October 30, 2024 • 18 mins
Josh and Chuck dive into two spooky true stories in today's Short Stuff.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I should say,
hey and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too, skulking around like a
real ghoul who just wants to dig up a grave
and eat the corpse inside. That's what Jerry does around
this time of year. And this is short stuff. So
let's get going because it's basically Halloween.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's right, the day before Halloween. We're going to talk
about two scary stories. Big thanks to Medium, People Magazine,
A Cult of Weird, and The Cut and other places
for these two scary stories. The first one about the
Breeziest family of Auburn, Pennsylvania, who moved into a home
for their family of six. They were like, let me,
(00:46):
let's renovate a little bit. Let's take down this wall in.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
The living room, and oh my god, what is that?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Basically because what they found within the walls of the
home were dead animal carcasses, bones and skeletons.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yes, and very quizzically. They were wrapped in newspaper that
dated from the nineteen thirties and forties, and apparently every
wall that they opened up to put insulation in they
found it packed with not only like dead animals, but
also some spices artifacts and by god, I searched high
(01:26):
and low for an example of what the artifacts were,
but everybody just followed the example of whoever first wrote artifacts,
and that's all you can get. So I have no
idea what the artifacts are.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Maybe that was the newspapers.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I guess this qualify as artifacts. Yeah, yeah, all right,
we'll just say that. So spices, newspapers, and dead animals.
And they're like, I don't know what's going on here,
So let's ask some locals what they think is happening.
And it turns out that these people bought their house
smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and
(01:58):
it turns out what had happened they discovered that their
house was being protected via a kind of Dutch magic,
Pennsylvania Dutch magic called pow wow.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It has its roots in Pennsylvania there, and it's sort
of like, I mean, Christianity is part of it because
they do use the Christian or I don't know if
they're still around or maybe did use the Christian Bible.
I think it is still around, Okay, but there's definitely
folk magic healing remedies, stuff like that powwow refers to
(02:32):
or it actually came from this German book called The
Long Lost Friends by John George Homan, published in eighteen twenty,
and they believe that it wasn't called pow Wow at first,
but it was renamed that later after the Algonquin word
for you know, pow wow gathering of medicine men, and.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
It was this book basically that also has kind of
a creepy backstory though, right, well, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So just a little more about the book. It's a
bunch of folk remedies and spells and recipes and hey,
use this, you know, cat's paw for you know, to
ward off this thing. And it very importantly to me.
Nothing in the book is for casting spells against somebody
or for hexting somebody. It's all protective or defensive to
like undo some somebody did on you. So it's basically
(03:21):
all positive and pow wow doctors who again are still
around today, they don't take a cent for what they're doing.
If you want to give them something as a token
of thanks, they'll accept it, but they do not charge
for their services or else it won't work. And to
the people that they're working with and themselves. They are
a conduit through from God to this person who needs healing,
(03:45):
and that's what they're serving as, which is where the
Christianity part comes in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And I mentioned the creepy backstory of that book here
is that because in nineteen twenty eight it was found
in the Possession of them guy, a murderer named John Blimeyer,
and there was a local witch in this story named
Nellie Knowle and what great name, Nellie.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Hole Yeah or a witch?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
John Blimeyer was convinced that he was cursed by one
of his neighbors and so he went to break into
that neighbor's house to find this spell book and try
and reverse this curse. But when he broke in, his
neighbor was actually there, so they just killed him. They
mutilated him, and they thought maybe that will lift the curse.
