Crying Baby

The Crying Baby is an urban myth that has been circulating by e-mail since 2003. It told the story of a woman who was home alone one night and heard the sound of a baby crying outside her front door.

A few years ago, an e-mail did the rounds warning people about a cunning serial killer who used a terrifying trick to lure his victims out of the safety of their homes and into his clutches.

One night, a middle-aged woman was sitting at home, reading the newspaper. Her husband worked nights which meant that she was often alone in the house.

It was getting late and she was about to go to bed, when she heard a strange noise outside. It sounded like a crying baby and seemed to be coming from the bushes outside her front door.

She thought it was very weird, but was tempted to go out and investigate. Just then, her dog jumped to its feet and began barking and growling at the door. The woman got a strange and uneasy feeling. She stopped in her tracks and decided to call the police instead.

When she told them she had heard the sound of a crying baby, the police said, “We’ll be right over. Whatever you do, DO NOT open your door.”

The lady hung up the phone and, minutes later, she heard the sound of sirens as two police cars pulled into her driveway. One policeman banged on her door, while the others searched the bushes outside her house.

The woman opened her front door and let the policeman in. He was holding a doll in his arms and she noticed that it had a tape recorder in its belly. The policeman pressed Play on the tape recorder and they both heard the sound of a baby crying.

He explained that there was a serial killer on the loose who was targeting women who were alone at night. He was using a cunning trick to fool the women into opening their front doors and coming outside. He would hide in the bushes and play a tape of a baby crying.

The recording of the baby’s cries would make the women think there was a child in need of help and they would come out of their homes. While they were looking for the source of the cries, the killer would emerge from the bushes and murder them.

He said that in the past few days, they had received several calls from women saying that they heard a crying baby outside their homes when they were alone at night. The serial killer had already murdered two women in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and if it hadn’t been for her dog warning her of the danger, she might have become his next victim.

While the police have never actually come across a real-life case like this, the e-mail was inspired by an episode of America’s Most Wanted that theorized that a serial killer in Louisiana may have been using the crying baby lure to fool one of his victims. Years later, an episode of Criminal Minds also mentioned a serial killer using the crying baby lure.