The slasher under the car, also known as the mall slasher, is an urban legend that has circulated around America for decades. The grabbing, slashing, or striking out at a female victim’s ankle from under her own car is the central conflict of the story. It is usually set in a mall parking lot or garage, and it challenges the notion of shopping areas as safe places. Though it has never been substantiated, this story has spread, reflecting changing fears and stereotypes over the years.
Most accounts of the slasher under the car legend are quite similar. A lone female shopper walks back to her car in the parking lot. When she reaches her car and attempts to open the door, a man slashes her ankles with a weapon. She falls to the ground, whereby the perpetrator proceeds to attack her. However, fine details have been added and changed, depending on the time period and location of the audience of the story. Sometimes the setting places the tale inside a parking garage instead of a parking lot. The time of day has been reported as taking place in both broad daylight or later in the evening when it is dark. The attacker’s weapon ranges from a knife or razorblade for cutting, to a tire iron for smashing the victim’s ankles to bring her down. The purpose of the attack is sometimes mere theft of the victim’s purchases. At other times, the attack is an intended rape. The attack is sometimes purported to be a gang initiation. In this version, the victim, already attacked and brought down, loses a finger to the assailant to take back to his gang as proof of his crime.
The story is said to appear as early as the 1950s in regard to the Northland shopping mall outside Detroit. It is also reported in the late 1970s in Fargo, and several incident reports came out in the 1980s from Indiana, Alabama, Arizona, and Maryland. Some newspapers around the country reported the legend, seemingly as truth, while others attempted to quell its craze. In 1989, Tacoma, Washington’s News Tribune tried to debunk the legends, comparing them to the stories of women drying their dogs in the microwave. The attempt to highlight the ridiculousness of the story failed to squash its popularity. Gaining momentum in the press, the slasher under the car legend later appeared in the syndicated column Dear Abby in 1992. A girl requesting advice about the tale of her friend’s attack at a local shopping mall received a warning about shopping while alone and being aware of her surroundings, thereby adding credence to the otherwise unsupported legend. The speed of the Internet in the 1990s caused a rash of emails, chain letters, and warnings. It was also at this time that the legend seemed to change. Adding references to gang rites and initiations included a further layer of fear to the already scary tale.
In 1998, the film Urban Legend took several urban myths and placed them into the context of a full-length horror film. Numerous tales associated with cars, the slasher under the car included, were depicted on screen. The death of Dean Adams takes place in a dark parking garage. While he is distracted by a noise, the killer under the car slashes his ankles with a sharp blade, rendering him incapable of walking. He attempts to crawl away when the hooded murderer sets the car in motion. The vehicle runs him over the tire spikes at the garage entry, ending his life in a bloody reenactment of the mall slasher legend. The film is interesting in that it includes a twist on the gender expectations of the killers in urban legends. Brenda, a white female, is the culprit, while Dean Adams, a white, older male, is the victim.
The story of the slasher under the car reveals our culture’s changing fears and stereotypes regarding gender, race, victimization, and crime in the twentieth century.
Josianne Leah Campbell
See also Killer in the Backseat; Racism in Urban Legends; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1993. The Baby Train: And Other Lusty Urban Legends. New York: W. W. Norton.
Potter, Gary W., and Victor E. Kappeler. 1998. Constructing Crime: Perspectives on Making News and Social Problems. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Roeper, Richard. 1999. Urban Legends. Franklin Lakes: Career Press.
Urban Legend. 1998. DVD. Directed by Jamie Blanks. Canal+ Druits Audiovisuels, Original Film, and Phoenix Pictures.