The Boyfriend's Death (Mackenzie Kliebert)

## Legend Summary

The Boyfriend’s Death is what one could easily consider a common urban legend, due to the nature of it and the way it is presented in the media. The legend begins with a couple, driving somewhere late in the night. Usually, the couple is on the way back to their homes after being out for a little longer than they were supposed to, or, they are driving somewhere to sneak around from people. Either way, the legend begins with the couple already not in a good place. The boyfriend, who is always the one that is driving the vehicle, notices that they are dangerously close to running out of gas. Eventually, the car does run out of gas, which causes them to pull off the side of the road or onto a gravel road located within the neighboring woods. The location they pull off at seemingly has terrible service so there is no way the boyfriend can call for help. The brave boyfriend then states that he saw a gas station about a mile back, and offers to walk to the gas station so that the couple can return home. When he makes his way to leave, he instructs the girlfriend to not move, stay hidden, and especially do not get out of the car. After a while, the girlfriend eventually gets restless due to the “sounds of nature” occurring outside the vehicle or from having to wait a long time. Eventually, the girlfriend gets out of the car to walk around or to see if she can stop the “sounds of nature”. Upon exiting the car, the girlfriend is met with the sight of her dead boyfriend in very close proximity to the car (Mikkelson 2001).

## Legend History

The history of this adaptation begins with Frank Mitchell in 1966, and when he escaped from the Dartmoor Prison in the United Kingdom (Wilson 1998). His escape led to mass hysteria all over the United Kingdom due to his history of violence, previous actions, and his enormous stature (“Frank Mitchell”, 2023). Mitchell had escaped high security prisons two times previous to the one currently being described. On both accounts of his previous escapes, Mitchell had held young couples hostage when confronted with law enforcement (Wilson 1998). During the time in which he held these people hostage, it was claimed he had threatened to murder them with an axe. These two instances eventually led to him receiving the name “The Mad Axeman” (“Frank Mitchell”, 2023).  His history of holding couples hostage, along with the mass hysteria spreading across the United Kingdom, parents grew very wary. Law enforcement began to notify citizens to “lock your doors”, leading to even more panic in Dartmoor and Devon. With the mixture of real incidents that occurred which involved Frank Mitchell and the wide-spread hysteria across the United Kingdom, the legend of The Boyfriend’s Death was created. The most notable research and analysis of this legend and its creation was written by Michael Wilson, in Volume 109 of his Folklore collection. In this article, Wilson carefully researches the past involving Frank Mitchell and how he has inspired one of the most well known legends today. He incorporates commentary from individuals who lived during the wave of panic and even dives into how traditional gender roles play into the legend.

## Adaptations of the Legend

This legend has been adapted and shifted in many different ways to imply different behavioral tendencies of the girlfriend and also the way in which the boyfriend was found dead. In the earlier adaptations of the legend, the girlfriend is deemed as more obedient and the boyfriend is eventually found dead with his head spiked onto a CB antenna (antenna found on earlier makes of vehicles). This legend keeps consistent with the original version in the way the couple was sneaking out to hook up, the car ran out of gas, and the boyfriend left to get gas for the car. He instructs her not to move, don’t get out of the car, and to stay hidden. She waits for an extremely long time, until eventually the sun rises, and the local sheriff comes to see if anyone is still in the car. She finally gets out of the car, and begins to walk to the sheriff, when she suddenly looks back and sees her boyfriend's head impaled on the car’s antenna (Mikkleson 2001). In 1998 a film was released called “Urban Legend”, in which it tells a slightly different tale of The Boyfriend’s Death. This adaptation follows the same events as the original version, once again, minus the actions of the girlfriend and the way in which the boyfriend was found dead. In “Urban Legend”, the girlfriend becomes irritated with what seems to be the sound of a tree scratching the car, and proceeds to turn on the radio. Despite the radio, the noise continues and she gets out of the car to investigate the noise and to hopefully stop it, but looks up to a dreaded sight. Her boyfriend, hung by his feet, was hanging upside down from a tree above the car, throat slit, and his fingernails dragging across the roof of the car (Mikkelson 2001).

## Analysis of the Adaptations

While these two adaptations only differ in the behavior of the girlfriend and the way in which the boyfriends were found dead, I believe it demonstrates the way in which time plays a massive impact on these legends. The earlier legend includes an obedient girlfriend who waits in the car for over 12 hours waiting for her boyfriend to return, following every instruction given to her until she is “saved” by the voice of another man. Considering the time in which this was written, and women were still viewed as co-dependent in nature, it makes sense as to why she was written the way she was. Even despite the continuous sound of an irregular dripping noise, she makes no move to investigate and stays hidden under a blanket. She trusted her boyfriend to return, and followed his exact instructions until met with another man, an authority figure, to give her the instructions to get out of the car. On the contrary, the actions of the girl from the second legend paint quite a different picture. In the later adaptation of The Boyfriend’s Death, the girl turns on a music radio station when annoyed by the noise and eventually gets out of the car to investigate. During her investigation, she finds her boyfriend’s dead body swinging from a tree above the car. This adaptation, instead painting the girl as obedient, blatantly paints her as disobedient, and in a way, dumb and naive. When she turned on the music radio station to try to drown out the noise, the end of this adaptation claims she should have turned on the news. If she would have listened to the news, she would have heard that a maniac had escaped a nearby insane asylum (Mikkelson 2001). This story depicts that if she would have been “smarter” or had followed the boyfriends exact directions, this could have been avoided and things might have ended differently for the couple. I believe that as time goes on, the narrative behind the women's behavioral instincts would continue to change. If this legend were to be adapted in today’s world, not only do I think the girlfriend would not listen to the instructions of her boyfriend, but more likely she would insist on going with him. Women today tend to hold themselves in a different way than in the past, so I believe this adaptation would have to be modernized in many different ways.

## Works Cited

Mikkelson, B. (2001, January 29). The Boyfriend’s Death. Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-boyfriends-death/

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, September 24). Frank Mitchell (prisoner). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank\_Mitchell\_(prisoner)

Wilson, Michael. “Legend and Life: ‘The Boyfriend’s Death’ and ‘The Mad Axeman.’” Folklore, vol. 109, 1998, pp. 89–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1260573. Accessed 12 Oct. 2023.