Short Stuff: The Call is Coming... FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE

Did you know that the "the call is coming from inside the house" urban legend may be based on a very grisly murder case from the 1950s? See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:12Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we are coming to you from inside your house.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  That's right. No, we're not. Trigger warning on this one, by the way, there's some pretty violent content, including speak of sexual assault at some point.

• 1:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this takes a real hard left all of a sudden.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  It really does. And we're talking about the, the sort of trope of the call is coming from inside the house. And as a trope, we want to thank tvtropes.com, Tropedia. And a really good article from Chrissy Stockton on Thought Catalog.

• 1:47Josh Clark?

  Plus also Sean Van Horn on Collider and the good folks on the Straight Dope Message Board.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  That's right. And Principal Seymour Skinner.

• 1:55Josh Clark?

  That's right. So the call is coming from inside the house is also often called the babysitter and the man upstairs.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04Josh Clark?

  And just the quick sketch of it, this is an urban legend that probably dates back to the 60s. And it essentially says that there is a usually a young teen tween girl alone at home. Or more often that she is alone babysitting some kids who are younger than her. And she's she keeps getting calls from some mysterious stranger who asks her, have you checked on the kids? Who are ostensibly asleep upstairs? And she just then, you know, hangs up, she thinks it's a prank call. And as time goes on, these calls get more and more sinister.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely more sinister because the, you know, it's been in quite a few movies we're going to talk about in different iterations. But the babysitter would usually like, I don't know, put them off or not believe it or whatever, say, you know, is this Johnny? Is this my boyfriend? Then hang up, then the caller calls back. The caller calls back again, it's usually a few times, and eventually the babysitter is going to call the police. They're going to say, ma'am, we're going to put a trace on the call. She's going to say, you don't have to call me ma'am, I'm 13 years old. And they say, well, that's just how we say things. And then the stranger calls, the police trace the call and then call back and say, you've got to get out of there, the call is coming from inside the house.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  I know, it's it's genuinely scary to think about, obviously. And then, once she is out, the cops show up and the prowler has murdered those kids upstairs already.

• 3:34Josh Clark?

  Yep. And one of the things that makes it so creepy too, is that when this, you know, was passed around, this urban legend,

• 3:46Josh Clark?

  like the you couldn't really call your own phone number.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:50Josh Clark?

  And if you had two lines in the house, maybe only the richest of your friends had two lines in their house. There's a whole urban legend surrounding how you could call your own line if you did certain things. That's neither here nor there, it turns out. But the the fact that it's coming from inside the house means that it's the last place you'd expect somebody to be calling from, which made it even scarier for the viewer who had no idea, or the listener, I guess, for the urban legend, who had no idea it was coming.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know what? I remember hearing these stories like around the campfire kind of thing and it terrified me. And it never dawned on me that that was a near impossibility.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Did you have that, the little legends that it was like you could, you could do something, you know, like tap thing, tap like the receiver, whatever, to call your own line? Or was it just like you just can't do that?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  I don't remember hearing any of those, but I do know they existed. Because you sent them to me.

• 4:49Josh Clark?

  That's right. But, yeah, so that the fact that it was coming from inside the house when you were, it's really not supposed to have been able to happen, just made it that much scarier. And it makes it a little harder to understand or grasp in the age of cell phones where you can call somebody from inside the house. Like, it's entirely possible the call was coming from inside the house.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, it goes along with some of the great scary legends of the day, like the hook. The vanishing hitchhiker was another one. I remember Drip Drop Maniac. Do you remember that one?

• 5:23Josh Clark?

  No. Did he say, "We cause holes in teeth"?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  No. No, Drip Drop Maniac was some version of a thing where there's a, like a German shepherd that sleeps under the bed that, you know, the kid was scared and the reason, and the way they would not be scared is they would put their hand down and the German shepherd would lick their hand. And so I'm sure you see what's coming. It turns out the German shepherd, they hear drip, drip, drip, and the German shepherd is like killed and dripping blood on the floor and the, and the person, there was a dude under the bed licking the person's hand.

• 5:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, crazy. That was a good one.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. The Drip Drop Maniac.

• 6:03Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, terrifying.

• 6:05Josh Clark?

  You want to take a break so I can kind of recollect myself after that terrifying story?

• 6:11Speaker 02

  You're never going to hang your head, hand off the side of the bed again, are you?

