Carroll applies psychoanalytic ideas to urban legends transmitted by word of mouth. He studied the story concerning a sick old woman who asks a younger woman for a ride home from a shopping center. The woman turns out to be a man who has an axe to kill the younger woman, but he is thwarted by a security guard. This legend has gained wide circulation in North America beginning in the early 1980's. The author contends that the particular details of the legend, the shopping center, the axe, the older woman-younger woman, and the gender disguise, are unique enough to merit interpretation along psychoanalytic lines. He feels the story reflects an unconscious projection by daughters of murderous hostility toward the phallic mother. This legend is compared with other similar stories and with the folktale "Little Red Riding Hood." The author concludes that the study of such legends helps us understand the projective systems of modern urban society.