The Boyfriend’s Death

One of the oldest and most popular urban legend is the tale of “The Boyfriend’s Death.”

One night a teenage couple parks their car out in the middle of the woods for a make out session. After they’re done, the boyfriend tells his girlfriend that he has to go outside to relieve himself.

After waiting for what seemed like three or five minutes, the girl starts to grow concerned that her boyfriend hasn’t returned yet. Just then, she hears a squeaking noise coming from the top of the car.

Right before she opens the car door, she looks out her window and sees a dark shadow only a few feet from the car. She recognizes that it’s not her boyfriend and fearing for her life, she hops into the driver’s seat to peel off.

But the car won’t move.

She frantically keeps hitting the gas but something is holding the car back. Someone had tied a rope around a tree and to the bumper of the car. She hits the gas one more time only to hear a loud scream.

She slowly gets out of the car only to discover that her boyfriend was tied to the tree and the squeaking noise she had heard was his feet dragging across the top of the car.

In another version of this urban legend, the young couple is out driving and hears a radio broadcast about a deranged man with a hook who escaped from a local penitentiary.

On their way home, they hear a loud thump hit the side of the car. The boyfriend pulls the car to a screeching halt and wants to investigate the noise. But fearing the radio warning, the girlfriend urges her boyfriend to keep driving and check out the car when they return home.

After a moment of deliberating, the boyfriend agrees with his girlfriend and they keep driving. When they reach home, they realize that the noise that they had heard was someone attempting to get into the car.

Hanging on one of the door handles was a bloody hook.

Both versions provide their own warnings. In the first urban legend, the message is clear: teenagers shouldn’t engage in pre-martial sexual situations. And the second urban legend is a warning to not stray too far from home, as well as to heed warnings in general.