Shadowrun Storytime is a long running series of text posts on 4chan's /tg/ board, originally starting as thread about playing Shadowrun with That Guy.From there the threads continue to chronicle the crew of runners and their many adventures after That Guy leaves, and the threads change name from Shadowrun That Guy to Shadowrun Storytime. Emily Irene Sander (February 26, 1989 â November 24, 2007) was an 18-year-old student at Butler Community College in El Dorado, Kansas, United States, who was reported missing on November 23, 2007 and found dead six days later. David Alan Gore (August 21, 1953 â April 12, 2012) was an American serial killer who confessed to, and was convicted of, six murders in Vero Beach and Indian River County, Florida in the 1980s. Gore was executed by lethal injection in 2012, having been on Florida's death row for 28 years. Brett Peter Cowan (born 18 September 1969) is an Australian murderer and child rapist who was convicted of the murder of Daniel Morcombe, who disappeared from the.
(Redirected from Hookhand)
The Hook, or The Hookman,[1] is an urban legend about a killer with a pirate-like hook for a hand attacking a couple in a parked car. The story is thought to date from at least the mid-1950s, and gained significant attention when it was reprinted in the advice column Dear Abby in 1960.[2] It has since become a morality archetype in popular culture, and has been referenced in various horror films.
Legend[edit]
The basic premise involves a young couple cuddling in a car with the radio playing. Suddenly, a news bulletin reports that a serial killer has just escaped from a nearby institution.[3] The killer has a hook. For varying reasons, they decide to leave quickly. In the end, the killer's hook is either found hanging from the door handle or embedded into the door itself. Different variations include a scraping sound on the car door. Some versions start the same way, but have the couple spotting the killer, warning others, and then narrowly escaping with the killer holding onto the car's roof. In another version, the woman sees a shadowy figure watching the couple from nearby. The man leaves to confront the figure, who then suddenly disappears. Thinking that his date just imagined it, the man returns to the car only to see that the woman has been brutally murdered with a hook.
In an alternate version, the couple drive through an unknown part of the country late at night and stop in the middle of the woods, because either the man has to urinate, or the car breaks down and the man leaves for help. While waiting for him to return, the woman turns on the radio and hears the report of an escaped mental patient. She is then disturbed many times by a thumping on the roof of the car. She eventually exits and sees the escaped patient sitting on the roof, banging the man's severed head on it. Another variation has the woman seeing the man's butchered body suspended upside down from a tree with his fingernails scraping against the roof. In another version of this variation, he's hanging right side up and either his blood is dripping on the roof or his feet are scraping against the roof. In other versions, the man does return to the car only to see his date brutally murdered with a hook embedded in her. Other tales have the woman leaving the car when her date doesn't come back, only to see his mutilated body (either on the car's roof, nailed on a tree, or just a few short stops away). As she starts to panic, she runs into the maniac and is also killed. In another variation of the story, the woman is discovered by police. While being escorted to safety, she is warned not to look behind her. When she does so, she sees the grisly aftermath of the man's murder.
