The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs

The Babysitter and the Killer upstairs — also known as The Baby-sitter or The Sitter — is an urban legend that dates back to the 1960s about a teenage girl babysitting children who receives telephone calls from a man who continually asks her to "check the children".^[1] The basic storyline has been adapted a number of times, including in Foster's Release (1971), The Sitter (1977), When a Stranger Calls (1979 and 2006), When a Stranger Calls Back (1993), and Amusement (2008). (The Sitter, When a Stranger Calls, and When a Stranger Calls Back are all the work of director Fred Walton.)

It has also been covered in the television programs Freaky Stories and Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed.^[2][3]

The legend of The Babysitter and The Man Upstairs

A teenage girl is babysitting at night. The children have been put to bed upstairs and the babysitter is downstairs, watching TV. The phone rings, a man is laughing and telling her to check on the children. She at first dismisses the call. After a second call of the man laughing and asking her to check on the children, she asks who it is, the caller hangs up. Rather than checking on the children, the teenager decides to ignore the call and goes back to watching TV. The stranger calls back again.

Eventually the girl becomes worried and calls the police, who tell her they will trace the next call. After he calls again, the police call back, telling her that the call is coming from inside the house and to get out now.

She goes outside and the police meet her. They explain that the calls were coming from inside the house, and he was calling her after killing each child.

The crime

The crime on which this urban legend is based happened in 1950. On the evening of March 18, 1950, 13-year-old Janett Christman^[4] was babysitting 3-year-old Gregory Romack at his home on West Boulevard and Stewart Road in Columbia, Missouri. Sometime after Christman put the toddler to bed and before his parents returned around 1:30 a.m., an intruder shattered a window and attacked her in the Romacks’ living room. Although a garden hose left outside was used to break the window, police said the furniture and light fixtures near the window were totally undisturbed, making it impossible for him to have entered that way. This indicated to investigators that the intruder attempted to make it look like the house had been broken into, when in reality, Christman probably opened the front door for someone she knew.^[5]

At 10:35 p.m., Officer Roy McCowan received a jarring phone call. A girl was screaming hysterically on the other end, and McCowan heard the words “come quick.” The connection, however, broke off before the girl could identify herself. At that late hour, the test board at the telephone company was not staffed, and the call could not be traced. At about 1:35 a.m., the Romacks returned home to find the front Venetian blinds open and the porch light illuminated. Both the front and back doors were unlocked, and a side window was broken open. Christman lay in a pool of blood on a shag carpet by the family piano.^[6]

In the attack, she was hit on the head with a blunt weapon, raped and strangled with an iron cord. Several small puncture wounds on her head were consistent with that of a mechanical pencil — an item often carried by a close friend of the Romacks, Robert Mueller. He had met Christman several times and, according to court documents, “expressed admiration for Christman’s figure and her mature development, and expressed the opinion that she was a virgin.” Mrs. Romack told police she thought Mueller had made unwelcome advances toward Christman in the past.^[5]

The prime suspect, 27-year-old Robert Mueller, was never charged, passed a lie detector test and eventually sued the sheriff and others for holding him illegally.^[7]

The crime remains unsolved.

