Have you ever experienced the uncanny feeling that you’re just being watched? The unshakable sensation that, no matter how many times you look over your shoulder and assure yourself there is no one there, there is someone somewhere just staring at you? The strangeness of swearing you could feel eyes on you that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end?
If so, then you are going to loooove this story. Get ready to lock your windows.
Take a moment, if you will, to imagine this scenario:
You buy a new house. Not just any house—a mansion. You and your significant other believe this house is the house. The dream house. The perfect place to raise your three young children, in the perfect neighborhood. This mansion is absolutely beautiful. It has six bedrooms, hardwood floors, multiple fireplaces, and a gourmet kitchen. You’re so excited to move in that you start investing thousands of dollars in even more home improvements in order to make it the perfect place for you and your family.
And then you get mail! Yay, your first mail at your new place! How exciting!
But wait.
This isn’t an electric bill or a nice card from a family member or heck, even one of those little flyers advertising the new gym down the street or a deal from the cable company that’s only addressed to “Resident”.
No, this isn’t any of those things. This is a letter from someone who calls themselves “The Watcher”. The writer of the letter declares that they have been in charge of “watching” your new home for decades, and that they’ve been waiting for its “second coming”. The writer also threatens your children, saying, “Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Once I know their names, I will call to them and draw them out to me.”
Um. WHAT.
This scenario became the horrifying reality for the Broaddus family in June of 2014 when they purchased a beautiful mansion in Westfield, New Jersey—one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America (in fact, just this year it was listed as the 99th wealthiest place in the U.S. and the 14th wealthiest in New Jersey)—only to begin receiving letters from a mysterious stalker who referred to themselves only as The Watcher, signing the letters, “Who am I? I am The Watcher.”
That’s right, spoopy babes, this story is entirely real—not just a weird urban legend of some sort.
If the first letter wasn’t creepy enough, it didn’t end there. They started getting more letters from this creepshow, and they got weirder and weirder.
The first letter the Broaddus family received not only stated that The Watcher had been watching in the house for decades, but that his entire family had done so, as well.
“My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time.”
On June 18th and July 18th, they got more letters that would be enough to send chills down the spine of any homeowner. Just imagine getting letters that say this about your own house and family:
“Have they found what is in the walls yet? In time they will. I’m pleased to know your names now and the names of the young blood you have brought to me. Will the young bloods play in the basement?”
Again, I say, um, WHAT?
I think the creepiest part of this one is, “Have they found what is in the walls yet?” If that’s not some Cask of Amontillado level stuff, I don’t know what is. (Could The Watcher possibly be a fellow Poe fan?)
“Who has the bedrooms facing the street?” The Watcher asked in one of the letters. “I’ll know as soon as you move in. It will help me to know who is in which bedroom. Then I can plan better.”
Of course, I think anyone’s first thought here would be, plan for what?!
The Watcher also commented on the different home improvements that the Broadduses were making to the property, saying that they were making it “so fancy”. This was obviously creepy as hell, since the improvements they were making were mostly to the interior of the house, and led them to believe that this mysterious stalker had somehow found their way inside the property without them realizing someone else was in there.
“It cries for the past and what used to be in the time when I roamed its halls,” The Watcher wrote. “When I ran from room to room imagining the life with the rich occupants there. And now I watch and wait for the day when the young blood will be mine again.”
Obviously, to anyone with children, all this mention of “the young blood” and the Watcher’s obsession with them is thoroughly disconcerting. As a result of being totally terrified by the weird letters, the Broadduses ended up deciding not to live in the house.
Which…seems entirely reasonable.
In an effort to find out just what the heck was going on here, the Broaddus family also got in contact with the previous residents of the mansion, the Woods, and were shocked to find out that the Woods were not entirely unfamiliar with The Watcher. Although they didn’t think that things were taken to the extent that The Watcher took them to with the Broadduses (with all the creepy mentions of “young blood” and alluding to being inside the house), the Woods did say that they had indeed received one letter from The Watcher.
The Watcher, however, had made it seem in his letters as if the Woods were very aware of him, and as if they had been doing his bidding by moving out of the home to make way for the Broadduses to purchase it.
“I asked the Woods to bring me young blood. I have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two decades now. The Woods family turned it over to you. It was their time to move on and kindly sold it when I asked them to.”
Whether or not this is true–and whether or not we should take the word of a stalker whose clear intent is to scare the crap out of the new family moving into the house–is up for debate, but the Broadduses believed that the Woods knew much more about The Watcher than they let on, and they were extremely upset with them for not warning them that their beautiful new home came fully equipped with its own resident weirdo to spy on them, complete with horrific love letters. So, they did what any red-blooded American would do—they sued them.
The Woods, of course, countersued, claiming defamation and being very upset about all the negative media attention surrounding the accusations that they knew The Watcher and had allegedly kind of sicced him on a new family by selling the house.
Now I know what you’re thinking—this family called the family who lived in the house prior to them, and they called their lawyer. But did they call the cops?
Of course they did. Who wouldn’t call the police when they clearly have a stalker who is leaving scary as heck letters basically threatening them and their children in their mailbox at their new home? But the problem with that might just be the creepiest part of the story:
The cops never found anything.
