The Killer in the Backseat (Stacey Courville)

## Legend Summary

“The Killer in the Backseat” first emerged in the late 1960’s.  It is an urban legend with staying power as proven by the abundance of its variations and adaptations.

First appearing in 1967 (Brunvand), the legend begins with a woman leaving the home of friends late at night.  As she gets into her car, she notices a car behind her start up at the same time.  The car follows her car even as she gets on the highway.  He drives close to her car, but never passes.  Terrified, the woman finally reaches her home honking madly with the car right behind her.  Her husband runs out to help and the driver in the other car explains that he followed her home because as he got into his car and turned on his lights, he saw a man crouch down in the backseat. He followed to be sure she got home safely. After hearing this, the husband opened the car door and pulled a man out of the backseat.

There are two regularly reoccurring core variations of the legend.  One variation involves flashing car headlights and the other features a gas station.

In the flashing headlight variation, the pursuing male driver flashes his car’s lights between high and low beams at erratically spaced intervals as he follows the woman.  After the conclusion of the pursuit, he ultimately explains that he flashed his lights each time the man in the backseat popped up to harm the woman. (Wikipedia)

The other core variation does not involve a pursuing driver but rather has the woman stopping at a gas station late at night. The gas attendant, an unsavory looking character who acts strangely around her car, eventually gets the woman to accompany him into the station where he explains that a man is crouched in her backseat as he calls the police. (Mikkelson)

Within these core variations, there are numerous versions.  Some feature a high school girl (Meirick) rather than a woman.  The pursuing driver might be a tough looking guy or a truck driver (Brunvand).  Some versions specify the would-be attacker in the backseat as a black man (Brunvand) an escaped mental patient (Wikipedia), or a gang member (Mikkelson) who might be wielding an axe or a knife.

## Legend History

“The Killer in the Backseat” first emerged in 1967 as a contribution by a University of Utah student with the legend first appearing in print in a 1968 collection from Indiana University Bloomington (Brunvand).  The first printed version introduces the variation with the car pursuing the woman flashing its high beams to keep the would-be attacker at bay.

Additional printed versions appeared in the early 1980’s. According to Cody Meirick, the first printed variation is the main source for Alvin Schwartz’s 1981 version of the story “High Beams” which appeared in the children’s book, “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.”  In 1982, the legend also appeared in a letter to advise columnist Ann Landers (Wikipedia).

The legend does not seem to have arisen from actual events but may be based on a real news story.  David Mikkelson reported that in 1964 in New York City, “an escaped murderer hid in the backseat of a car. The car, ironically, belonged to a police detective who shot the man.”

## Adaptations of the Legend

“The Killer in the Backseat” has been adapted in print, television shows, short and feature film, internet email chains forums, blogs and even in an episode of a TV cartoon series.  Interestingly, two of the more popular adaptations first appeared in 1998.  Although they share a “birth year,” the adaptations vary dramatically in their telling of the legend.

In the “Bright Lights” episode of the TV show “Beyond Belief:  Fact or Fiction,” a woman on the way to her grandmother’s house stops at a country bar late at night to check her road map.  A big, burly pool player named Gunner leaves a group of his cat-calling friends and offers to buy her a cup of coffee.  She declines and quickly heads out to her car.  As she drives into the night, a large pick-up truck begins following her very closely, honking and flashing its high beams on and off.  When she tries calling for help on her “car phone,” she drops it and her car skids to a halt.  Gunner emerges from the pick-up cocking and pointing his shotgun.  He then orders someone to get out of the backseat. A man emerges from the backseat with a knife.  While Gunner detains the man, he says to the grateful woman, “Maybe we can have that cup of coffee now” with the sound of approaching police sirens in the background.

In the feature film “Urban Legend” a woman is driving alone late at night in the rain when she stops at a dimly lit, rundown gas station on a lonely road.  A wiry, wild-eyed, stuttering gas attendant stares ominously in the car as he pumps gas and takes her credit card inside for processing.  He returns and tells her the card company is on the phone and needs to speak to her.  Once inside the office, she realizes the phone only has a dial tone and believes the man is trying to harm her.  As the attendant struggles to get his words of explanation out, the woman subdues him with pepper spray and breaks out of the office to escape to her car.  As her car fishtails out of the station lot, he runs after her, finally getting the words out through his stutter. “There is a man in your backseat!” he yells as he watches her taillights recede into the darkness. Just a little further down the road, the unsuspecting woman is attacked and killed by the man in the backseat.