• 6:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, I don't already.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah, we'll be right back.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

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• 6:57Josh Clark?

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• 7:12Speaker 02

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• 7:35Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 7:37Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Through with Alan's whole crew design, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  I'm still laughing, by the way.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Are you, you gotta be under the sheets and stuff still?

• 8:53Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got over that at some point. I used to be like that, uh, in like well into even my 30s. I think I was probably in my 30s or 40s when I was finally like, you know what? I'm a hot sleeper. I'm just gonna brave whatever's out there and sleep on top of the sheets.

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  Good for you, man.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:10Josh Clark?

  I've gotten better in my older age, but if I'm watching like a particularly a good ghost movie, horror movie.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 9:18Josh Clark?

  At night, and you, me and Momo have already gone to bed. When I have to turn out all the lights, I, I will basically run down the hall to the bedroom like.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:28Josh Clark?

  I try not to, and I just can't not.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  No, I'm with you. If it's something like that, and I'm truly scared by a movie and I'm up late by myself, the, the getting back to the bed scene is truly ridiculous for a 54-year-old man.

• 9:43Josh Clark?

  Um, I'm also one of those people who, if you jump out and scare them, I go up like both feet off of the ground.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:50Josh Clark?

  And make like a whoa sound kinda thing. Like, you can really get me if you.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I used to scare people like that on occasion, and I, I finally learned that like, that's just not cool to do.

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, I think it's great. After, like about 30 seconds afterward, I think it's hilarious and wonderful, but it takes me a second.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Oh, oh gosh, do we have time? Yes. Very quickly in college, after we saw the movie Misery, my roommates and I at the Dollar Theater, the Alps Theater in Athens, Georgia.

• 10:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Uh, my, we had ridden separately, and my one roommate and I, Chris, raced home, and he was a real sick twist. Uh, and he was like, let's scare Eddie. You know Eddie? Uh, cause Eddie was right behind us, and, uh, Chris went home and unscrewed all the light bulbs in the main room. And, uh, we hid in the closet, and Eddie, Eddie came in, turned on the lights, no lights came on, and he was like, "Yeah, you guys are pretty funny," and smartly turned on the television to provide some light, and, um... You know how when you're like hiding in a closet and it's just barely cracked, you see people kind of looking in at you, but they're not focused on you because they can't see you?

• 10:54Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  That was Eddie. He was coming closer and closer and we jumped out of the closet and got him pretty good. I think he knocked a framed picture off the wall and broke it.

• 11:03Josh Clark?

  You had framed pictures on your wall in college?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Oh, you know.

• 11:06Josh Clark?

  That's impressive.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:08Josh Clark?

  Have I ever told you my being scared from the closet story?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:15Josh Clark?

  I was just sitting there in my room. I was probably like 14 or something. I was just reading in bed. And I noticed that the closet door was cracked just a little bit, which was unusual. I didn't usually do that. And I even made like a little joke to myself like, oh, it's probably something in the closet.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:30Josh Clark?

  And I looked over a minute or two later and the door was open further than it had been.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  And I just immediately jumped up and started running for the door. Like, I didn't go to look. I didn't say like, oh, that's weird. I immediately jumped up, right? I would totally survive a horror movie. And my dad came barreling out of the closet like, rawr. And I just basically flipped on my back like a turtle and started screaming.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 11:58Josh Clark?

  Even after he was like standing over me like, are you okay? I was just looking at him. I couldn't stop screaming.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 12:04Josh Clark?

  My mom had time to make it upstairs and into my room and say, what'd you do to him? And I'm looking at them like talking, screaming still on my back. Like, he got me that good. Like, he definitely shortened my life.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Poor guy. I feel so bad for you. That is not, certainly not something a dad should do to their kid.

• 12:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  All right, so we're back and we're gonna tell the, possibly what inspired this real story. I got this particular version from Chrissy Stockton that I mentioned from Thought Catalog, but I looked it up and it was in plenty of other places, so.

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  This is where it turns pretty dark.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it goes very dark. So if you have kids listening, they may want to tune out. In the 1950s, in fact, March of 1950, there was a young 13-year-old named Janet Crisman, hired to babysit a three-year-old for the Romacs, Mr. Gregory Romac and his wife. I, you know, just like with our live show, I couldn't find his wife's name because they didn't print stuff like that back then. But she decided to babysit rather than go to a school party. At 7:30, she got to their house. This is in Columbia, Missouri. And before they left for the night, Mr. Romack said, hey, by the way, see this shotgun? I've got this shotgun and it's loaded and here's how you shoot it.

