The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs
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The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs is a horror legend that dates back to at least the 1960's.
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[edit] The Legend
A teenage girl is babysitting one evening. The children have been put to bed and the babysitter is in the living room watching TV. Just then, the phone rings. When she answers it, she hears a man laughing (alternatively there is either silence, or heavy breathing) on the other end. He asks her if she's checked on the children recently. When she asks who he is, he hangs up. The stranger calls several times throughout the evening, and the babysitter starts to get scared. She calls the operator and asks him to trace the call. When the stranger calls back, the babysitter manages to keep him talking for several minutes, in order to trace the call, but when she asks who he is again, he hangs up. Then, the phone rings again. This time it's the operator. He orders the babysitter to get out of the house, because the calls are coming from inside the house. Now the babysitter is very scared. The operator says the police are already on their way (in some versions, the babysitter calls the police herself). As the babysitter moves toward the door, she hears, and then sees, a shadowy figure coming down the stairs. She runs from the house in terror. When the police arrive, they arrest a madman with a butcher knife. The children are all dead. The killer got into the house through an upstairs window and murdered the children in their beds. The babysitter was going to be his next victim.
[edit] Variations
- The number of children varies (one, two or three).
- In some tellings, the babysitter runs from the house without seeing the killer first.
- In an alternate humorous version, the police discover that one of the children is making the calls as a prank.
- In some versions (but very rarely), the children aren't murdered. Instead, they're either taken hostage, or the babysitter panics and moves the children downstairs. But usually, the story never works out for the children.
[edit] In other media
- The legend is discussed by a class of college students in the 1998 movie Urban Legend.
- The legend was the central plot for the 1979 movie When a Stranger Calls and its 2006 remake.
- A version of this was in the first book of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
Popular teen movie SCREAM holds similarities to this(the protagonist is called in her own home when her parents are out)
