A teenage couple has parked along a lonely country road. As they kiss, a news announcement comes over the car radio, warning of the escape of a dangerous homicidal mental patient in the area. He can be identified easily by the hook he wears in place of his missing hand. The girl becomes alarmed by the announcement and grows increasingly nervous as the boy attempts to rekindle their passion. Finally the boy, frustrated by his date’s inattentions, floors the accelerator and spins wildly out of the parking spot. Later, when they arrive at the girl’s home, the boyfriend comes around to open his girlfriend’s car door. He is horrified by what he sees hanging from the door handle: the bloody hook torn from the crazed killer’s hand!
One of the most enduring of the popular urban legends, the story of the hook hand has been around for generations, making its way into slumber party and campfire lore as well as into popular culture. Bill Murray tells the story in the movie Meatballs (1979), and countless references can be found in television programs and other media. The legend is yet another cautionary tale parents may tell their children to keep them away from romantic encounters in secluded off-road locations.
The constants in the story include the boyfriend becoming frustrated or angry when his girlfriend refuses to relax after hearing the radio broadcast. His angry, speedy takeoff in the car is essential to explain the dangling hook on the door. The boyfriend’s trip around the car to open his girlfriend’s door is also necessary to illustrate how right his girlfriend was and how wrong he was. In some versions of the story the girl tells her date that she hears scratching on the side of the door, leading to the abrupt departure.
The “hook hand” tale is yet another cautionary story that developed in the 1950s when cars became readily available to teens. However, earlier versions exist in which people on horseback were nearly attacked by the hook-handed madman before urging their horses to gallop away quickly, severing the hook. Logic aside (would a crazed killer be issued a deadly hook?), the scary story is commonly known in many countries, and the mention of a hook hand by anyone nearly always brings the legend to mind.
Some have applied Freudian concepts to this tale, most notably Alan Dundes. He speculates that the “fearful girlfriend” element of the story relates to anxieties that women possess of being alone in cars with men. The image of the hook being “torn off”—always on the door handle on the girl’s side—is a symbolic castration. Certainly the killer is foiled, but then so is the amorous date whose plans are spoiled by the girl’s uneasy feelings. In fact, in some versions of the story, no radio message is mentioned, and the young woman wants to flee merely because she feels “unsettled.” Others have speculated that the “hook hand” story may reflect prejudice and unreasonable fear against the mental and physically handicapped.
Besides Meatballs, the story is widely told in a variety of popular media. One of the characters in the film Stand By Me (1986) tells a version of the story on a camping trip, and in the film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) campers tell the story only to be attacked by a mentally deranged murderer with a hook hand. Television programs like Supernatural (The CW), Arrested Development (Fox), Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed (TLC), and Community (NBC) have staged episodes in which the story appears as a thematic element. The story is so fully ingrained in contemporary popular culture that no collection of campfire stories either in print or on the Internet is complete without including a variation of The Hook.
Linda Urschel
See also Killer in the Backseat; Scary Stories; Slasher under the Car
Further Reading
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2004. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends. New York: W. W. Norton.
Craughwell, Thomas J. 1999. Urban Legends: 666 Absolutely True Stories That Happened to a Friend … of a Friend. New York: Barnes and Noble.
Penn-Coughin, O. 2008. They’re Coming for You: Scary Stories That Scream to Be Read. Bend, OR: You Come Too.