Freaky Finger Tales

A wealthy lady and her boyfriend go to the mall about a half hour before closing time. The lady shops while her boyfriend waits outside. After a while, stores are closing down, locking doors, but the boyfriend is still waiting outside with no signs of his girlfriend returning to the car.

When the boyfriend notices what looks like the last store flip it's "open" sign to "closed," and shut off all the lights, the man gets worried and goes into the mall to talk to security. He asks security to check for his girlfriend, mentions the store she planned on visiting, and says he has been waiting almost an hour for her.

Sure enough, the security guy finds the girlfriend in the clothing store she visited. Bad news...

The woman is passed out from blood loss and requires emergency care immediately.

One of her fingers is cut off...the one which used to display her diamond ring.

Security and the lady's boyfriend act quickly. They summon an ambulance, then try to stem the flow of blood until the emergency crew arrives. The security assistant calls forward to another guard elsewhere at the mall and has him search for a black/negro assailant anywhere in or around the mall, in hallways or in the parking lot. The search turns up absolutely nothing.

Emergency workers assist the injured shopper and after a trip to the hospital for stitches, she is sent home with a warning from doctors that, perhaps, she not make herself an easy target for crime again by wearing expensive jewelry to common places like shopping malls.

The woman's finger and, obviously, her diamond were never recovered.

(General version, mostly told in U.S.A.)

A woman on a long journey by bus was jostled awake on a late night bus ride by the bus driver coming to a sudden and near-erratic stop.

The bus had been hastily pulled over by policemen and the police quickly boarded the bus, shouting orders almost too rapidly for the sleepy woman to comprehend. She watched as the police restrained a man and roughly marched him off the bus. The police spoke to the angry man beside the bus for a moment, near the woman's open window.

She heard the police ask the man to reveal what was in his knapsack and made him hand the bag over. As one of the officers was identifying the contents, the woman heard:

"diamond ring - arrest this man"

Worried about her own diamonds at this point, the woman reached her hands into her lap to check for her rings...found blood all over her front. She took one look at her hand, missing a ring finger - and passed out cold - before she could hear the officer also say,

"and the ring is still attached to a finger - search the bus for an injured passenger!"

(This version often told in Spain)

A man boarded a bus and found an empty seat. After a few moments of getting settled and comfortable in the bus seat, the new passenger was able to look around a bit and relax. He thought he might talk in a friendly way with his seatmate but when he examined his seatmate with a polite glance, he noticed his seatmate's shirt was spotted with blood. Worried, the newcomer asked if he might be of assistance, asking if his seatmate was aware of the blood.

The seatmate abruptly - almost harshly - declined any assistance, and his gruff manner caused a few other passengers to look his way so that others began to notice the blood stains on his shirt. Finally, some of the other passengers began to lean over and speak to the man, offering assistance, but to this, the man with the bloodstained shirt displayed agitated behaviors - while still strongly refusing aid.

At the next stop, the man with the bloodied shirt shimmied out of his seat, bolted down the aisle, got off the bus and, once clear of the doors, began to run full out. Something dropped by the bus wheel, so the bus driver yelled, "Wait - Stop - You dropped something!"

The man was long gone.

The bus driver stepped off the bus to pick the dropped item up, looked at it, dropped it, himself, while nearly fainting...

The twice-dropped item was a severed finger - with an expensive diamond ring still attached.

Mickey Rourke's anger management issues have been well spread over the years and are well known to most Americans. The actor had a strange way of dealing with anger in one incident - which later required that Rourke visit a hospital to have his self-severed finger reattached!

Yes, he cut his own finger off!

Here's the story:

Mickey Rourke Cut His Own Finger Off Because He "Didn't Want It."

Correction: The actor ALMOST completely severed his finger - the tip of his pinky finger on his left hand. He made a statement that he didn't think he needed the end of his little finger on his left hand, he was angry at the time, so he cut the fingertip almost clean off but left the extremity hanging by a tendon.

A friend was nearby and took him to a hospital to have the finger fixed. Rourke endured an 8-hour surgical procedure to have the tip of his little finger re-attached.

The Cut Off Finger tales seem to arise out of societal fears about mainly urban crime. Some of the 'Bus' versions I've encountered are about journeys or traveling to unfamiliar places and these might involve fear of unknown places and cultures, however, most bus versions are about city, metro, urban vehicles.

Crowds, high urban populations and the criminals that are feared - who magically become invisible within large crowds are common fears to both urban and rural people in most countries.

Aside from the Mickey Rourke story, the rest on this hub so far have no proofs of being actual, real events.

Some of the freaky finger tales stories are also cautionary tales against doing things to your body that are possibly dangerous and they fall into (as in the video below about the misude of Silly Bandz) a mild body horror genre.