This is the urban legend that has been scaring teenagers since the 1960s. it is also known as “When a Stranger Calls”. The urban legend does refer to several unsolved crimes that have been told for years about babysitters. The urban legend has been made into a horror film showing what the legend is.
The story of the legend: The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.
A married couple called for a teenage babysitter to look after their three children whilst they went out for the evening. The couple told the babysitter that they would not be back until later in the evening and that the children were already asleep.
At the start of the evening the babysitter started to do her homework whilst waiting for a call from her boyfriend. After a while the phone rang but when she answered no one was there, it was complete silence and the caller then hang up. A few minutes passed then the phone rings again, this time a man with a chilling voice said: “Have you checked the children?”
The caller hangs up once again.
The babysitter decides to ignore the call as it may have been the father that got distracted and had to hang up. Shortly after this call the phone rings again.
“Have you checked the children?” the man was back.
The babysitter answered: “Mr. Murphy?”.
The caller hangs up.
As it was the second call, she decided to ring the restaurant that the married couple where dining at, when she asked if she could talk to them and she is told the pair left 45 minutes earlier. In panic the babysitter called the police to say a stranger had been calling the house and kept hanging up. Due to the stranger not threating the girl they said they can not do anything.
After the call to the police, the phone rang again. The man was back.
“Why haven’t you checked the children?”
She asked the man “who is this?”
The caller hangs up.
She dials 911 again. She says to the dispatcher “I’m scared. I know he’s out there, he’s watching me.”
Due to not seeing the caller the police could not send police out to the house, but they could trace the address by using the address and number used. After giving information to the police she turns down the light down to see if she could see anyone outside. This is when the phone rings again.
“It’s me” the familiar voice said. “Why did you turn the lights down?”.
In panic she asked the caller: “Can you see me?”
After a long pause the man says: “Yes.”
She replies: “Look, you have scared me. I’m shaking. Are you happy? Is that what you wanted?”
“No.” he replies.
“Then what do you want?” she asks.
Another long pause. “Your blood. All over me.”
The babysitter then slams the phone down and almost immediately it rings again.
“Leave me alone” she screams.
It turns out to be the dispatcher calling back to tell her to get out the house as the caller is in another room of the house. Within seconds she puts the phone down and runs to the front door. She finds the door chain to be latched and it takes her time to unhook it, by this time she notices a door open at the top of the stairs with the children’s room light on. The light revealed a masked man. As she opens the door police are outside and go get the intruder that is covered in blood. This is when she finds out all the children had been murdered.
This legend did not happen in real life this way but there is a case very similar to this.
Where did the urban legend come from?
The urban legend came from a case that had similar and the same features in.
The case of Janett Christman:
Janett was born in March 1936 and was the oldest daughter of Charles and Lula Christman. She lived in Columbia, Missouri where her family owned a café and steakhouse. Janett was a 13-year-old student at Jefferson Junior High School and was described as a loving teenager that was very intelligent for her age.
Janett Christman
On Saturday 18th March 1950, Janett had plans to babysit for one of the two families she was a babysitter for, this family was Ed and Anne Romack. Janett was to babysit their 3-year-old son, Gregory. At 7;30pm Janett arrived at the Romack’s house, the married couple recently moved to the home in a rural and isolated home on 1015 Steward Road (on the outskirts of Columbia). At the time, Anne Romack was pregnant with their second child and they were going out for a night with their friends. When Janett arrived at the house they told her Gregory enjoyed sleeping with the radio on and he should not be a hassle for her.
Before leaving Ed showed Janett how to load, unload and fire the shot gun in case anything was to happen. He placed the gun by the door and said they would be back soon, they advised her to lock the door and turn the pouch light on.
Throughout the evening the weather became worse and temperatures became low. At 10:35pm the Boone County Sheriff’s Department received a frantic phone call, a woman in a panic shouted, “Come quick!” He tried to talk back to the woman, but the line was cut short and all that could be heard was the dial tone. The call was too short to trace, and she did not mention any information on her location.
Shortly after Anne Romack called home to check on Janett and see how Gregory was doing but they got no answer. Considering it was late they presumed she was asleep, so they spend a few more hours with their friends before heading home.
The Romack’s arrived home around 1:35 am, when they pulled up on the driveway, they noticed the front blinds were fully open. As they started to unlock the door, he released it was unlocked. As they opened the door, they were faced with Janett on the living room floor in a pool of blood. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered. She had a head wound made from a blunt object and multiple wounds from a mechanical pencil and a cord from an electric iron was cut with scissors was found around her neck. A few feet away the landline was dangling off the hook, Anne ran upstairs to check on her son and found him unharmed and still asleep.
Ed Romack dialled the police and they were sent immediately. The Boone County’s Sheriff’s department arrived with detectives and bloodhounds. The home showed clear indications that Janett tried to resist her attacker as there was blood smears and fingerprints found in the living room and kitchen. The back door was left open and police followed a trail outside and the search dogs managed to follow a trail one mile from Steward Rd to West Boulevard and across West Ash St. This is when they lost the trail. Male adult footprints were found by a side window of the house and the window was found shattered with a garden hose, this is where the attacker is believed to have got in. Detectives theory was that the killer knew Janett and tried to appear friendly to get inside.
This was not the first murder to have happened in Columbia, Missouri. 5th February 1946, 4 years earlier Marylou Jenkins had been brutally murdered in a similar matter to Janett and was just two blocks from the Romack’s house. Marylou was home alone whilst her mother looked after an elderly couple and her father was out of town. If Marylou’s mother was away, they had a plan in case anything was weird or amiss; the plan was to turn on the light and lift up the blinds and place a phone call. Marylou’s mother noticed the lights were on and the blinds were up at the house, but she never received a phone call therefore she thought nothing of it. The following morning when she returned home, she found her daughter dead on the living room floor. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with an electric cord.
Both girls were found on the living room floor, sexually assaulted and strangled with an cord that had been cut of an appliance with scissors.
