I was lying awake in bed this morning, and I don't know why I was thinking of slumber party horror stories, but I remember the classic The Call is Coming from Inside the House. (Babysitter gets creepy call, police trace it, tell her the call is coming from inside the house, bah bah BAHH, police arrive to find sitter dead, blood all over the walls.)
I am old enough to remember this slumber party tale, because it pre-dates the emergency call number 911. (In fact, an early slumber party had us accidentally calling 911.) But the plot doesn't check out at all.
You picture the story from the sitter's point of view and it's feasible. But say you are the crazed mid 1970's killer. You pick up the princess phone, hear the dial tone (it was a thing, go with me on this), then dial the same number you are calling from, and get ... a busy signal. You can't place a call from inside the house. It's too early for conference calls, or the flash button on your handset. There is no way you can call the number you're calling from.
I know some of you are thinking, "Well, the killer was calling from a mobile phone," and to you I say, "Pay attention. Mid 1970s." The only way this would make sense would be if the killer lived next door and had a really long spiral cord that connected the handset to the base, long enough to stretch from his phone at his house to the basement of the house the sitter was in. But then, the police would have said, at best, "The call is coming from the phone registered to your next door neighbor."
Now, on further inspection evidently this was popularized by a September 1979 movie, When a Stranger Calls, which got around the plot hole by saying there was a second phone line inside the house, and to that I say horseshit, not in the mid 70s suburbia no there wasn't.
Also there are way too many search results for "How do I install a second phone line in my house?" Step up, cheaters, and buy a burner phone; it's 2023.
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