part0023

The question is: Was Ann Landers taken in by a horrifying urban legend? Many of her readers—at least, those who are also my readers—seem to think she was, and they wrote to ask my opinion.

People from coast to coast, plus a few from abroad, sent me Ann’s column dated September 24, 1986. In it, a reader relates a tragic story of drunken driving.

It seems that a woman’s husband came home from work at 2:00 A.M., cockeyed drunk. He managed to get up for work in time, though, and began pulling his car out of the garage, into the driveway. His wife realized that he had forgotten to take his lunch and began running out to give it to him. She got “as far as the porch and fainted.” The husband got out of the car to see what was the matter. There, embedded in the grill of his car, was the lifeless body of an eight-year-old girl.

Ann Landers replied, “What a grisly story! Bone-chilling, to say the least. I hope it makes an impact on drivers who chance ‘a few’ and don’t think it will make any difference.”

I also hope it has an impact, but not because I think it’s true. Until someone can offer conclusive proof that this cautionary tale really happened, I’ll have to say that that’s just what it is: a mini–morality play that got started up and gained currency because it demonstrates our rising concern with the dangers of drunken driving.

There are a number of questionable elements here. For one thing, there are no corroborating details of time or place. The letter writer simply begins, “I would like to tell you about another woman who had a nervous breakdown because of the same problem”—i.e., her husband’s drunken driving, discussed in a previous Ann Landers column.

I called Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD) in Houston, Texas, which keeps track of alcohol-related accidents. They told me that they assumed the story to be true—but even they could provide no further details.

Yet, in April 1987—seven months after the Ann Landers’s column—I received a letter from a Covina, California, reader who had heard a variation of “The Body on the Car” told at a Students against Drunk Driving (SADD) presentation. In this version, the wife goes out for the morning newspaper and discovers the “embedded” body, while her husband, still passed out from the night before, is lying on the living-room couch. Either other versions of the story had been circulating, or the one in the Ann Landers column was acquiring variations from repetitions.

Another letter sent in the spring of’87 reported “The Body on the Car” told in Carbondale, Illinois. One slight variation here: she was a seven-year-old girl.

The notion implied in all versions that a young child was out on the streets at 2:00 A.M. seems farfetched. We’re asked to believe that the girl became integrated with the car’s grillwork (like the VW Bug in the preceding legend) instead of being hurled through the air, which is what normally happens in a head-on collision with a pedestrian. We’re also supposed to accept the idea that the driver was so drunk, he didn’t notice that he’d just hit a young child—nor did anyone else on the road—as he drove around town with her riding on his car like a hood ornament. Yet, this semiconscious man was still alert enough to park his car in the garage without incident.

The fainting woman is another familiar touch of urban-legend fantasy, as is the unlikely detail that the driver was up bright and early for work the day after his adventurous night.

One reader sending me the clip added the footnote, “Please, Ann, tell us it’s just a story.” Several others sent me copies of their own letters to Ann Landers, tipping her off that it smelled like a legend to them. But as far as I know, there has been no disclaimer for this one in any subsequent Ann Landers column.

I suppose I cannot blame Ann; she really wasn’t the first to spread the story. A reader wrote to me some weeks before the Ann Landers column (letter dated August 27, 1986) that she had heard it told in Santa Monica, California. At this time, it was attributed to the traditional “friend of a friend” and had the variation of the man himself making the discovery. He goes to a party, where he gets drunk. His host and hostess try to make him stay over, but he insists on driving home. In the morning, he returns to his car and sees “draped across the hood … a dead body.”

The day after most of the above discussion appeared in my column (in late March 1987), Professor Malcolm K. Shuman of the Museum of Geoscience at Lousiana State University in Baton Rouge wrote. He remembers reading a story very similar to the legend while browsing through the comic-book collection of a younger cousin some thirty years ago (“ca. 1953, give or take a couple of years”).

As Professor Shuman recalls the horror-comic episode, a man driving on a highway (fast, but not under the influence) is well aware that he has struck a pedestrian but decides to ignore the accident and drive on. But in the next town, an angry crowd stops him when they see the dead pedestrian caught between bumper and grill. So the hit-and-run element of the story seems to have existed much earlier than the 1980s, although the ultimate source of all details in “The Body on the Car” is still obscure .

Considering all these references to “The Body on the Car”—yes, folks, I do believe that Ann Landers fell for a legend, although her motives were only the best. After all, the reason so many grisly urban legends like this one continue to circulate is that they teach us worthwhile lessons in highly dramatic ways. The warning contained in “The Body on the Car” story should certainly be heeded, but that does not mean that the incident is true.