What Happened to the Infamous ‘Watcher’ House Featured in a New Netflix Series?
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In 2014, Derek and Maria Broaddus purchased a stunning Dutch Colonial in an upscale New Jersey suburb, the kind with a charming downtown and good schools. They hoped to raise their three young children in their $1.35 million dream home just a few blocks from where Maria had grown up. The Broadduses had arrived.
Instead, their nightmare was just beginning. Their terrifying, five-year ordeal is now being dramatized in a new, limited series from Netflix. It would culminate in the Broaddus family never fully moving into the house and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and neighbors feuding with one another in the idyllic town of Westfield.
The seven-episode “The Watcher” premieres on Thursday. The series was created by Ryan Murphy of “Glee” and “American Horror Story” fame. It stars Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, and Jennifer Coolidge.
Three days after the real-life Broadduses closed on the home, they received a spine-tingling letter from an unnamed writer who called themself “The Watcher.”
“My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out,” read the first letter sent to the couple.
Then the Watcher asked about the Broaddus children, referring to them as “young blood.”
“Who am I?” asked the writer. “There are hundreds and hundreds of cars that drive by 657 Boulevard each day. Maybe I am in one. Look at all the windows you can see from 657 Boulevard. Maybe I am in one. Look out any of the many windows in 657 Boulevard at all the people who stroll by each day. Maybe I am one.”
It would be the first of several chilling letters the couple would receive. Subsequent missives would grow even darker and more threatening.
“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,” one of the letters said.
The couple ultimately spent an additional $100,000 renovating the house, but were too afraid to ever take up residence there.
They tried selling the house for $1,495,000 just eight months after they had purchased it. But with no takers, they resorted to suing the former homeowners. Apparently, the previous homeowners had received a single letter from “The Watcher” but hadn’t disclosed it to the Broadduses. The case was ultimately dismissed.
Then the Broadduses tried to tear the home down and sell the land as two separate lots so that two homes could be built in its stead. The town’s planning board rejected that idea.
Eventually, they rented out the house.
In July 2019, the Broadduses finally sold the house for about $959,000, a significant loss. No further letters or problems at the house have since been reported.
Longtime Westfield resident Rebecca Jezierski previously told Realtor.com® that the saga “was really intriguing at the time and very scary.”
Jezierski, who lived a few blocks away at the time, added that the letters stopped “all of a sudden” when the new owners moved in.
Police investigated several neighbors and other leads but could never discover the identity of “The Watcher.” Speculation ran rampant throughout the town. Some were even convinced the Broadduses were sending the letters to themselves to sway the local planning board to allow them to subdivide the property so they could reap the profits.
“It was quite the story at the time,” Lauren Barr, editor and publisher of the Westfield Leader, the local newspaper, previously told Realtor.com. “Everyone put their sleuthing hats on in town. … It was all anyone talked about for a while.”
Westfield is no stranger to horror.
The tony town was where John List murdered his mother, wife, and three children before disappearing. The most famous resident of Westfield was cartoonist Charles Addams, best known for creating “The Addams Family.” The family’s famously creepy mansion was inspired by the old Victorians in the town.
The median home list price in Westfield was $924,450 in September, according to the most recent Realtor.com data.
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