Despite what the chief of police described as an “exhaustive investigation”, there were never any suspects for who could be The Watcher. At one point the police chief said that although they had no suspects, they were “exploring some possible leads”. And then nothing ever came of those leads.
There is rumor that female DNA of some sort was found on one of The Watcher’s letters, but the police didn’t confirm this, and nothing ever came of it.
In the end, no one was ever charged. No suspects were ever revealed. And The Watcher was never found.
Whoever was doing this is still out there.
Watching.
So, now the Broadduses didn’t feel safe moving into the home they had just spent $1.3 million on. They felt betrayed by the former homeowners. They had no leads at all, and no idea who The Watcher was. So the next thing they did was file an application with the city of Westfield asking if they could tear down the mansion and instead build two smaller houses on the lot. Now, I’m unclear on how they thought this would help—would it get rid of The Watcher? Was his obsession with that house specifically? Or would it have just given him two houses to watch? Perhaps the Broadduses thought that with two smaller houses, it would be easier to rent out the properties than with one big mansion. Unfortunately, the city denied their application, feeling that it would ruin the look of the street to disrupt the rows of mansions with two smaller houses. So, the Broadduses sued the city as well, racking up tons of legal charges in addition to the millions they just spent on the mansion.
This was four years ago, and as of 2017, The Watcher nightmare still hadn’t quite come to an end. The Broadduses’ lawyer, Lee Levitt, claimed that in February of 2017, the family received a fourth letter from The Watcher. Although he didn’t reveal the specific contents of the letter, he claimed it was “more derogatory and sinister” than the first three letters, and that this one contained “specific threats” rather than the general weirdo young blood nonsense that was prevalent in the others.
At some point in 2017, someone was apparently renting the house in question, but when asked by reporters, he said he wasn’t concerned about The Watcher letters. And by October of 2017, the now infamous Watcher house was back on the market, listed for $1,125,000.
Ya know…just in case you’re interested.
As a super creepy sidenote, despite the fact that Westfield was considered the 30th safest city to live in the United States (this information is as of 2014, which is ironically when the whole Watcher debacle first began), this isn’t the first horrific thing to happen in this very neighborhood. Back in 1971, a very disturbed and very religious man named John List actually murdered his whole family—his mother, his wife, and their three children—in their family home, “Breeze Knoll”. (You know you’re fancy when your house has a name, right?) Breeze Knoll was located just a few miles away from The Watcher house (which is a decidedly less fancy name).
In a tale straight out of a scary movie, List reportedly played organ music while he neatly lined up the bodies of his family in the house, where they would not be discovered until a month later.
And what happened to List? So glad you asked. After the murders, he fled. He took off to Virginia, where he assumed a new life under a new name, started a new family (who thankfully made it out alive), and remained uncaught for eighteen years. He was only caught in 1989 when America’s Most Wanted featured him an episode and his friends recognized him.
When it came to the murders, he claimed he did it to protect his family from the “pain of financial ruin”, but that he didn’t kill himself because, being a deeply religious man, he believed he wouldn’t get into Heaven if he committed suicide.
But, right, you’ll totally get in after murdering your entire family. Sure, Jan.
So what’s the conclusion to all this Westfield creepiness? Well, there isn’t one, really. Of course, just like with all creepy phenomenon there are tons of theories, scattered all across the Internet from all manner of amateur web sleuths. Some neighbors believe The Watcher is a local weirdo who lives in one of the nearby houses and likes to terrorize his neighbors. Some believe it could be that he hates children and wants to scare people away so that children won’t move into the neighborhood. Still others blame the Broadduses themselves, saying that they regret purchasing the house and made up The Watcher letters. And some blame the Woods (the former owners of the house) claiming that they regret selling the house and so they began delivering the Watcher letters.
Another, albeit somewhat far-fetched theory, is that the whole thing was just a super involved, super long game viral marketing ploy created in order to generate interest in a movie about the creepy stalker. While this seems like a lot for a viral marketing ploy, I guess it’s not entirely out of the question. After all, remember the viral marketing surrounding the original Blair Witch Project, with the missing persons posters and a whole website dedicated to finding the three missing hikers featured in the film?
At the time, it was fairly groundbreaking and, in my opinion, brilliant, so I wouldn’t put it past a movie studio to try something similar again. In fact, several studios, including Blumhouse, New Line, and Universal, have reportedly expressed interest in making a movie out of the whole Watcher situation. (Though I’m sure it would be a totally overblown version of it, like when they adapted the short film Lights Out into a full length movie…but I digress).
And that’s it, spoopy ladies and gents. That’s all she wrote. To this day, we still don’t know who The Watcher really was or if the whole thing was a hoax or if it was real or what. It’s one big mystery that we may never get a definitive answer to.
What do y’all think? Who do you think The Watcher is? Do you think it’s a hoax or some sort of really elaborate prank? And what would you do if this happened to you? Let me know in the comments! You know I’d love to talk. <3
And thanks for stopping by for another Spooky Saturday!
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