Okay, so if you ever spent an evening sitting around a campfire listening to ghost stories, then the chances that you’ve heard the story of ‘The Man With The Hook’ are somewhere around about 2 billion percent. It’s one of those wonderfully chilling tales that never fails to send a tingle up the spine, and it has made its way into any number of folk stories told all over the world [1].

I recently discovered a wonderful retelling of the tale over on AmericanFolklore.net, and I’d love to encourage you to go over and read the story, if for no better reason than it might remind you (as it did me) of some great times you spent at a younger age being scared out of your wits by a good tale.

Interestingly, I’ve encountered two different main retellings of this tale in my life. The first is very much like the version over on American Folklore, where the young couple discover the psychopath’s bloodied hook attached to the car door handle, indicating a very narrow escape.

The second, which may well have been borrowed from some other tale of a terrible encounter with a maniac, is even grislier still!

In this version the boyfriend leaves the young woman to go for help. A few minutes later she hears a sound on the top of the car, and moments after that a police loud hailer instructs her to run from the car for her life, and that whatever she does, she’s not to look back. Of course, she does risk a glance back at the car as she flees, and the story ends with her screams as she sees the The Man With The Hook standing on the roof of the car, holding the severed head of her unfortunate boyfriend [2].

Hope you enjoy the read, and I’d love to hear about your own encounters with the story of ‘The Man With The Hook’ in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of TJ Scott.

Footnotes:

1.	For example, I first heard it when I was about 12, at a Christmas Camp I attended just south of Brisbane, here in Australia.
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2.	Seriously, when I look back on stories like these, is it any wonder we all had nightmares as children?
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I can’t think of a better place to begin this blog than with possibly my favorite urban legend / ghost story of all time — the completely spooky tale of Bloody Mary!

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the story in one form or another from your childhood years. Sometimes the name changes [1], sometimes the details of the ritual changes, but in most cases the core elements of the story remain largely the same.

To summon Bloody Mary you have to go into a bathroom at the stroke of midnight and stand in front of the mirror with a lit candle and with the lights turned off. You chant her name 3 times, “Bloody Mary… Bloody Mary… Bloody Mary…” and then you shout, “I stole your baby!”

And then… in the mirror… you will see the face of a horribly disfigured woman — and she’ll claw your face with razor-sharp nails, leaving you just as terribly mutilated as she is!

Egad, what could be creepier than that!

It’s easy to imagine that some form of this ritual has been performed an endless number of times by children from vastly different backgrounds in the decades since it made its way into popular folklore.

But what about the legend itself?

Read the rest of this entry »

Footnotes:

1.	I’ve encountered the story using the name Bloody Mary, Hell Mary, Mary Worth, Mary Whales, Mary Wolf, and Black Aggie, just to name a few.
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