The vanishing hitchhiker (or variations such as the ghostly hitchhiker, disappearing hitchhiker, phantom hitchhiker) is an urban legend in which people travelling by vehicle, meet with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes without explanation, often from a moving vehicle.

Public knowledge of the story expanded greatly with the 1981 publication of Jan Harold Brunvand's non-fiction book The Vanishing Hitchhiker. In his book, Brunvand suggests that the story of The Vanishing Hitchhiker can be traced as far back as the 1870s." Similar stories have been reported for centuries across the world in places like England, Ethiopia, Korea, France, Tsarist Russia and in America among Chinese Americans, Mormons and Ozark mountaineers

What was probably the first vanishing hitchhiker legend can be found in the 400-year-old manuscript Om the tekn och widunder som föregingo thet liturgiske owäsendet, which translates approximately as "About the signs and wonders that preceded the liturgical event". The author was Joen Petri Klint, a priest in diocese of Linköping, Sweden, and diligent collector of omens.