Legend: A babysitter left alone in charge of sleeping children receives several threatening phone calls. After reporting the calls to the phone company, the girl is notified by the telephone operator that the calls are originating from the upstairs extension. The babysitter flees the house just ahead of an armed intruder who has already murdered the children.

Origins: This tale, like several other adolescent horror legends, seemingly originated (or at least was first collected) 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 not simply left alone to fend for herself, but she is also made responsible for the safety of other children (in what might be considered a "dress rehearsal" for motherhood). She fails at her task in the most catastrophic manner (with the implication that she is at least partly to blame for being too absorbed in watching television), and, in a delicious irony, she herself is threatened through the instrument that is a teenage girl's favorite means of social communication.

Variations: In some versions the mysterious caller just laughs maniacally instead of making threatening statements.

The number of murdered children (one, two, or three) varies.

Sometimes the girl sees the killer first, then runs from the house and summons the police herself.

In an alternate humorous version (in which the babysitter runs out of the house without first seeing the murderer) the police arrive to find that one of the children upstairs has been making the threatening calls as a prank.

Another variation (combined with elements from The Roommate's Death) involves two babysitters. After the first girl learns from the operator that the calls are originating from the upstairs extension, she runs to the stairway to summon her friend. As she approaches the stairway she hears a thumping sound coming from the stairs -- the sound of the friend, her limbs severed, dragging herself down the stairway. (In some versions the mutilated friend warns the first babysitter that the children have all been murdered and urges her to flee the house.)