So that has nothing to do with actually what's in
(04:35):
the book, because like you said, it's a positive book
of protection spells mainly, but it is Halloween, so I
thought it was worth mentioning.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, and also reverse the curse sounds like a cub's
T shirt from the nineties.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
You know, yeah, yeah, totally or red sox maybe.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So yeah. It turns out that the house of Nelson Reemeyer,
the neighbor who was killed by John Blmeyer, it's still
around and his great grandson lives there. And the part
of the floor where Remeier was burned alive is still singed,
and the guy is cut it out and put plexiglass
over it and gives tours of the house.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That's right, and again, has nothing to do with this
home or the dead animals in the wall. They're just
dead animals in the wall. And by all appearances, it
was part of a powwow protection ritual. They don't know
what that house might have been trying to be protected from.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
That's kind of creepy.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, but they took care of everything to the tune
of about twenty thousand dollars because insurance would not cover it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Nope, they said this existed before your policy. So ts
for you the spookiest part of the story exactly. So
let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
about a second real life horror story. How about that.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Stop you should know, stop, you should I should know?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Okay, Chuck, So for the second real life scary story.
We're going to talk about the saga of Derek and
Maria Brotus, who bought a dream home essentially in Westfield,
New Jersey in twenty fourteen. They paid over asking for it,
which is also very scary. They paid one point four
million for it. And this house was a fourth bathroom,
(06:49):
six bedroom Dutch colonial, which should be the opposite. It
was built in nineteen oh five, and they loved the house.
They thought it was amazing. What they didn't know is
that there was a stock watching the house who called
themselves appropriately the Watcher.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
This is, of course the basis of the Netflix show
The Watcher. And we should also say we're going to
cover this in about six or seven minutes. And this
is a very dense story, so there is a lot
more out there about the Watcher, and this is the
broadest of overviews about the broadest family like that. But
this house was originally built in nineteen oh five. About
(07:28):
a month before closing, the Woods family, who was selling it,
got a letter from someone that called themselves the Watcher.
Sure was hand typed, and they claimed to be watching
the house in one of a long line of people
in their family that had been watching the house since
nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, and one little note about the letters. The letters
were tight, but the envelopes were hand handwritten in a
block script. Yeah, yes, And that to me suggests strongly
that the watcher couldn't figure out how to type onto
an envelope, which I finally as.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, that's pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
So six fifty seven Boulevard is where this house is,
and the Woods family had lived there for twenty three years,
and they were like, this letter's kind of weird. It's
a little creepy, but we're selling it and let's just
not tell anybody.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
That, right. So, yeah, apparently it was the first letter
they ever got. No one never seems to have intimated
that they got one prior to this, so they just
kind of threw it away and were just like whatever.
And then over the course of the next month, as
the Brotuses started moving their stuff in, three days after
(08:42):
closing in June, they received a letter, their first letter,
and it was essentially the watcher introducing themselves to this
new family who'd moved into this house at six five
seven Boulevard, that the watcher was the third generation to
watch this house.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Hey, Dave.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Maybe we could Dave producer Dave for the shorties. Make
we have some scary music when we read these letters. Yeah, great,
So cue the scary music. And here we go with
letter two. My grandfather watched the house in the nineteen
twenties and my father watched in the nineteen sixties. It
is have b and of course put the little parenthetical sic.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
In there, which I'm not the dummy. They're the dummy.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It is have be put in charge of watching and
waiting for its second coming. You don't want to make
unhappy talking about the house. Do you need to fill
the house with the young blood I requested? I asked
the previous owners to bring me young blood.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
So this is not the kind of letter you would
want to get when you're moving into your new house,
especially because you have kids. In this person, it's this
anonymous letter writer is mentioning young blood that you apparently
brought to them, and they the watcher said that the
Woods had told the house because the watcher asked them to,
and they were doing the watcher's bidding, something that the
(10:05):
watcher liked to apparently think about themselves, that they were
in control of everything that happened. With this house. And
two weeks later another letter arrived. It was addressed to
mister and missus Braddis. They left the O out this time,
and it got even more detailed about the kids.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, I was talking about their birth order, their nicknames,
and this is very creepy. But it asked who would
be in the street facing rooms and said it will
help me to know who was in which bedroom then
I can plan better.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Man, don't forget the music their day. So Derek Brotus
did what every normal father and husband would do in
twenty fourteen, he set up webcams in the house.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah yeah, and they hadn't moved in, by the way.
In fact, it never moved in. They had moved some
of their stuff in, but given what was happening, they
were slow rolling, I think.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah. Yeah. So weeks after the second letter, so this
is a couple months after they closed down the house,
they got another letter that said where have you gone to?
