Serial killers, college, phone calls, jobs, no, just stay home, never leave.

Then you won't get murdered by a stranger.

Even though you're in your house and you will get murdered by a stranger if you have a phone.

Well, yeah, that's true.

Even the most folklorically out of touch American has probably heard the urban legend called The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.

You know, the one that created the famous idiom, The Call is Coming from inside the house. That's because, at least in my

view, it is urban legend number one, the classic of all classics, and certainly my favorite

when I was a kid. The urban legend that is Sarah Marshall of the podcasts you're wrong about and you are good

joins me today as I share my scholarly presentation that I will pedantically refer to as new

perspectives on the babysitter and the man upstairs. I'll share some new ideas about where this tale comes from,

focused on the decades-long epidemic of obscene phone calls

women were suffering through in the 1960s,

as the way that the telephone worked was rapidly changing.

Sarah and I will also discuss a sensational true crime story that could

have offered up a grain of truth to the tale, and how, in my opinion, this urban legend was the

most important driving force behind the creation of the entire slasher film genre.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber-Smith, and this is American Hysteria.

Okay, dear listeners, we are coming in super hot today with what I think is probably the most famous American urban legend of all time.

And I'm very excited to welcome Sarah Marshall, the person, the only person that I could really truly get into this topic with.

So, Sarah, thank you. That means so much to me. My gosh, because we both used to read snopes.com for fun in 2003, I bet. Of course. Yeah. Yes,

of course. Where else are you going to find out information in the age of the war on terror?

So I think to start, basically what I'm going to do today is show you my hypothesis about kind of

...