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Short Stuff: The Call is Coming... FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we are coming
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to you from inside your house.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: That's right. No, we're not trigger warning on this one.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: By the way, there's some pretty violent content, including speak
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: of sexual assault at some point.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this takes a real hard left all of a sudden.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: And we're talking about the sort of trope of the
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: call is coming from inside the house. And as a trope,
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: we want to thank TV tropes, dot Com, Tropedia and
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: a really good article from Chrissy Stockton on Thought Catalog.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Plus also Sean van Horn on Collider and the good
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: folks on the Straight Dope message Board.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: That's right, and principal Seymour Skinner.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: That's right. So the call is coming from inside the house.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Is also often called the babysitter and the man upstairs. Yeah,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and just the quick sketch of it. This is an
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: urban legend that probably back to the sixties and essentially
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: says that there is a usually a young teen tween
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: girl alone at home, or more often that she is
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: alone babysitting some kids who are younger than her, and
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: she keeps getting calls from some mysterious stranger who asks
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: her have you checked on the kids who are osensibly
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: asleep upstairs, and she just then you know, hangs up.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: She thinks it's a prank call. And as time goes on,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: these calls get more and more sinister.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely more sinister because the you know, it's been
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: in quite a few movies. We're going to talk about
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: in different iterations, but the babysitter would usually like, I
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: don't know, put them off or not believe it or whatever.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Say you know, is this Johnny?
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: Is this my boyfriend?
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Then hang up.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Then the caller calls back, The caller calls back again.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: It's usually a few times, and eventually the babysitter is
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: going to call the police. They're gonna say, oh man,
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: we're going to put a trace on the call. She's
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: gonna say, you don't have to call me. I'm thirteen
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: years old, and they say, well, that's just how we
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: say things. And then the stranger calls the police trace
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: the call and then call back and say you've got
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: to get out of there. The call is coming from
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: inside the house.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: It's genuinely scary to think about, obviously, and then once
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: she is out, the cops show up and the prowler
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: has murdered those kids upstairs already.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Yep. And one of the things that makes it so
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: creepy too, is that when this, you know, was passed around,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: this urban legend like that, you couldn't really call your
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: own phone number. Yeah, and if you had two lines
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: in the house, maybe only the richest of your friends
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: had two lines in their house. There's a whole urban
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: legend surrounding how you could call your own line if
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: you did certain things. That's neither here nor there, it
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: turns out. But the fact that it's coming from inside
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the house means that it's the last place you'd expect
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: somebody to be calling from, which made it even scarier
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: for the viewer who had no idea or the listener,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I guess, for the urban legend who had no idea
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: what was coming.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know what, I remember hearing these stories
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: like around the campfire kind of thing, and it terrified me.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: And it never dawned on me that that was a
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: near impossibility.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you have that the little legends that it
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: was like you could you could do something, you know,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: like tap thing tap, like the receiver or whatever to
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: call your own line or was it just like you
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: just can't do that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: I don't remember hearing any of those, but I do
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: know they existed because you sent them to me, right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: But yeah, So that the fact that it was coming
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: from inside the house when you were it's really not
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: supposed to have been able to happen, just made it
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: that much scarier. And it makes it a little harder
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: to understand or grasp in the age of cell phones,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: where you can call somebody from inside the house, like
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: it's entirely possible to call was coming from inside the house.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And and it's uh, it goes along with some
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: of the great scary legends of the day, like the hook.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: The Vanishing Hitchhiker was another one I remember. Drip Drop Maniac.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Do you remember that one?
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: No? Did he say we cause holes and teeth?
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: No? Drip Drop Maniac was some version of a thing
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: where there's a like a German shepherd that that sleeps
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: under the bed that you know the kid was scared,
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: and the reason and and the way they would not
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: be scared is they would put their hand down and
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: the German shepherd would lick their hand and.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: So I'm sure you see what's coming.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Uh. It turns out the German shepherd they hear drip, drip, drip,
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: and the German shepherd is like killed and dripping blood
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: on the floor, and the and the person there was
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: a dude under the bed licking the person's hand.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Oh crazy, that was a good one.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maniac. Yeah, terrifying.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Uh you want to take a break so I can
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: kind of recollect myself after that terrifying story.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: You're never gonna hang your head hand off the side
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: of the bed again, are you?