Six fifty seven Boulevard is missing you? And that's fairly creepy,
but at least it wasn't a threatening letter this time.
But it also showed that the watcher was clearly watching
(11:21):
the house. And so a year went by a year, Chuck,
where these people who paid almost one and a half
million dollars for their house never moved into it because
they were too scared of whoever this person was, and
they also grew very paranoid. I don't think the Netflix
special took any liberties with that. I think it was
(11:42):
like an actual depiction of like how this family, especially
the Dag, kind of descended into paranoia and suspecting anyone
and everyone of being the Watcher. They just couldn't take
this at all, so they just never moved in the
house and they tried to sell it and it did
not go over it.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Well, I thought a second ago you were going to say,
these people didn't move into their one point for me
dollar house for a year because they were too scared
and privileged.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, we just won't move in.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So one other thing too, I called it a Netflix special,
which I think kind of outed me as almost.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Fifty right in a program.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
It was the Netflix movie of the week.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
You're watching your program.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So they went to court and said, hey, these Woods
people got this, they knew about this, they didn't disclose this.
Now we've got this scary haunted house, or maybe not haunted,
maybe being stalked by a real dangerous person, and.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
The Woods were like, no, no, no, that's not true.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
That didn't happen, And so news started getting hold of this,
they started reporting it. They actually did DNA testing and
found that woman's DNA on the envelopes and letters, and
that they had any postmarks on them.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, that's twenty miles away and closer to New York.
I don't know if we said this whole thing takes
place in uh, what is it, Westfield, New Jersey? Right, yeah,
of course, New Jersey. Okay, so the cops are involved.
Now the prosecutor's office is actually involved or spending money
testing this stuff for DNA, like you said, And they
(13:23):
started theorizing of who it could be, and that they
thought maybe it was one of the other prospective buyers
who was mad that they've been outbid by the.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Brotuses did get them out of there.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, could yeah, exactly. Could have been one of the neighbors,
like the watcher, essentially intimated. And then there was a
lot of suspicion on the Brotus family too, that they
were essentially like the family from the Amityville horror that
they had they were trying to basically create a sellable story,
which is what turned out to be the case. Actually, yeah,
(13:56):
or buyer's remorse too, that's another one too. But they
that would be a terrible, terrible thing to do if
you just wanted to sell the house, And there were
other people who had offered over, asking why would you
like saddle it with a now famous stalker rather than
(14:16):
just being like, we're gonna sell it and we'll try
to sell it at least break even.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. That doesn't make much sense.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, So in twenty sixteen, they try to subdivide the
property into a couple of lots, get rid of that house,
build two more.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
The zoning board in the town said no, no, big
slap in the.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Face, and they rented the place and the renter was like, yeah,
I mean, I know about this watcher thing, but like,
I wasn't too freaked out.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
It was fine.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
It was a good house to rent, and I did
have a clause and out clause in my lease in
case another.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Letter popped up.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Smart, And another letter did pop up, and this was
a really creepy one, and I think you should.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Read this one.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Oh well, the whole thing. Okay, violent winds and bitter
cold to the vile and spiteful Derek and his wench
of a wife, Maria. Do you wonder who the Watcher is?
Turn around, idiots, Maybe you even spoke to me, one
of the so called neighbors who has no idea who
the Watcher could be. Or maybe you do know and
are too scared to tell anyone. Good move. I walked
(15:14):
by the news trucks. Remember this whole thing had become
like a media circus by now when they took over
my neighborhood and mocked me. I watched as you watched
from the dark house in an attempt to find me.
Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions. Six fifty seven Boulevards
survived your attempted assault and stood strong with its army
of supporters barricading its gates. My soldiers of the boulevard
(15:37):
followed my orders to a tee. They carried out their
mission and saved the soul of six fifty seven Boulevard
with my orders. All hail the Watcher. Pretty full of themselves, right.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, he kind of came across as a smarmy a
hole in that one. Remember this watcher, is.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
He or she don't forget they found female DNA on
the envelope.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Oh yeah, that's true. This sounds like something got I
would do. Though they did mention the renter in that letter.