Variations

• In some tellings,^[8] the babysitter does not receive any phone calls but is disturbed by a hideous clown-doll (sometimes it is an angel-doll). During the night, the babysitter repeatedly leaves the room and returns, and the clown always seems to be in a different position than before. The babysitter calls her employers asking for their permission to remove the doll from the bedroom, and the mother tells her they do not have a clown-doll. This version has made its way into the annals of internet "creepypasta." This is most likely a version inspired by the movie Poltergeist. The film Amusement also includes a babysitter troubled by a sinister clown-doll.
• The number of children varies in different versions; sometimes one, other times, two or three. Also the children rarely survive in the story, sometimes having been murdered by the man before he called the babysitter.
• Sometimes in the story, the killer gives a certain time that he will kill the children and when he will come for the sitter (usually 10:30 pm is the given time).
• Often when the killer makes the phone call, he asks the sitter if she is "upstairs with the children".
• Sometimes the killer is described as having a weapon, like an axe or a sharp knife, or the killer is described as being covered in blood. In darker versions, he tears the children apart with his bare hands, such as in the film When a Stranger Calls.
• Other similar legends feature the babysitter herself as the threat to the children.
• Other versions describe the sitter as having a split or multiple personality. With at least one of these personalities being a threatening and dangerous one.
• In one semi-related variation, the babysitter goes upstairs to check on the child and sees an eerie face in the window, but brushes it off. Later, when the parents return home, the child is found dead. When the babysitter mentions the window, the parents are confused, and say that there is no window, only a mirror.
• In lighter versions of the story, the calls turn out to be a prank by the children using a tape recorder of an adult voice (usually a recording of their father's voice).
• In lighter versions, the children are not killed. They are instead locked up in a closet or trunk, or tied up or threatened by the killer to be silent. This variant is used in the 2006 version of When a Stranger Calls.
• In some versions of the story the police arrive just in time to save the children, but in others they are too late.
• There have also been versions where the killer gets away, and the children (and sometimes the sitter) are never seen again such as in When a Stranger Calls Back.
• In most versions, the caller asks the sitter "have you checked the children?" at least three times.
• In one version, the story cuts to several years later. The babysitter is now married with her own children, and she is out for dinner with her husband having hired a babysitter. During the meal in the restaurant, the waiter advises that there is a phone call for her which turns out to be from the same caller who terrorized her years before. This element is used in When a Stranger Calls (1979)
• In about every variation of this tale, the sitter is told that the calls are coming from inside the house.
• In a different variation, the babysitter hides the children (usually in a laundry basket or an empty trunk) after she finds out the phone calls are coming from the house, only to be confronted by the killer soon after. He murders the babysitter and finds the children, who hug him lovingly when they discover he is, in fact, their brother. The parents come home, overjoyed to see their son come home from the bad place (possibly referring to an asylum or a prison) and the killer explains how he found the gift (the babysitter) waiting for him, suggesting the whole family is psychotic.
• Some renditions of the story only start out with a single parent leaving the children with the sitter only to have the other parent (who often has been restricted by court officials) breaking in to either see or take the children.
• A version appears in one of Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. In this version, the sitter is with the children in the TV room and keeps getting calls from someone laughingly saying "pretty soon now". She has the police trace the call, and they tell her that the man is inside the house, at which point he reveals himself. However, this version ends with the sitter and children escaping and the police arresting the man.
• A lighter and slightly humorous variation ends with neither the deaths of the babysitter nor the children, but simple miscommunication on the babysitter's part about a man called "The Viper" calling constantly to announce his arrival once an hour, eventually for the babysitter to face her assassin face-to-face at the door after hearing a knock; The man comes in and announces of some degree, "I am the viper. I vish to vash and vipe your vindows.", and is a Central European man with an accent.
• Other variations also have one of the children (usually a young boy) being babysat playing a prank on the babysitter after the call is traced and coming from inside the house.
• There is also a version in which the babysitter calls the parents to ask if she can watch the TV in their room. After the father gives her permission she asks if she can cover up the statue of the angel they have in the garden because she is scared of it. The father then says to her to take the kids, call the police and leave the house immediately, as they do not have a statue in the garden. When the police arrive, the girl and the children are dead and the angel is gone.

References

1. Forman-Brunell, Miriam (2009). Babysitter: An American History. New York University Press. p. 133. ISBN 0-8147-2759-X.
2. Gillian Bennett, Paul Smith (2007), Urban legends, p. 50
3. Gillian Bennett, Paul Smith, Contemporary legend
4. "Mueller v. Powell, 203 F. 2d 797 - Court of Appeals, 8th Circuit 1953". Google Scholar. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
5. "A History of Violence: Janett Christman". Vox Magazine. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
6. "Who killed Janett Christman?". Columbia Daily Tribune. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
7. "Unsolved murder brought back to spotlight". Columbia Daily Tribune. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
8. "Statue". Urban Legends Reference Pages. Retrieved 28 November 2009.

External links

• The Babysitter Story
• The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs