Imagine… you are driving home, down an abandoned highway, from a late-night party, and all of a sudden a man drives up behind you and starts flashing his headlights. Bright, dark, Bright, dark. As this pattern continues, you are becoming more anxious while wondering what this crazed driver could possibly want. By the time you reach your house, he is still right behind you, and pulls into your driveway as well. You immediately jump out of the car and start to run at about the same time as the man behind you. You hear him yell to call the police, and your mind is going in all different directions. Even though you are sure he is the one whom the police should arrest, you dial the number anyway. When the police finally come, you find out what the …show more content…
In 1967, The Killer in the Backseat was a well-known story that was passed around from person to person. Because of this, it spread very quickly around America and became immensely popular. The urban legend teaches the reader to be aware of what is close to them, and was featured in the 1998 movie, Urban Legends. This pop culture icon may have originated from a 1964 report, where an escaped murderer climbed into the trunk of a cop car. Once the owner of the vehicle had reached his car, he shot the murderer and retrieved him from the backseat (Mikkelson). This comes to show that this urban legend is more than just a telling of a creative author’s imagination. It’s an adaptation of a real event. However, this isn’t the only account. On Sept. 14, 2007 a familiar sequence of events took place. A college girl in Alabama had a man with a gun pop up in her backseat, as she was driving away from her dorm. Thankfully, she got away from him by slamming on her brakes and bolting …show more content…
“Even as a horror legend, this one is sexist to the core. As mentioned earlier, the prey is always female and both the evil fiend and the rescuer are male” states Mikkelson in his Snopes Urban Legend Article. Evidence proving the bias part of the legend is presented here because it shows that there are personal meanings, even though it may just seem like a silly story. This is also extremely racist, seeing as the criminal is always a black man and the victim and savior are both white.. Diving in deeper to the sexist side, the girl always needs the guy to explain to her what is going on, and she can never figure it out for herself. This woman is treated much lower than the others