The first call is easy to dismiss.
The second makes the quiet house feel much larger.
The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs is an urban legend about a sitter who receives threatening calls and learns that the caller is already inside the house with the children.
The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs at a Glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does the caller say? | Often, “Have you checked the children?” |
| Where is the caller? | Upstairs, using another telephone in the house. |
| How does the babysitter learn this? | Police trace the calls and tell her to get out immediately. |
| What has happened upstairs? | In many versions, the children have already been murdered. |
| Famous adaptation | When a Stranger Calls (1979). |
| Folklore classification | BRUN 03000, “The Baby-sitter and the Man Upstairs.” |
The Story
A teenage girl agrees to babysit for a family in Montreal.
The children are asleep upstairs. The parents leave a number where they can be reached, and the sitter settles into the living room.
Then the telephone rings.
A man asks whether she has checked the children.
She hangs up. He calls again.
The sitter contacts the police. An officer tells her to keep the caller on the line long enough for them to trace him.
When the phone rings once more, she tries to listen. The man repeats the question.
Moments later, the police call back.
The calls are coming from another telephone inside the house.
The sitter runs outside. Upstairs, police find the children dead and a man hiding near the extension phone.[1]
The warning arrives just in time for one person, and far too late for everyone else.
“Have You Checked the Children?”
The question sounds almost responsible. A babysitter is supposed to check the children.
Each time the caller repeats it, the words change. They stop sounding like a reminder and begin to suggest that he knows what she will find.
Versions reported since the early 1970s usually keep that line or something close to it. The police trace is also remarkably stable. It turns an anonymous voice into a person who has been physically near the sitter throughout the call.[2]
The house has not been entered during the story. The danger was already there when the parents left.
Two Babysitters, One House
In another version, two girls are babysitting together.
After the calls begin, one goes upstairs to check on the children. She does not return.
The remaining sitter answers another call and hears the same voice. When police trace it, they tell her that it is coming from upstairs.[1]
Adding a second sitter changes the warning. The girl who goes upstairs does exactly what the caller asks, but checking the children brings her closer to him.
The survivor now has two reasons to fear the upper floor: the children are there, and her friend should be there too.
The Hippie Babysitter Version
The Big Book of Urban Legends places a darker babysitter story beside the man-upstairs versions. In it, parents return home and discover that a drug-impaired sitter has mistaken their baby for a turkey and put the child in the oven.[1]
Folklorists usually classify that plot separately as “The Baby Roast,” but the stories have often circulated together because both begin with parents entrusting their children to a sitter.[2]
The fear points in opposite directions. In the man-upstairs legend, the babysitter is young and vulnerable. In the baby-roast version, she is the danger the parents invited into their home.
Bringing the versions together shows how easily the babysitter can move between roles: caretaker, survivor, witness, and suspect.
From the Telephone to When a Stranger Calls
The opening of the 1979 film When a Stranger Calls made the legend familiar to audiences who had never heard it from another babysitter.
The American Film Institute’s catalog summarizes the same recognizable sequence: repeated calls asking about the children, a police trace, and the discovery that the caller is inside the house. The feature grew from Fred Walton’s 1977 short film The Sitter.[3]
The film continues beyond the legend’s reveal, but the first act does not need much expansion. A telephone, a staircase, and rooms the sitter cannot see are enough.
Later films and television episodes have returned to the same setup so often that “the call is coming from inside the house” now works as a phrase even when no babysitter is present.
The Telephone Changes the House
When this legend became popular, many homes had more than one telephone connected to the same line.
That familiar arrangement creates the trap. The sitter treats the telephone as her connection to the outside world. She can call the parents or the police without leaving the house.
The extension upstairs means the caller is using that same connection from inside.
Folklorist Cathy Lynn Preston studied versions in which storytellers had to adjust the mechanics as telephone technology changed. Separate lines, cordless phones, and later mobile phones could make the original trace harder to explain.[4]
Storytellers did not abandon the legend. They repaired the phone system.
Is The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs True?
No single murder has been verified as the source of the urban legend.
Real babysitters have received frightening calls, and real intruders have entered occupied homes. Those possibilities give the plot its force. They do not establish the familiar sequence as a report of one documented crime.
The repeated question, trace, upstairs extension, and murdered children form a story that has moved through conversation, print, film, and television while being presented as something that happened nearby.
Sophie’s Closing Note
The police tell the sitter to leave the house, but the line everyone remembers sends her in the other direction.
Have you checked the children?
For most of the story, she can still tell herself that upstairs is safe because it is quiet. The caller knows better. He is not asking a question. He is describing where he has already been.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs urban legend?
It is a story about a babysitter who receives threatening calls and learns from police that the caller is using another phone inside the house.
What does the caller say to the babysitter?
The best-known line is, “Have you checked the children?” Some versions use a direct threat or tell her that he can see her.
Is the caller always upstairs?
Usually. A few professional storytelling versions move him elsewhere in the house to account for different telephone arrangements.
Is When a Stranger Calls based on this urban legend?
The film’s famous opening uses the legend’s central plot: threatening calls, a police trace, and a caller inside the house.
Is The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs true?
No specific crime has been established as the source of the many versions. The legend combines believable dangers with a carefully repeated reveal.
Related Urban Legends
Sources and Further Reading
- Robert Loren Fleming and Robert F. Boyd Jr., adapted from Jan Harold Brunvand, The Big Book of Urban Legends (Paradox Press, 1994), 60–62.
- Jan Harold Brunvand, Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, 2nd ed. (ABC-CLIO, 2012), 83–85, 747.
- American Film Institute, “When a Stranger Calls,” AFI Catalog of Feature Films.
- Cathy Lynn Preston, “A Narrative Study of ‘The Baby-sitter and the Man Upstairs’,” Contemporary Legend 2 (1999).