A similar legend recounts that a young couple are heading back from a great date when their car breaks down (either from running out of fuel or a malfunction). The man then decides to head off on foot to find someone to help with the problem while the woman stays behind in the car. She then falls asleep while waiting and wakes up to see a hideous person looking at her through the window. Luckily, the car is locked, so the person can't get inside. But to the woman's horror, the person raises both of his arms to reveal that they are holding her date's severed head in one hand and the car keys in the other. The fate of the woman is never revealed.[2]
Origin[edit]
The origins of the Hook legend are not entirely known, though, according to folklorist and historian Jan Harold Brunvand, the story began to circulate some time in the 1950s in the United States.[1] According to Brunvand in The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, the story had become widespread amongst American teenagers by 1959, and continued to expand into the 1960s.[4]Snopes writer David Mikkelson has speculated that the legend might have roots in real-life lovers' lane murders, such as the 1946 Texarkana Moonlight Murders.[2]
The first known publication of the story occurred on November 8, 1960, when a reader letter telling the story was reprinted in Dear Abby, a popular advice column:
Dear Abby: If you are interested in teenagers, you will print this story. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it doesn't matter because it served its purpose for me: A fellow and his date pulled into their favorite 'lovers lane' to listen to the radio and do a little necking. The music was interrupted by an announcer who said there was an escaped convict in the area who had served time for rape and robbery. He was described as having a hook instead of a right hand. The couple become frightened and drove away. When the boy took his girl home, he went around to open the car door for her. Then he sawâa hook on the door handle! I will never park to make out as long as I live. I hope this does the same for other kids. âJeanette[2][5]
Literary scholar Christopher Pittard traces the plot dynamics of the legend to Victorian literature, particularly the 1913 horror novel The Lodger by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes.[6] Though the two narratives have little in common, he notes that both are built upon a 'threefold relationship of crime, dirt, and chance... Such a reading also implies a reconsideration of the historical trajectory of the urban legend, usually read as a product of postmodernist consumer culture.'[7]
The 4chan Serial Killer PicturesInterpretations[edit]
Folklorists have interpreted the long history of this legend in many ways. Alan Dundes's Freudian interpretation explains the hook as a phallic symbol and its amputation as a symbolic castration.[8]
Swedish folklorist Bengt af Klintberg describes the story as an example of 'a conflict between representatives of normal people who follow the rules of society and those who are not normal, who deviate and threaten the normal group.'[9]
American folklorist Bill Ellis interpreted the maniac in The Hook as a moral custodian who interrupts the sexual experimentation of the young couple. He sees the Hookman's disability as 'his own lack of sexuality' and 'the threat of the Hookman is not the normal sex drive of teenagers, but the abnormal drive of some adults to keep them apart.'[10]
In popular culture[edit]
A version of the story by author Alvin Schwartz appears in the 1981 collection of shorthorror stories for childrenScary Stories to Tell in the Dark.[11]
The 4chan Serial Killer Photos
In film, the Hook legend has occasionally appeared: in a 1947 film Dick Tracy's Dilemma. fictional Detective Dick Tracy pursues a murderous killer with a hook for a hand; the killer with a hook theme has also appeared in comedies; In Meatballs (1979), Bill Murray's character retells the Hook legend to campers around a campfire.[12] In Shrek the Halls (2007), Gingy tells an alternate version of this legend to his girlfriend Suzy in his flashback. The story has, however, most often been depicted and referenced in horror films.[13] Its prevalence, according to film scholar Mark Kermode, is most reflected in the slasher film, functioning as a morality archetype on youth sexuality.[14]He Knows You're Alone (1980) opens with a film within a film scene in which a young couple are attacked by a killer while in a parked car.[15] The slasher film Final Exam opens with a scene in which a couple are attacked in a parked car, and later, a student is murdered in a university locker room with a hook.[16]Campfire Tales (1997), an anthology horror film, opens with a segment retelling the Hook legend, set in the 1950s.[17]I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) features a killer stalking teenagers with a hook; at the beginning of the film, the central characters recount the Hook legend around a campfire. The Candyman films of the 90's, and the Jordan Peele update of the series that is scheduled to release in June of 2020, is centered around this legend as well.[18]Lovers Lane (1999), is a slasher film featuring a killer who murders teenagers at a lovers' lane with a hook.[19]
The story has also appeared in various television programs; 'The Pest House' (1998), the fourteenth episode of season 2 of the TV series Millennium, opens with a murder similar to that of the urban legend. Season one, episode seven of the TV show Supernatural features a hookman as the villain. It is the first story in the first episode of Mostly True Stories?: Urban Legends Revealed. The Canadian animated anthology series Freaky Stories (1997) has a segment in its first season based on the Hook, set in the 1950s.[20]
An attempted telling of the story by a 4chan user in broken English is itself a minor meme, specifically the ending when the woman in the car discovers the Hookman's hook stuck in the car, which is rendered simply 'man door hand hook car door.' This version has found its way into a re-working of the song 'Mr Sandman' by The Chordettes.[21]
See also[edit]References[edit]
Bibliography[edit]
Further reading[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Hook&oldid=974740152'
The Smiley face murder theory (variations include Smiley face murders, Smiley face killings, Smiley face gang, and others) is a theory advanced by retired New York Citydetectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, and Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud State University.[1] They allege that a number of young men found dead in bodies of water across several Midwestern American states from the late 1990s to the 2010s[2] did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but were victims of a serial killer or killers.