## Analysis of the Adaptation

The “Urban Legend” film adaptation of “The Killer in the Backseat” holds true to many of the legend’s traditional elements and themes while introducing new ones. It also incorporates cultural elements and themes from the time of its creation in 1998.

The “Urban Legend” adaptation features the usual lone woman, traveling by car, dark night, need to temporarily stop on the journey, unfamiliar ominous stopping point, seemingly threatening male, and unseen attacker in the backseat.  However, many elements are unique.  The gas attendant, while still strange as in many versions, is not physically menacing and has the weakness of stuttering.  The woman, instead of being naïve, is wary, prepared with a weapon, and physically capable of escaping from the attendant.  Unlike in traditional variations, the attendant is unsuccessful in his attempts to warn the woman of the danger in her backseat and does not “rescue” her. Another difference from many versions is that the woman is confident that her actions have led to her escape from danger when in fact, her escape from the attendant ultimately leads her back to her car and the deadly danger still in the backseat.  Obviously, the biggest difference from other adaptations is that the woman dies.

The director uses 1990s cultural elements symbolically throughout the film in what now might seem to be campy ways.  For example, the woman drives a large SUV which could be considered a “safe” vehicle with a large backseat which is all the better for a would-be attacker to hide in.  The woman is listening to a college radio station call in show with the caller talking about stealing her roommate’s birth control pills, so we know the woman is sexually liberated.  The woman uses the self-defense spray Mace which is also the name of a medieval spiked club which certainly would be beneficial against an attack by an axe-wielding maniac.

The most apparent and consistent symbolic element running throughout the “Urban Legend” adaptation is the woman’s selection of music for her drive selected from her self-recorded cassette collection – the 1983 hit single “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (Steinman).  The refrain “Turn around, bright eyes” is advice that if followed might have exposed the man in the backseat.  As she continues to sing along, “Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by. Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit terrified” certainly is foreshadowing to events to come when she encounters the killer in the backseat.  Finally, the last verse of the song “But now I'm only falling apart. And there's nothing I can say. A total eclipse of the heart” would describe the woman being hacked with an axe by the killer in the backseat and her heart ultimately stopping.

While not as tidily packaged in a more romanticized format like some versions, this adaptation still warns us to be aware of our surroundings.  It still reminds us not to judge people’s character based on their appearance and our initial reaction to them.  The difference is that this adaptation warns us more broadly that the world has changed and everything is not as it appears.  Stuttering men can tell us vital details.  Women are strong.  We are better prepared for some dangers while still being unaware of others. Sometimes now there is no one to rescue us.

## Works Cited

Brunvand, Jan Harold. “Chapter 3: ‘The Hook’ and Other Teenage Horrors".” *The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings*, Norton, New York, 2003, pp. 47–73.

Davis, Amy. “Urban Legend Fact or Fiction: Killer in the Backseat.” *NERDBOT*, 1 Aug. 2023, nerdbot.com/2023/08/01/urban-legend-fact-or-fiction-killer-in-the-backseat/.

“Killer in the Backseat.” *Wikipedia*, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 May 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer\_in\_the\_backseat.

Meirick, Cody. “High Beams and the Killer in the Backseat: Story, Origins, and Meaning.” *Scary Studies*, 24 May 2022, www.scarystudies.com/high-beams-story-backseat-legend/.

Mikkelson, David. “The Killer in the Backseat.” *Snopes*, Snopes.com, 26 Sept. 2000, www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-killer-in-the-backseat/.

*Urban Legend*. Directed by Jamie Blanks, performances by Jared Leto and Tara Reid, Sony Pictures, 1998.

"Bright Lights." *Beyond Belief:  Fact or Fiction*, written by Mitchell Schneider, directed by

Marty Pasetta, Jr., Fox Network, March 6, 1998.

Steinman, Jim. “Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart.” *Genius*, 1983, genius.com/Bonnie-tyler-total-eclipse-of-the-heart-lyrics.