The renter was a little bit spooked, but it was like,
but I'll stay here, you know, I like this place.
Get some of those cameras in there, and I'll be fine.
And then there was one last spooky, spooky tag on
(16:19):
this letter about the revenge that might befall them. Maybe
a car accident, maybe a fire, Maybe something as simple
as a mild illness that never seems to go away
but makes you feel sick day after day after day
after day after day. Maybe the mysterious death of a pet.
Loved one suddenly die. Planes and cars and bicycles crash,
(16:40):
bones break.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
They threatened to make a plane crash.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Hey, that's pretty scary.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So how the whole thing end up? The Bronus family
finally did sell the house about five years after they
bought it, right.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, at a four hundred thousand dollars loss. And that
is the end of the story. What I don't know
was how the Netflix show that. Surely it just doesn't
wrap up that way.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
There's Oh, you haven't seen it, No, have you? Yeah?
It's good? Oh is it good?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
You watch the whole thing?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, it's How.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Does it end? Well, don't tell me how it ends.
I guess on air, but.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I honestly don't remember how it ends. But I don't.
It didn't seem to It didn't seem to be like
a succinct ending, like everything was wrapped up, if I
remember correctly. But it's nuts, man, it's off the rails.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
It's got and and you know, I'm sure they fictionalize
a lot of it, but it's got what's his name,
the guy like Roseburn's husband, Bobby kind of ali.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Oh, he's married to Rosebrnd. I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, one of my favorite couples.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And I sat next to him in a lounge at
the LaGuardia Airport one time and he smiled at me.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So, yeah, I think we got something brewing their friendship one.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I think so too. Well, you should definitely watch the
Netflix special on the Watcher because you need something to
talk about with him.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's right, And thanks to everyone for indulging this extra
long two parts shorty and be safe tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Happy Halloween, everybody.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Halloween Everybody Short, Stuff's Out.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I should say,
hey and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too, skulking around like a
real ghoul who just wants to dig up a grave
and eat the corpse inside. That's what Jerry does around
this time of year. And this is short stuff. So
let's get going because it's basically Halloween.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's right, the day before Halloween. We're going to talk
about two scary stories. Big thanks to Medium, People Magazine,
A Cult of Weird, and The Cut and other places
for these two scary stories. The first one about the
Breeziest family of Auburn, Pennsylvania, who moved into a home
for their family of six. They were like, let me,
(00:46):
let's renovate a little bit. Let's take down this wall in.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
The living room, and oh my god, what is that?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Basically because what they found within the walls of the
home were dead animal carcasses, bones and skeletons.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yes, and very quizzically. They were wrapped in newspaper that
dated from the nineteen thirties and forties, and apparently every
wall that they opened up to put insulation in they
found it packed with not only like dead animals, but
also some spices artifacts and by god, I searched high
(01:26):
and low for an example of what the artifacts were,
but everybody just followed the example of whoever first wrote artifacts,
and that's all you can get. So I have no
idea what the artifacts are.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Maybe that was the newspapers.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I guess this qualify as artifacts. Yeah, yeah, all right,
we'll just say that. So spices, newspapers, and dead animals.
And they're like, I don't know what's going on here,
So let's ask some locals what they think is happening.
And it turns out that these people bought their house
smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and
(01:58):
it turns out what had happened they discovered that their
house was being protected via a kind of Dutch magic,
Pennsylvania Dutch magic called pow wow.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It has its roots in Pennsylvania there, and it's sort
of like, I mean, Christianity is part of it because
they do use the Christian or I don't know if
they're still around or maybe did use the Christian Bible.