The term 'smiley face' became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that the police had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. Gannon wrote a textbook case study on the subject titled 'Case Studies in Drowning Forensics'.[3][4] The response of law enforcement investigators and other experts has been largely skeptical.
Gannon and Duarte's investigation[edit]
Letter from Congressman Sam Graves to FBI director Robert Mueller requesting the reopening of the case.
As recently as 2008, Gannon and Duarte were examining evidence[5] going back to the late 1990s that they believe connects the deaths of 45 college-age males whose dead bodies were found in water in 11 states, often after leaving parties or bars wherethey had been drinking. The men, according to the former detectives, often fit a profile of being popular, athletic and successful students, and most were white.[6]
Gannon and Duarte have theorized that the young men were all murdered, either by an individual or by an organized group of killers.[6][7] The term 'smiley face' became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that Gannon and Duarte had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer had dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases.[4]
In 2019, a new article appeared on The Daily Beast that highlighted the theory advanced over the years that a serial killer is abducting and murdering subjects of college age.[4]
Reception of the theory[edit]
Other police forces that have investigated the deaths dispute the conclusion that the cases are linked. Police departments that are involved do not currently view the deaths associated with smiley faces present at the scenes as serial-killer activity. [8] The La Crosse, Wisconsin police department, which was in charge of eight of the investigations, concluded that the deaths were accidental drownings of inebriated men, and stated that no smiley-face symbols were found in connection with any of the cases.[9] The Center for Homicide Research published a research brief that also attempted to scientifically refute the theory.[10] In March 2009, Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice faculty member at St. Cloud State University, voiced his support for the theory on an episode of Larry King Live in which the alleged murders were discussed.[11]
Criminal profiler Pat Brown calls the serial-killer theory 'ludicrous', arguing that the evidence does not fit what is known about serial killers. Brown also believes that the smiley-face images found in some of the cases are likely nothing more than coincidences based upon guesses as to where the bodies entered the water, with smiley-face graffiti only found after a wide-area search. 'It's not an unusual symbol,' she told Minneapolis-based newspaper City Pages. 'If you look in any area five miles square, I bet you could find a smiley face.'[12]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued the following statement:
The FBI has reviewed the information about the victims provided by two retired police detectives, who have dubbed these incidents the 'Smiley Face Murders,' and interviewed an individual who provided information to the detectives. To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings. The FBI will continue to work with the local police in the affected areas to provide support as requested.
ââFBI National Press Office, FBI Statement Regarding Midwest River Deaths (April 29, 2008)[13]
Ruben Rosario of the St. Paul Pioneer Press has questioned Gannon's motives, stating that Gannon has failed to provide any factual evidence that a group of killers exists, and that others, such as reporter Kristi Piehl (the original reporter of Gannon and Duarte's theory) and some of the parents of the young men, who were at first encouraged by Gannon, now wonder if he is actually hurting the grieving families. One of the parents, Bill Szostak, and Rosario even speculate that Gannon is seeking money or notoriety. Another parent, Kathy Geib, is working with Piehl and others, but their main goal is to convince police to take a second look at cases of alcohol-related drownings.[14]
Gannon and Duarte's investigation is the subject of a 2019 docuseries, Smiley Face Killers: The Hunt for Justice, on the Oxygen television network.[15] Episode 1 dealt with the death of Dakota James; episode 2, Luke Homan; episode 3, Will Hurley; episode 4, Brian Welzien; episode 5, Tommy Booth; and episode 6, Todd Geib.[16]
Oxygen television show[edit]
In January 2019, Oxygen TV aired a docuseries that examines victims of the smiley-face murder theory.[17] Produced by Alison Dammann, the six episodes focus on cases of young men who have disappeared and whose bodies are found in a body of water some time later. Smiley-face graffiti has been found at most of the crime scenes, which is how the cases are connected.[18] The causes of all deaths have either been undetermined or ruled as accidental drowning. The show seeks to find a possible connection to the smiley-face murder theory in hopes of reopening the cases and redefining the causes of death.
See also[edit]
General:
References[edit]
Bibliography
Notes[edit]08 The 4chan Serial Killer
The 4chan Serial KillerExternal links[edit]
The 4 Chain Serial Killer
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Smiley_face_murder_theory&oldid=968513340'
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