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah. 13-year-old girl in Missouri.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess, I mean, 1950 is gonna 1950.

• 13:30Josh Clark?

  1950, Missouri, I could see that being pretty standard procedure.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:35Josh Clark?

  He also very wisely said, do not open this door until you at least turn on the porch light to see who it is knocking on the door, right?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:44Josh Clark?

  So you would think that little Janet was probably going to be just fine. I mean, it was probably going to be an uneventful night anyway. But she had also been equipped with a shotgun by the people she was babysitting for. The thing that gets me is that she had chosen to babysit rather than go to a school party because she had recently bought a dress on installment and needed the money

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Jeez.

• 14:10Josh Clark?

  to pay for her dress, like a responsible little 13-year-old.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:14Josh Clark?

  So she shouldn't have even been there. I think at some point around 10:30, the police in her town got a call from a girl just shouting, come quick, and then the line suddenly was cut off. The police didn't have anything like tracing calls or anything like that at the time. This is 1950 in Missouri. And they had no idea who it was, but it turned out it was Janet sadly.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  That's right. The Romacks called the house about 30 minutes later, but no one answered. And I guess they didn't sweat it because they didn't show up until 1:30 in the morning. They weren't like, we should rush home. They opened the front door to find a pretty nasty grisly murder scene. Janet was dead there in a pool of blood. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. And it appears that she had struggled with her attacker. There was no shotgunning, obviously. But that porch light was on, which makes it even sadder.

• 15:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, um, yes. And the reason why that porch light seems to be important is that the Romacs and Janet's family believed that a man that was known to her was the, the person who murdered her, a guy named Robert Mueller.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:27Josh Clark?

  He was a friend of Ed Romac's and he also knew Janet because Janet had babysat for Robert Mueller's children before. And he had actually asked her to babysit that night and she said, I can't, I'm babysitting for the Romacs already. And, um, he was a, he was an odd duck, to say the least. And enough of a creep essentially from how the Romacs and Janet's family put it, that he was always suspected by them.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. The other detail I didn't mention was that the phone had been ripped from the wall. So that would explain when she shouted, come quick, and the line went dead. It seems as, you know, that was when the phone was, uh, ripped away from the wall, possibly by Robert Mueller, although nobody was ever, um, tied to her death officially. No one was ever arrested, as far as I know.

• 16:13Josh Clark?

  No, but there were some reasons why they, they suspected him. One, he apparently had groped Mrs. Romac just a few days before the murder. Mrs. Romac was like, I, I'm not really down with that guy.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:26Josh Clark?

  He also had told Mr. Romac that, um, he liked Janet. And later on, after the murder, he had told, um, Mr. Romac that he could have murdered Janet and then just forgotten about it. So it was some weird stuff and like they, they, yeah. He died in 2006, we'll never know.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:47Josh Clark?

  Janet's murder has never been solved and probably never will at this point.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  No, but supposedly that is the story that inspired The Call Is Coming In From The House, or at the very least inspired When A Stranger Calls. It's probably the most famous use of The Call Is Coming From Inside The House from 1979. Also, Black Christmas, a great, great horror movie. Halloween in 1978. And I'll even throw Scream had a sort of version of this with Drew Barrymore, but not exactly Coming From Inside The House.

• 17:21Josh Clark?

  No, I saw the first instance of it on film, though. It was a 1973 movie called The Severed Arm, but it wasn't like a plot driver. It was just one of the ways a person was murdered. The call was coming from inside, like I think the studio they were working in.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And now cell phones have kind of screwed this whole thing up.

• 17:39Josh Clark?

  For sure, for sure. One other thing real quick, though. When A Stranger Calls Back, the sequel to When A Stranger Calls, is one of the finest riff tracks you can see.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 17:50Josh Clark?

  So if you're looking for riff tracks to start with, start with that.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Awesome. I'll check it out.

• 17:55Josh Clark?

  That's it, I guess, for the trope of the call coming from inside the house, right?

• 18:00Speaker 02

  That's right. I think it means short stuff is out.

• 18:02Josh Clark?

  First, R.I.P. Janet Christmas.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 18:05Josh Clark?

  Now, short stuff's out.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 18:25Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.