I think it is still around, Okay, but there's definitely
folk magic healing remedies, stuff like that powwow refers to
(02:32):
or it actually came from this German book called The
Long Lost Friends by John George Homan, published in eighteen twenty,
and they believe that it wasn't called pow Wow at first,
but it was renamed that later after the Algonquin word
for you know, pow wow gathering of medicine men, and.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
It was this book basically that also has kind of
a creepy backstory though, right, well, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So just a little more about the book. It's a
bunch of folk remedies and spells and recipes and hey,
use this, you know, cat's paw for you know, to
ward off this thing. And it very importantly to me.
Nothing in the book is for casting spells against somebody
or for hexting somebody. It's all protective or defensive to
like undo some somebody did on you. So it's basically
(03:21):
all positive and pow wow doctors who again are still
around today, they don't take a cent for what they're doing.
If you want to give them something as a token
of thanks, they'll accept it, but they do not charge
for their services or else it won't work. And to
the people that they're working with and themselves. They are
a conduit through from God to this person who needs healing,
(03:45):
and that's what they're serving as, which is where the
Christianity part comes in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And I mentioned the creepy backstory of that book here
is that because in nineteen twenty eight it was found
in the Possession of them guy, a murderer named John Blimeyer,
and there was a local witch in this story named
Nellie Knowle and what great name, Nellie.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Hole Yeah or a witch?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
John Blimeyer was convinced that he was cursed by one
of his neighbors and so he went to break into
that neighbor's house to find this spell book and try
and reverse this curse. But when he broke in, his
neighbor was actually there, so they just killed him. They
mutilated him, and they thought maybe that will lift the curse.
So that has nothing to do with actually what's in
(04:35):
the book, because like you said, it's a positive book
of protection spells mainly, but it is Halloween, so I
thought it was worth mentioning.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, and also reverse the curse sounds like a cub's
T shirt from the nineties.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
You know, yeah, yeah, totally or red sox maybe.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So yeah. It turns out that the house of Nelson Reemeyer,
the neighbor who was killed by John Blmeyer, it's still
around and his great grandson lives there. And the part
of the floor where Remeier was burned alive is still singed,
and the guy is cut it out and put plexiglass
over it and gives tours of the house.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That's right, and again, has nothing to do with this
home or the dead animals in the wall. They're just
dead animals in the wall. And by all appearances, it
was part of a powwow protection ritual. They don't know
what that house might have been trying to be protected from.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
That's kind of creepy.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, but they took care of everything to the tune
of about twenty thousand dollars because insurance would not cover it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Nope, they said this existed before your policy. So ts
for you the spookiest part of the story exactly. So
let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
about a second real life horror story. How about that.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Stop you should know, stop, you should I should know?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Okay, Chuck, So for the second real life scary story.
We're going to talk about the saga of Derek and
Maria Brotus, who bought a dream home essentially in Westfield,
New Jersey in twenty fourteen. They paid over asking for it,
which is also very scary. They paid one point four
million for it. And this house was a fourth bathroom,
(06:49):
six bedroom Dutch colonial, which should be the opposite. It
was built in nineteen oh five, and they loved the house.
They thought it was amazing. What they didn't know is
that there was a stock watching the house who called
themselves appropriately the Watcher.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
This is, of course the basis of the Netflix show
The Watcher. And we should also say we're going to
cover this in about six or seven minutes. And this
is a very dense story, so there is a lot
more out there about the Watcher, and this is the
broadest of overviews about the broadest family like that. But
this house was originally built in nineteen oh five. About
(07:28):
a month before closing, the Woods family, who was selling it,
got a letter from someone that called themselves the Watcher.
Sure was hand typed, and they claimed to be watching
the house in one of a long line of people
in their family that had been watching the house since
nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, and one little note about the letters. The letters
were tight, but the envelopes were hand handwritten in a
block script. Yeah, yes, And that to me suggests strongly
that the watcher couldn't figure out how to type onto
an envelope, which I finally as.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, that's pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
So six fifty seven Boulevard is where this house is,
and the Woods family had lived there for twenty three years,
and they were like, this letter's kind of weird. It's
a little creepy, but we're selling it and let's just
not tell anybody.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
That, right. So, yeah, apparently it was the first letter
they ever got. No one never seems to have intimated
that they got one prior to this, so they just
kind of threw it away and were just like whatever.
