Urban Legends: The Babysitter

STORY: The babysitter story is truly an unforgettable urban legend, told at slumber parties in almost all countries. The myth has different variations but the spooky and downright terrifying elements remain the same.

A young couple living in a large isolated house had gone out to a dinner party one evening and left the teenage baby-sitter in charge of their two children. The babysitter put the children to bed when it got late and went downstairs to watch some television when the phone rang. She answered but all she heard was a man breathing heavy and then a voice saying, "I'm upstairs with the children, you'd better come up." She hangs up the phone assuming the phone call is a practical joke and turns up the television. About 15 minutes later, the phone rings again. She picks up the phone and hears hysterical laughter from the other line and the voice once again said "I'm upstairs with the children, you'd better come up." The babysitter is truly frightened now and calls the police. The operator at the police station advises her to keep him talking if he calls again in order to give them time to trace the call, but assures her it is probably a prank.

The phone rings a third time and the man tells her he has come for her and it's only a matter of time. He continues with some heavy breathing until the babysitter is so terrified that she hangs up the phone again. Only seconds later the phone rang again, this time it was the operator who says, "Get out of the house straight away the man is on the upstairs extension." The babysitter put down the phone and just then heard someone coming down the stairs.

She fled from the house and ran straight into the arms of the police. The madman escapes but they find the children upstairs dead and a bloody axe laying on the bedroom floor next to an open window. He had entered the house through an upstairs window, murdered both the children and was just about to do the same to the poor babysitter.

ORIGIN: This legend, like other adolescent horror legends, originated in the early 1960s. Its obvious features deal with the insecurity felt by adolescents as they are required to accept increasing responsibilities while making the transition to adulthood. The teenage girl is left alone to fend for herself and is also made responsible for the safety of other children (practice for motherhood). She fails at her task miserably (with the implication that she is partly to blame for being too absorbed in watching television), and is threatened through a teenage girl's favorite means of social communication.

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