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Oh I don't already.
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, we'll be right back. I'm still laughing, by
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: the way, that are you?
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: You got to be under the sheets and stuff still, Yeah,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: I got over that at some point. I used to
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: be like that, like well into even my thirties. I
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: think I was probably in my thirties or forties when
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: I was finally like, you know what, I'm a hot sleeper.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: I'm just gonna brave whatever's out there and sleep on
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: top of the sheet. You.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've gotten better in my older But if I'm
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: watching like a particularly a good ghost.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Movie, horror movie, oh sure, yes, at.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Night and you me and MoMA have already gone to bed.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: When I have to turn out all the lights, I
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: will basically run down the hall to the bedroom like yeah, yeah,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and try not to and I just can't not.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: No, I'm with you.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: If it's something like that and I'm truly scared by
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: a movie and I'm up late by myself, the getting
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: back to the bed scene is truly ridiculous for a
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: fifty four year old man.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I'm also one of those people who if you jump
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: out and scare them, I go up like both feet
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: off of the ground, yeah, and make like ooh sound
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: kind of thing, like you can really get me if you.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I used to scare people like that on occasion,
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: and I finally learned that, like, that's just not cool
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: to do.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think it's great after like about thirty seconds. Afterward,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I think it's hilarious and wonderful. But it takes me
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: a second.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh gosh, do we have time? Yes, very quickly.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: In college, after we saw the movie Misery, my roommates
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: and I at the Dollar Theater the Alps Theater in Athens, Georgia.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: We had ridden separately and my one roommate and I
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Chris raced home and he was a real sick twist
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: and he was like, let's scare Eddie. You know Eddie
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: because Eddie was right behind us. And Chris went home
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: and unscrewed all the light bulbs in the main room
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: and we hid in the closet and Eddie.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Eddie came in turned on the lights. No lights came on,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and he was like.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you guys are pretty funny, and smartly turned on
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: the television to provide some light. And you know how
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: when you're like hiding in a closet and it's just
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: barely cracked, you see people kind of looking in at you,
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: but they're not focused on you because I can't see you.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: That was Eddie.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: He was coming closer and closer, and we jumped out
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: of the closet and got him pretty good.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: I think he knocked a frame picture off the wall
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: and broke it.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: You had frame pictures on your wall in college? Oh,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: you know that's impressive. Yeah. Have I ever told you
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: my being scared from the closet story?
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: No.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I was just sitting there in my room. I was
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: probably like fourteen or something. I was just reading in bed,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: and I noticed that the closet door was crackediced a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: little bit, which was unusual. I didn't usually do that.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: And I even made like a little joke to myself, like, oh,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: it's probably something in the closet, right, And I looked
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: over a minute or two later, and the door was
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: open further than it happened, and I just immediately jumped
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: up and started running for the door, like I didn't
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: go to look. I didn't say like, oh, that's weird.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I immediately jumped up right, I would totally survive a
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: horror movie. And my dad came barreling out of the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: closet like rah, and I just basically flipped on my
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: back like a turtle and started screaming. Even after he
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: was like standing over me like are you okay? I
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: was just looking at him. I couldn't stop screaming. My
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: mom had time to make it upstairs and into my
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: room and say what'd you do to him? And I'm
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: looking at them like talking, screaming, still on my back
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: like he got me that good, Like, oh God, definitely
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: shortened my life.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Poor guy. I feel so bad for you.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: That is not certainly not something adached to to their Yeah, exactly,
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: all right, So we're back and we're going to tell
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: that the possibly what inspired this real story. I got
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: this particular version from Chrissy Stockton that I mentioned from
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Thought Catalog, but I looked it up and it was
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: in plenty of other places.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: So this is where it turns pretty dark.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it goes very dark.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: So if you have kids listening, they may want to
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: tune out. In the nineteen fifties, in fact, March of
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: nineteen fifty, there was a young thirteen year old named
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Janet Chrisman hired a babysit a three year old for
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: the Romax mister Gregory Romack and his wife, I, you know,
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: just like with her live show. I couldn't find his
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: wife's name because they didn't print stuff like that back then.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: But she decided babysit rather than go to a school party.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: At seven thirty, she got to their house. This is
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: in Columbia, Missouri, and before they left for the night,
