Edit filter log

'{{Other uses|Hook (disambiguation)}} {{refimprove|date=August 2015}} '''The Hook''' or '''Hookman''' is an [[urban legend]] about a killer with a [[Prosthesis#Hooks|hook for a hand]] attacking a couple in a parked car. The story is thought to date from at least the mid-1950s.<ref>[http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/hook.asp]</ref> ==Story== The basic premise involves a young couple parking at a [[lovers' lane]]. The [[radio]] plays while they [[making out|make out]]. Suddenly, a [[news bulletin]] reports that a [[serial killer]] has just escaped from a nearby [[Psychiatric hospital|institution]]. The killer has a [[:wikt:hook|hook]] for one of his hands. For varying reasons, they decide to leave quickly. In the end, the killer's hook is found hanging from the door handle. Different variations include a scraping sound on the car door. Some versions start the same way, but have the couple spotting the killer, warning others, and then narrowly escaping with the killer holding onto the car's roof. The couple are later killed. In an alternate version, the couple drive through an unknown part of the [[rural area|country]] late at night and stop in the middle of the [[forest|woods]], because either the male has to relieve himself, or the car breaks down and the man leaves for help. While waiting for him to return, the female turns on the radio and hears the report of an escaped [[mental patient]]. She is then disturbed many times by a thumping on the roof of the car. She eventually exits and sees the escaped patient sitting on the roof, banging the male's severed head on it. Another variation has the female seeing the male's butchered body suspended upside down from a tree with his fingers scraping the roof. == Interpretations == Folklorists have interpreted the long history of this legend in many ways. [[Alan Dundes|Alan Dundes's]] Freudian interpretation explains the hook as a phallic symbol and its amputation as a symbolic castration.<ref>Brunvand, Jan H. ''The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings, '' New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981, pp.50-51.</ref> Swedish folklorist [[Bengt af Klintberg]] describes the story as an example of "a conflict between representatives of normal people who follow the rules of society and those who are not normal, who deviate and threaten the normal group."<ref>Brunvand, Jan H. ''Encyclopedia of Urban Legends'' New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp.200-201.</ref> American folklorist Bill Ellis interpreted the maniac in the ''The Hook'' as a moral custodian who interrupts the sexual experimentation of the young couple. He sees the Hookman's handicap as "his own lack of sexuality" and "the threat of the Hookman is not the normal sex drive of teenagers, but the abnormal drive of some adults to keep them apart."<ref>Ellis, Bill. ''Why Are Verbatim Transcripts of Legends Necessary?'' in Bennett, Smith and Widdowson, ''Perspectives on Contemporary Legend II'' (1987) pp.31-60.</ref> In 2012 an anonymous users on 4Chan wrote a short version of this story with very bad grammar named Man Door Hand Hook Car door, that has since become a meme for it's notortiously nonsensical last sentence, and use of the world "Sweaty" as a misspelling of "Sweetie" == See also == *[[Great Hill Cemetery|Hookman's Cemetery]] The actual hook of Sweden and Finland ref Norse mythology. https://youtu.be/VExAOYjXvZA This hook depicts an actual map. This is not spam == References == {{reflist}} {{Urban legends}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Hook}} [[Category:Urban legends]]'