Fact Check

Broom Death

Did a coed die pleasuring herself with a broom?

Published April 3, 2003

Claim:

Claim:   A coed fatally skewers herself while masturbating with a broom handle.


LEGEND

Examples:

[Collected via e-mail, 1999]

A story that I heard that was kind of like the hot dog one was that there was this girl who got drunk at a party then she went home and she was really horny so she used a broom stick to pleasure herself. She was standing on the table for some reason and her mom walked in on her. She jumped off the table and the broomstick went up her and it killed her. I doubt this is true but this girl just told me that.


[Collected via e-mail, 1999]

I heard something close to your frozen hotdog story. But it was about an athletic girl, who was doing arm pull ups. And after awhile she started to get horny from the up and down motion. So she found a broom and started to do her pull ups again, with the broom inside of her. After awhile her mom comes in to tell her that dinner is ready, but she walks in while the girl is masterbating with the broom. The mom screams and scares the girl, that she forgets the broom is underneathe her and she lets go of the bar. Then the broom goes through all of her organs, and comes out of her mouth and ends up killing the girl.


[Collected via e-mail, 1999]

A teenager reportedly was experimenting in her ways of masturbation. Her mother was rarely away from the house, so she had not come across too many opportunities to masturbate, but one day her mother came home from work, worn out, and told her that she was going to draw herself a bubble bath and not to expect her for at least an hour. The teenage girl took advantage of this time slot and decided to experiment with rubbing herself with various objects, and one of them was a broom. Finding she could not "do much" with the broom in her bed, she moved into the kitchen and situated herself on top of the refrigerator. Apparently her mother surprised her by opening the bathroom door before the hour was up, and the girl, not wanting her mother to find her in this compromising position, hurriedly hopped off of the refrigerator, without removing the broom handle. The broom handle was shoved up inside of her and came out her eye.


[Collected via e-mail, 1999]

My friend's dad was the director of one of our local hospitals. One day after coming home from work he told his son about something that had happened that day (even though it was supposedly confidential). He said a gay male had been admitted to the hospital that day. The problem was the guy, trying to get off, rigged up this sex toy type thing. It supposedly consisted of several pulleys attached to the ceiling and a broom, which was inserted into the rectum.

The idea was when the guy, who was suspended from the ceiling or something, pulled on one rope the broom would pleasure him. But then something went terribly wrong and it broke sending the broom up the rectum and through his stomach. Later family or friends found him (embarrassing I'm sure) hanging there with a broom up his butt.

Variations:

  • Almost without fail, when the story features a woman she will be described as a "girl," a term that serves to identify her as a sexually curious teen rather than as an adult with peculiar tastes.
  • The deceased's mother usually features prominently in the tale, either by the shock of her discovery of the masturbatory act precipitating the accidental fatal impalement or through fear of her making that discovery prompting the youngster to take ill-conceived steps to conceal her activity.
  • Sometimes the broomstick death is used to complete other legends of sexual misadventure by having the embarrassed party expiate guilt by suicide in this manner (e.g. girl caught masturbating with a hotdog sharpens a broom handle, inserts it into herself, and jumps off a refrigerator).
  • A few tellings change what is most often a "horny teen girl" tale into one featuring a gay man whose proclivities send him to the emergency room or the morgue.

Origins:   Our 1998 article about the hapless hotdog lover (teen girl who pleasures herself with a frozen weiner has to be taken to a hospital to have the hot dog fished out, a process that serves to bring her solitary activity to light) prompted many of

Broom

our readers to ask about a related tale of masturbatory misadventure involving a broom. Though we cannot pinpoint how long this particular urban legend has been circulating, it has clearly been part of the genre for many a year.

Akin to other tales of parental discovery of masturbation (e.g. one we call the Tea-Bird in the Hand), it's Mother, the ultimate moral figure who happens upon the scene of her child experimenting with self-gratification, never Dad. At least in the world of lore, fathers are not perceived as wielding the same power of disapproval mothers are expected to dish out, so good storytelling demands the parent deemed more easily shocked and less likely to be permissive about sexual matters be the one called upon to witness the act. Yet parental discovery there must be because mere death (even one involving being skewered on a broom handle) is not enough; Mother has to witness with her own eyes what her dearest darling was doing if the underlying moral of this cautionary tale

is to be transmitted adequately. (Teens fear parental discovery far more than loss of life because the one is far more real a possibility to them.)

In the broom story, the girl doing the experimenting pays for her expanded sexual knowledge and uncontrollable lust with her life. That same lust results in other deaths by impalement in another urban legend, the venerable "girl on a gearshift" tale, in which other young ladies overcome by sensations of sexual tension attempt to relieve them with equally fatal results.

Underlying all of these stories are two shared themes: "inappropriate sexual knowledge" and "uncontrollable lust," both seen as daunting concepts by the average teen. That sense of trepidation is put into words in these cautionary tales which warn teens (especially girls) against the dangers of letting their burgeoning sexual feelings take them over by presenting wildly improbable worst-case scenarios of what could happen if they ever did unleash that particular ravening beast.

Barbara "beast of burgeon" Mikkelson

Last updated:   24 June 2011