The Hook on the Hand

So one of the things I didn't get around to mentioning in my The Cemetery post is the use of the urban legend commonly known as The Hook. It comes up twice - once when Rick is telling ghost stories at the Halloween party* and again when Dorian is killed by the Ripper. Just before his death, Cyndi finds a hook attached to Dorian's car:

If you're not familiar with the story, The Hook dates back to roughly the 1950s, and like most urban legends, serves as a morality tale for hormonal teens, much the same way fairy tales like Red Riding Hood warned young women against predatory men of court back in the day. The quick and dirty version of the story is thus:

A young couple are parked up down some lovers' lane. The radio plays while they make out. A breaking news story announces that a serial killer has escaped from a local mental institution and can be identified by the hook on his hand. The couple decide to leave, with various spins on the end of the story following. Either they get home to find a bloody hook dangling from the car door, or for some reason the man has to leave the car, and the woman later finds him dead. Some variations see her hearing strange thumping on the roof of the car, only to discover said serial killer up there with her boyfriend's severed head. One version sees her finding the boyfriend hung from a tree over the car, his nails scraping the roof as his body swings back and forth.

However the story ends, the message is clear: keep it in your pants, kids!

Now, clearly this is a warning against loose morals and sexual experimentation, and we could even link to back to the real-life Phantom Killer case of 1946, but I'm not here to talk about horny teens and the fates they richly deserve. I'm here to ask questions. Two questions, specifically.

First - why is the killer an escaped mental patient?

And second - why the blazing hell would someone who'd been instutionalised be allowed to keep a hook on their hand?

I mean, look, I know mental health care in 1950s America wasn't the best, but we were seeing a move towards more community-based care and less underfunded, understaffed, brutally poorly-run institutions. In any case, I have to assume that even the worst asylum going wouldn't let someone with a hook for a hand just keep that hook. Especially if that patient was also a serial killer and also certifiable insane as the story implies. That's just...really bad practice, you guys.**

Also, for the record, I think a hook is probably a really inefficient way to serial-kill people.

But let's circle back to question one. Why does the story conflate mental illness with murder? Why is a mental patient automatically dangerous, or a killer?

I noted with Help Wanted and The Mummy that there is a tendency in Point Horror books to make the villains "crazy." I guess it's an easy literary shortcut - they're doing bad things because they're mentally ill! Case closed. And of course nowadays you don't have to wait long to hear "was he mentally ill?" whenever a lone white male goes on a mass shooting spree. This clearly completely ignores the fact that many of us with mental health problems never bloody kill anyone***.

We can blame it on the era. Like I say, mental health care in the 1950s was undergoing a change, but the change in treatment options wasn't necessarily followed by a change in understanding. The stigma surrounding mental health continues to this day, and the understanding of conditions evolves slowly, with social understanding tending to lag behind medical understanding, because let's face it - "sociopath" is just such a cool term to throw around.****

You would think, for a 1950s warning against whipping your dick out in public places, you wouldn't need the added "scare" of the killer being a crazy guy. We can talk about the abnormal psychology that might lead someone to become a serial killer, for sure, but there are always exceptions to the generally accepted "signs." I'm not here to say serial killers are not mentally ill, though. I'm here to say mentally ill people are not destined to become serial killers, and that the conflation of "mentally ill" with "dangerous" is itself a damaging stereotype. And it's so prevalent in the news, in literature, and even in old spoopy urban legends, that it feels worth reiterating as often as possible. Psychotic is not psychopathic. Depressed is not dangerous. Hooks are not good murder weapons.

*Even though this is categorically not a ghost story, Rick, you moron. I'm glad someone knocked you out.

**And don't tell me he could have got the hook after escaping. Where's an escaped asylum inmate going to find a hook? Like, how much effort is that kind of person going to put into find a hook they can attached to their wrist and use to kill people? There are easier ways to kill people, that's all I'm saying. 

***Even if Karen is super annoying.

****That was sarcasm, by the way.

Retro Reading - The Mummy

After thoroughly loving my re-read of Help Wanted, I decided my next Point Horror should be one I didn't read as a teenager, so as to view it without those rose-tinted nostalgia goggles. I remember seeing The Mummy in bookshops during my Point Horror years, but I never picked it up. I'm not sure why, because I love Egyptian mythology, so this should have been a must-read for me. Maybe I was already weaning myself off Point Horror by the time this one came out?

Anyway! Our story is simple enough. Egypt-obsessed aspiring archaeologist, Lana, volunteers at her local museum to help run a priceless Egyptian exhibit. As she becomes more and more fascinated with the mummy of the boy-prince, Nefra, creepy things begin happening to and around her. Part of the exhibit is stolen. Someone - or something - is stalking Lana. And they may not be human - or even alive. Throw in some dreams that might not be dreams and a too-smart cat, and you've got a recipe for spookiness!

Honestly, I started out thinking I wouldn't like this. The writing felt more juvenile than Help Wanted or The Silent Scream, but I think some of that is down to the nostalgia goggles. Lana came across at first as very young, and her Egypt obsession was painted as kind of childish. As the story develops, she improves, but I could never really get a feel for how old she was supposed to be, and she could have been anywhere between fourteen and eighteen based on her behaviour.

The central mystery - who stole the necklace from the exhibit and who is stalking Lana - is handled well in that there are several suspects who all seem equally likely. Disappointingly, it's another case of "the villain is psychotic!" and I really think there should be a disclaimer in these books somewhere that reads PSYCHOTIC DOES NOT EQUAL DANGEROUS/CRIMINAL. But I liked that the answer wasn't obvious, and that Lana pieces the clues together herself, without any wild last-minute confessions from the bad guys.

The Egyptian elements rely heavily on the motif that Egypt is an exotic, mysterious country where everyone believes in magic and curses, which...I don't know, probably isn't entirely a sensitive presentation. But I think any story written by a non-Egyptian person is probably going to take that route, because it's an idea that's so entrenched in Western society. There are paranormal elements in the story that turn out to be genuine - Lana's cat is the reincarnation of Nefra, and Lana's dreams really are dreams of her past life as an Egyptian princess. I liked that, in the sense that it was cool that it turned out the spooky stuff wasn't all Scooby-Doo style "bad guy in a mask" shenanigans.

There was a heavy emphasis placed on how Lana could so easily pass for an ancient Egyptian without anyone ever addressing what an "ancient Egyptian" looked like. I guess it's entirely possible Lana is a WoC, but mostly it just seems like she wears her hair a certain way (it's not said, but I'm assuming she's gone for the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra cut), and everyone says "wow, so Egyptian!" I found that weird, especially as there are two Egyptian characters in the book who are explicitly described as "not white." It irked me that Lana, who is presumably white, is lavished with praise for being so beautifully Egyptian-looking.

What I did like was this:

There's a nasty tendency for certain Westerners to mock the broken English of people who speak it as a second language. I am always going to champion a book that makes the point that - hey, how many languages do you speak? So just going to leave that there.

That aside, this turned out to be a fun read. Hey, it had a magic cat! And I can definitely relate to a heroine who just wants to stay home with her cat.