Urban Legend- The Claw

A girl and her boyfriend are up on a hill at the edge of town. They turned on the radio and found some music. The announcer read a bulletin. He said that a man with a hook in place of a hand had escaped from the state prison. The girl wanted to go home because the prison was not far from where they were. So the boy started the engine. But before they left they heard a scratching noise. They drove off. When the girl got home the boy walked around the car to open her door. Handing off the door handle was a hook.

Mandy was told this story when she was fifteen by her mother and has also heard the story since from some of her childhood friends. When she began to go out more, her mother lectured her a lot about being careful and Mandy always replied she would and then would leave. One night, Mandy ended up coming home later than she had told her mom and her mom discovered she had been out with a boy at a party in the Mullholland hills. The next day Mandy remembered her mother telling her this story.

Mandy believes the story was meant to scare her and deter her from wanting to be alone with a boy or be alone at any time at night. While at the time she heard this, she didn’t understand the moral of the story and believed her mom was overreacting, she now knows it was meant to teach her a lesson about safety. Mandy also pointed out that this story was told to her older sister as well when she was around Mandy’s age and apparently her mom was told the same story by her mother.

I believe many mothers or parents would use this story in general in order to deter their child from being alone at night with someone they might not know so well. I believe that this story would probably be more relevant and useful if told to a female just because there tends to be more of a concern when a girl is on her own with a guy rather than when a guy is alone with a girl. It is likely that this urban legend has been passed on also by kids who have heard the story, however, when they tell their friends about it, it’s more to scare them then to deter them from something.