, who was riding a tricycle, near the tunnel. A speeding car reportedly struck and killed the child in a hit-and-run, and the mother — driven half out of her mind by grief — is said to have died herself soon after. Locals describe two resulting phenomena: honk your horn three times inside the tunnel late at night and an old woman’s ghost is said to appear, and drivers who exceed roughly 70 km/h through the tunnel report a wild-eyed woman chasing the car in the rearview mirror. Other tellings describe the ghost of a young boy on a tricycle following vehicles instead.
What Actually Checks Out
We could not verify the hit-and-run death, the mother’s death, or either ghost sighting against a documented incident or accident record. What is verifiable is more basic: the tunnel is real, it runs beneath an active airport runway, it has a low clearance that restricts larger vehicles, and it carries a long-standing local reputation as the “Ghost Tunnel” independent of which specific version of the story a given local tells.
An Airport With a Ghost Story Running Beneath It
Most haunted tunnels covered on this site sit in remote, disused isolation. This one is the opposite: a functioning underpass beneath one of Hokkaido’s operating airports, driven through daily by people who may not think twice about its reputation. That juxtaposition — a mundane commute route with a horn-honking ritual attached to it — is unusual among the sites on this list, most of which trade on abandonment rather than continued, everyday use.
Can You Visit?
Yes — the Danjo Road Tunnel is a public road and remains open to ordinary traffic. It is narrow with restricted vertical clearance, so treat it as you would any tight, low tunnel: watch your vehicle height, drive at a sensible speed, and don’t test the horn ritual in a way that distracts you from oncoming traffic.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the tunnel beneath Hakodate Airport abandoned?
No — it’s a functioning road tunnel (the Danjo Road Tunnel) carrying live traffic beneath the runway, not an abandoned railway line as an earlier version of this article stated.
What’s the actual ghost story tied to this tunnel?
The most consistently told version involves a mother and child struck by a speeding car near the tunnel, with the mother’s ghost said to appear after three horn honks or to chase cars going over roughly 70 km/h.
Is the hit-and-run death documented?
No — we could not verify it against any accident record. It survives only as local legend.
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