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: mister Romac said, hey, by the way, see the shotgun.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: I've got this shotgun and it's loaded and here's how
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: you shoot it.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thirteen year old girl in Missouri.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I mean nineteen fifty is going to nineteen.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Fifty nineteen fifty Missouri. I could see that being pretty
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: standard procedure. Yeah. He also very wisely said do not
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: open this door until you at least turned on the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: porch light to see who it is knocking on the door,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: right right, So you would think that little Janet was
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: probably going to be just fine. I mean, there was
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: probably going to be an uneventful night anyway, but she
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: had also been equipped with a shotgun by the people
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: she was babysitting for. The thing that gets me is
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that she had chosen to babysit rather than go to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: a school party because she had recently bought a dress
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: on installment and needed the money She's to pay for
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: a dress. It's like a responsible little thirteen year old. Yeah,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: so shouldn't have even been there. I think at some
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: point around ten thirty, the police in her town got
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a call from a girl just shouting come quick, and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: then the line suddenly was cut off. The police didn't
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: have anything like tracing calls or anything like that at
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the time. This is nineteen fifty in Missouri, and they
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: had no idea who it was. But it turned out
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: it was Janet.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Sadly, that's right.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: The Romax called the house about thirty minutes later, but
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: no one answered, And I guess they didn't sweat it
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: because they didn't show up until one point thirty in
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: the morning. They weren't like we should rush home. They
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: opened the front door to find a pretty nasty, grizzly
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: murder scene. Janet was dead there in a pool of blood.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death, and
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: it appears that she had struggled with her attacker. There
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: was no shotgunning, obviously, but that porch light was on,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: which makes it even sadder.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes, And the reason why that porch light seems
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: to be important is that the Romax and Janet's family
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: believed that a man that was known to her was
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: the person who murdered her. A guy named Robert Mueller. Yeah,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: he was a friend of Ed Romax, and he also
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: knew Janet because Janet had babysat for Robert Muller's children before,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: and he had actually asked her to babysit that night
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: and she said I can't. I'm I'm babysitting for the
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Romax already. And he was an odd duck to say
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the least, and enough of a creep. Essentially from how
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the Romax and Janet's family put it, that he was
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: always suspected by them.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: The other detail I didn't mention was that the phone
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: had been ripped from the wall, so that would explain
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: when she shouted come quick and the line went dead.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: It seems, as you know, that was when the phone
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: was ripped away from the wall, possibly by Robert Mueller.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Although nobody was ever tied to her death officially, no
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: one was ever arrested as far as I know.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: No, but there were some reasons why they suspected, and
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: one he apparently had groped missus Romack just a few
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: days before the murder. Mister Romack was like, I'm not
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: really down with that guy.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: He also had told mister Romac that he liked Janet,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: and later on after the murder, he had told mister
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Romack that he could have murdered Janet and then just
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: forgotten about it. So it was some weird stuff and
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: like they Yeah, he died in two thousand and six.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Will never know. Yeah, Janet's murder has never been solved
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and probably never will at this point.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: No, but supposedly that is the story that inspired the
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: calls coming in from the house, or at the very
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: least inspired. When a Stranger Calls was probably the most
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: famous use of the calls coming from inside the house
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy nine, also Black Christmas, a great great
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: horror movie, Halloween in nineteen seventy eight, and I'll even
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: throw scream and had a sort of version of this
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: with Drew Barrymore, but not exactly coming from inside the house.
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: No.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I saw the first instance of it on film though,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: was a nineteen seventy three movie called The Severed Arm.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't like a plot driver. It was just
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: one of the ways the person was murdered. The call
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: was coming from inside, like I think the studio they
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: were working in.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and now cell phones have kind of screwed this
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: whole thing up.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: For sure. For sure. One other thing, real quick though,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: When a Stranger Calls Back, the sequel to When a
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Stranger Calls is one of the finest rift tracks you
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: can see. So you're looking for riff tracks to start with,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: start with, I'll check it out. That's it, I guess
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: for the trope of the call coming from inside the house, right,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: that's right.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I think it means short Stuff is out.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: First rip Janet Christman for sure. Now short Stuff is that.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 15:01
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• 15:05
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