Legend
The legend involves a woman who is driving and being followed by a strange car or truck. The mysterious pursuer flashes his high beams, tailgates her, and sometimes even rams her vehicle. When she finally makes it home, she realizes that the driver was trying to warn her that there was a man (a murderer, rapist, or escaped mental patient) hiding in her back seat. Each time the man sat up to attack her, the driver behind had used his high beams to scare the killer.
In some versions the woman stops for gas, and the attendant asks her to come inside to sort out a problem with her credit card. Inside the station, he asks if she knows there's a man in her back seat. In another she sees a doll on the road in the moors, stops, and then the man gets in the back.
The story is often told with a moral. The attendant is often a lumberjack, a trucker, or a scary-looking man; someone the driver mistrusts without reason. She assumes it is the attendant who wants to do her harm, when in reality it is he who saves her life.
Read more about this topic: Killer In The Backseat
Famous quotes containing the word legend:
“Newspaperman: That was a magnificent work. There were these mass columns of Apaches in their war paint and feather bonnets. And here was Thursday leading his men in that heroic charge.
Capt. York: Correct in every detail.
Newspaperman: He’s become almost a legend already. He’s the hero of every schoolboy in America.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I’m still doing it.”
—Miles Davis (1926–1991)
“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
—Willis Goldbeck (1900–1979)