The Watcher’s plot is unrelated to the Keanu Reaves supernatural thriller from the early 2000s. It’s about a creepy real-life stalker who has been terrorizing a family for years and is still on the loose.
It may appear to be a typical gorgeous home in a peaceful New Jersey suburb, but this home is the center of an unnerving and frightening true-crime narrative straight out of a horror film. In the case of The Watcher, the adage “real life is stranger than fiction” could not be truer.
This true-life horror story has a plot straight out of a Stephen King novel. A scared family, a terrifying villain, and an ineffective police force are all trademarks of the classic horror film. The key difference is that this isn’t your typical horror story, and there are plenty of unexpected twists and turns along the road.
Derek Broaddus and his wife Maria Broaddus had just signed a deal on the perfect property at 657 Boulevard and were remodeling and getting ready to move into their new dream house when things took a turn for the worst one night in June 2014.
They found an envelope addressed to “The New Owner” in thick clumsy handwriting in the mail. Derek was perplexed by this discovery and opened the envelope to find a strange note addressed to the family.
The note read as follows:
“Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard,
“Allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
This letter didn’t appear to be very disturbing at first look, but the letters they would get after moving into 657 Boulevard would forever affect their lives.
The Watcher wrote in another letter:
“Do you need to fill the house with the young blood I requested? Better for me. Was your old house too small for the growing family? Or was it greed to bring me your children?
Many suspects have been proposed as the mystery watcher over the years, ranging from the exceedingly suspicious to the completely ludicrous, and even the Broaddus family has been questioned of penning the letters themselves!
BuzzFeed Unsolved’s great study of The Watcher case goes over the several suspects for this unusual case in a sardonically clever manner. Giving us an intriguing look at the official suspects and their possible motives.
Since the initial letter landed in the letterbox of 657 Boulevard, the New Jersey police have concentrated on only three primary suspects in the case.
A first suspect is a man only identified as ‘The Gamer,’ who was linked to a car spotted outside the Broaddus family’s home late one night, and whose home is situated on the same block as 657 Boulevard. Was this a fluke or a hint that he’s connected?
Michael Langford and his eccentric family, who lived within sight of 657 Boulevard, are the second suspects. They’ve resided in the house since the 1960s, which happens to be the same time period that The Watcher mentioned his father kept an eye on it. Despite the fact that the family looks suspicious, authorities have ruled them out because their DNA does not match.
The Broaddus family itself is the third and final suspect. Although this may appear to be a far-fetched hypothesis, it has some merit. Some speculated that the entire story was a fraud devised by the family to allow them to move to a much larger home.
The family has been able to upgrade to better houses numerous times with refinanced mortgages since the excitement sparked by The Watcher’s letters, and have even had movie producers interested in buying the rights to the narrative of their entire life.
Was it all a ruse perpetrated by the Broaddus clan? Or is this story totally true, and there is a ruthless stalker out their intent on frightening a family? This terrifying true story continues to captivate people to this day.
Is “Watcher” based on a true story?
Ghosts aren’t found in every house. The phantom stalker was the ghoul of the Westfield Watcher house. That’s why I featured it in the Haunting American True Crimes season of the podcast’s “Cases of Creepy Haunted Houses” episode. The story is quite disturbing.
Is it, however, a true story?
Some may say that this is dubious and that the whole affair was created by the Broaddus family.
Why?
Who knows, but until they bought the over 100-year-old Dutch colonial at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey in 2014, everything was fine.
Derek and Maria Broaddus claim to have received threatening letters from “The Watcher.” The first one arrived shortly after they completed the purchase of the house.
“How did you wind up here?” was one of the inquiries in that initial letter to “The New Owner.” “Did 657 Boulevard call to you with its force within?”
More letters arrived, and the quality of the letters deteriorated as they became more personal and centered on their three children.
They provided information that would make any parent’s heart race:
“Once I know their names I will call to them and draw them to me.”
“Have you found all of the secrets it holds yet? Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone?”
“I would [be] very afraid if I were them. It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs you would never hear them scream.”
“Will they sleep in the attic? Or will you all sleep on the second floor? Who has the bedrooms facing the street?”
“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.”
I discovered a startling twist in the story when re-familiarizing myself with it for the podcast. Several of them, to be precise.
A suspect list was developed, and false charges were made, leading to lawsuits, monitoring, the secret collection of DNA samples to compare to that found on the letters’ envelopes, and, finally, an unexpected sale related to the house but not of it.
Perhaps that wasn’t shocking at all, given the culture we live in. All it takes is a good storey, and the best of them are sold to the highest bidder.
In the instance of the Broaddus family, as I mentioned in the “Bits & Pieces Bonus Episode,” they sold theirs to Netflix.
The significant thing to note is that, as LAD Bible stated it, the case is still unsolved, and the identity of The Watcher is unknown.
Unless, as some of the persons interviewed in Lauren Evans’ The Gothamist article argue, it was Derek or Maria Broaddus all along.
But we’ll never know, and the Westfield Watcher case will either become legendary American folklore as a result of the Netflix series, or it will vanish into the annals of weirdness over time.