And then over the course of the next month, as
the Brotuses started moving their stuff in, three days after
(08:42):
closing in June, they received a letter, their first letter,
and it was essentially the watcher introducing themselves to this
new family who'd moved into this house at six five
seven Boulevard, that the watcher was the third generation to
watch this house.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Hey, Dave.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Maybe we could Dave producer Dave for the shorties. Make
we have some scary music when we read these letters. Yeah, great,
So cue the scary music. And here we go with
letter two. My grandfather watched the house in the nineteen
twenties and my father watched in the nineteen sixties. It
is have b and of course put the little parenthetical sic.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
In there, which I'm not the dummy. They're the dummy.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
It is have be put in charge of watching and
waiting for its second coming. You don't want to make
unhappy talking about the house. Do you need to fill
the house with the young blood I requested? I asked
the previous owners to bring me young blood.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
So this is not the kind of letter you would
want to get when you're moving into your new house,
especially because you have kids. In this person, it's this
anonymous letter writer is mentioning young blood that you apparently
brought to them, and they the watcher said that the
Woods had told the house because the watcher asked them to,
and they were doing the watcher's bidding, something that the
(10:05):
watcher liked to apparently think about themselves, that they were
in control of everything that happened. With this house. And
two weeks later another letter arrived. It was addressed to
mister and missus Braddis. They left the O out this time,
and it got even more detailed about the kids.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, I was talking about their birth order, their nicknames,
and this is very creepy. But it asked who would
be in the street facing rooms and said it will
help me to know who was in which bedroom then
I can plan better.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Man, don't forget the music their day. So Derek Brotus
did what every normal father and husband would do in
twenty fourteen, he set up webcams in the house.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah yeah, and they hadn't moved in, by the way.
In fact, it never moved in. They had moved some
of their stuff in, but given what was happening, they
were slow rolling, I think.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah. Yeah. So weeks after the second letter, so this
is a couple months after they closed down the house,
they got another letter that said where have you gone to?
Six fifty seven Boulevard is missing you? And that's fairly creepy,
but at least it wasn't a threatening letter this time.
But it also showed that the watcher was clearly watching
(11:21):
the house. And so a year went by a year, Chuck,
where these people who paid almost one and a half
million dollars for their house never moved into it because
they were too scared of whoever this person was, and
they also grew very paranoid. I don't think the Netflix
special took any liberties with that. I think it was
(11:42):
like an actual depiction of like how this family, especially
the Dag, kind of descended into paranoia and suspecting anyone
and everyone of being the Watcher. They just couldn't take
this at all, so they just never moved in the
house and they tried to sell it and it did
not go over it.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Well, I thought a second ago you were going to say,
these people didn't move into their one point for me
dollar house for a year because they were too scared
and privileged.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, we just won't move in.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So one other thing too, I called it a Netflix special,
which I think kind of outed me as almost.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Fifty right in a program.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
It was the Netflix movie of the week.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
You're watching your program.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So they went to court and said, hey, these Woods
people got this, they knew about this, they didn't disclose this.
Now we've got this scary haunted house, or maybe not haunted,
maybe being stalked by a real dangerous person, and.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
The Woods were like, no, no, no, that's not true.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
That didn't happen, And so news started getting hold of this,
they started reporting it. They actually did DNA testing and
found that woman's DNA on the envelopes and letters, and
that they had any postmarks on them.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, that's twenty miles away and closer to New York.
I don't know if we said this whole thing takes
place in uh, what is it, Westfield, New Jersey? Right, yeah,
of course, New Jersey. Okay, so the cops are involved.
