Brunvand - The choking doberman: and other urban legends

Other Books by Jan Harold Brunvand

THE TRUTH NEVER STANDS
IN THE WAY OF A GOOD STORY

AMERICAN FOLKLORE: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA

THE BABY TRAIN

CURSES! BROILED AGAIN!

THE MEXICAN PET

THE VANISHING HITCHHIKER

THE STUDY OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE

READINGS IN AMERICAN FOLKLORE

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF URBAN LEGENDS

In order to provide the reader with a frame of reference for appreciating the new urban legends contained in this book, here are sample texts of several types of legends discussed in The Vanishing Hitchhiker. They include most stories from my first book that are mentioned or alluded to in this one, without any of the historical, comparative, or analytical material that was presented there. I have selected texts that illustrate a true oral style as well as the journalistic form in which urban legends may appear, and I give one British version as a contrast to the American ones. All of these texts originally appeared in the sources cited, but none was included in The Vanishing Hitchhiker itself, to which the reader should turn for more background material and further texts of these and many other urban legends.

There were these two boys going from Winchester to Lexington. They were going to a prom. There was this girl in a formal on the road, and they picked her up in a Model A roadster. It was cold. Each of the boys danced with her. She danced good, but her flesh was cold. They started home but saw her again on the street and picked her up. She was cold, and they gave her a coat. They took her to her house down this hill and left her. They left his coat too, but went back to get the coat and told her mother that he left his coat. Her mother told them that she was dead and buried. She then took them to the family graveyard where she was buried. They found the overcoat hanging on the tombstone.

(No. 363 in William Lynwood Montell, Ghosts Along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975, pp. 12728. Collected in Monroe County, Kentucky, in 1969 from a man born in 1905, this version combines the motifs of meeting the ghost at a dance with meeting her on the road, but it lacks the characteristic portrait-identification motif at her home.)

HITCHHIKER NO GODSEND TO POLICE

LITTLE ROCK (UPI) Reports of a mysterious hitchhiker who talks about the second coming of Jesus Christ then disappears into thin air from moving cars has sparked the imaginations of highway travelers and mystified the state police.

It sure is a weird story, Trooper Robert Roten said Friday.

Roten said the state police had had two reportsboth on a Sundaythat a clean-cut, well-dressed hitchhiker had disappeared from cars traveling along highways near Little Rock.

Efforts to find someone who actually saw the highway apostle proved fruitless. But Little Rock apparently is full of people who know someone who knows someone who had it happen to them.

One such woman, who emphasized she could not verify the story, heard about the hitchhiker from a woman she rides to work with. That woman had heard it from another woman whose parents supposedly were involved in the incident.

Lowering her voice, the woman told the story thus:

The girl said her parents and another couple were coming from Pine Bluff. They picked up this neatly dressed man because he looked like he needed transportation, you know. He discussed current eventshe knew about the [Iranian] hostagesand all of a sudden he said, Jesus Christ is coming again and disappeared.

They stopped the first trooper they saw and told him, youre going to think were crazy and told him about it. And he said, no, youre the fourth party thats told me about it today.

Roten said he checked with police districts all over the state and found only the two reports in Little Rock.

(National wire service story published in the Salt Lake Tribune on 26 July 1980.)

It was advertised in a newspaper in Boise, Idaho, that a 1971 Corvette was selling for $75.00. The advertisement was small and inconspicuousnot too many people noticed it. Anyone interested must appear in person to see the car brand-new condition.

When someone checked it out, they found the reason for the unbelievably low price being asked. It seems the car was being sold by the mother of the college-aged boy who the car had belonged to. It was on the level. The only reason the car could not be sold was the fact that the son had committed suicide in it, and the car had not been found with his body in it until after about ten months. The body had decomposed to the point that the horrible smell could not be taken out of the car, and no one could stand to be near it for any length of time. The mother still has it on her hands.

(Collected by my student Kristen Jensen in October 1971; deposited in the University of Utah Folklore Archive.)

We were sitting around and it was like about 12 oclock at midnight at a slumber party about two years ago [when this story was told].

Once there was a couple and they were dating and they went out to a they were out in the middle of the woods by a lake, parking. And they were making out and they had their radio on. There came a flash on the radio to beware that on the outskirts of the town there was a man with a hook on his hand who had escaped from a prison and to beware because if they saw anybody with a hook hand that he was dangerous. And so they sat there for a while, you know, and the girl started getting scared. She looked over and she locked her door and he locked his door and he said, This is really ridiculous getting upset about it. And she said, Well, you know, Im kinda scared about this thing. So they sat there for a while and she said, Listen, lets go into town. And he said, No, no lets dont worry about it, dont worry about it. And she said, Listen, Im getting kinda scared, well, lets go into town. And so he goes, OK. So he takes he takes her into town and when they drive up to her house, he gets out and he goes over to the side of the door, and on the door was a hook.

(From Danielle Roemer, Scary Story Legends, Folklore Annual 3 [1971], p. 13; collected from a nineteen-year-old woman in Dallas, Texas.)

Dear Ann: I tell this story to everyone I meet, but I hope that by telling you, others will get the message.

A lady friend of mine got into her car to do some errands. She was in a hurry but had to stop for gas.

The young attendant asked her to step inside his office because something was wrong with her credit.

Reluctantly, she got out and followed him. Once inside he asked her if she was aware that a man was crouched down in the back seat of her car. My friend nearly fainted.

Moral: Check your back seat before you get into your car. These days it is easy for an experienced rapist or mugger to open a locked car and hide in the back seat. Spread the word, Ann. I live in California.

Dear California: Consider it spreadand thanks for the tip.

(Ann Landers advice column, 31 July 1982.)

Okay, there was this lady, this baby-sitter, and she was baby-sitting these two kids and she kept on gelling these phone calls, and the first phone call said (Audience: Oh, I know this one!), You had better get out of your house in ten seconds or else Ill come down there and kill you. Ill kill you. And then she got another phone call which said, um. You better get out of your house in nine minutes or else Ill kill you. and then she didnt really believe him or anything, and she kept on dont do that! And then, so he did that about three times, well, so then it got down tothree, and then she called the police, and they transokay, they called it again, and the police were tracing the number, and the lady, and they said, they called her back and said, Lady, you better get out of your house, because the man, because(Audience: Uh-uh, they said, You better get out of your house before I kill you! ) Because the mans upstairs (Audience: Theres a murderer upstairs.) Before he was downstairs, and he slit the childrens neck.