Now the prosecutor's office is actually involved or spending money
testing this stuff for DNA, like you said, And they
(13:23):
started theorizing of who it could be, and that they
thought maybe it was one of the other prospective buyers
who was mad that they've been outbid by the.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Brotuses did get them out of there.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, could yeah, exactly. Could have been one of the neighbors,
like the watcher, essentially intimated. And then there was a
lot of suspicion on the Brotus family too, that they
were essentially like the family from the Amityville horror that
they had they were trying to basically create a sellable story,
which is what turned out to be the case. Actually, yeah,
(13:56):
or buyer's remorse too, that's another one too. But they
that would be a terrible, terrible thing to do if
you just wanted to sell the house, And there were
other people who had offered over, asking why would you
like saddle it with a now famous stalker rather than
(14:16):
just being like, we're gonna sell it and we'll try
to sell it at least break even.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. That doesn't make much sense.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, So in twenty sixteen, they try to subdivide the
property into a couple of lots, get rid of that house,
build two more.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
The zoning board in the town said no, no, big
slap in the.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Face, and they rented the place and the renter was like, yeah,
I mean, I know about this watcher thing, but like,
I wasn't too freaked out.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
It was fine.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
It was a good house to rent, and I did
have a clause and out clause in my lease in
case another.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Letter popped up.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Smart, And another letter did pop up, and this was
a really creepy one, and I think you should.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Read this one.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Oh well, the whole thing. Okay, violent winds and bitter
cold to the vile and spiteful Derek and his wench
of a wife, Maria. Do you wonder who the Watcher is?
Turn around, idiots, Maybe you even spoke to me, one
of the so called neighbors who has no idea who
the Watcher could be. Or maybe you do know and
are too scared to tell anyone. Good move. I walked
(15:14):
by the news trucks. Remember this whole thing had become
like a media circus by now when they took over
my neighborhood and mocked me. I watched as you watched
from the dark house in an attempt to find me.
Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions. Six fifty seven Boulevards
survived your attempted assault and stood strong with its army
of supporters barricading its gates. My soldiers of the boulevard
(15:37):
followed my orders to a tee. They carried out their
mission and saved the soul of six fifty seven Boulevard
with my orders. All hail the Watcher. Pretty full of themselves, right.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, he kind of came across as a smarmy a
hole in that one. Remember this watcher, is.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
He or she don't forget they found female DNA on
the envelope.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Oh yeah, that's true. This sounds like something got I
would do. Though they did mention the renter in that letter.
The renter was a little bit spooked, but it was like,
but I'll stay here, you know, I like this place.
Get some of those cameras in there, and I'll be fine.
And then there was one last spooky, spooky tag on
(16:19):
this letter about the revenge that might befall them. Maybe
a car accident, maybe a fire, Maybe something as simple
as a mild illness that never seems to go away
but makes you feel sick day after day after day
after day after day. Maybe the mysterious death of a pet.
Loved one suddenly die. Planes and cars and bicycles crash,
(16:40):
bones break.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
They threatened to make a plane crash.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Hey, that's pretty scary.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So how the whole thing end up? The Bronus family
finally did sell the house about five years after they
bought it, right.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, at a four hundred thousand dollars loss. And that
is the end of the story. What I don't know
was how the Netflix show that. Surely it just doesn't
wrap up that way.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
There's Oh, you haven't seen it, No, have you? Yeah?
It's good? Oh is it good?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
You watch the whole thing?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, it's How.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Does it end? Well, don't tell me how it ends.
I guess on air, but.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I honestly don't remember how it ends. But I don't.
It didn't seem to It didn't seem to be like
a succinct ending, like everything was wrapped up, if I
remember correctly. But it's nuts, man, it's off the rails.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
It's got and and you know, I'm sure they fictionalize
a lot of it, but it's got what's his name,
the guy like Roseburn's husband, Bobby kind of ali.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Oh, he's married to Rosebrnd. I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Yeah, one of my favorite couples.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And I sat next to him in a lounge at
the LaGuardia Airport one time and he smiled at me.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
So, yeah, I think we got something brewing their friendship one.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I think so too. Well, you should definitely watch the
Netflix special on the Watcher because you need something to
talk about with him.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's right, And thanks to everyone for indulging this extra
long two parts shorty and be safe tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Happy Halloween, everybody.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Halloween Everybody Short, Stuff's Out.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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