Lifestyle

Freaked Out Family Flees Dream Home After Getting Letters From Stalker Dubbed ‘The Watcher’

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In what just might be the creepiest story we’ve read all week (or, um, all year?), CBS Local reports on a New Jersey family forced to abandon their six-bedroom dream home — before they’d even moved in! — after they began to receive terrifying messages from a stalker known as “The Watcher.” (They apparently began receiving these letters just three days after closing on the house — yikes.)

The couple, Derek and Maria Broaddus, have since filed a lawsuit claiming that they should have been notified about the stalker before purchasing the property, because the creep had apparently been sending similar missives to the house’s previous owners.

It began when the Broaddus couple paid $1.3 million for a 4,000-square-foot house in the quiet town of Westfield, NJ in June of last year. Soon after, they began to get multiple letters from The Watcher claiming that the house “has been the subject of my family for decades” and asking, “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.”

The Watcher also claimed to have been “put in charge of watching and waiting for [the house’s] second coming,” and allegedly mentioned the couple’s young kids, writing: “I am pleased to know your names now, and the name of the young blood you have brought to me…Have they found out what’s in the walls yet?”

Other horrifying snippets of The Watcher’s letters, as found in the full lawsuit, include:

  • “I asked the Woods to bring me young blood.”
  • “Will the young bloods play in the basement?”
  • “Who has the bedrooms facing the street? … It will help me to know … then I can plan better.”
  • “Who am I? I am the Watcher and I have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two decades now.”
  • “I am in charge…Let the young blood play again like I once did.”

The story has pretty much blown up the Internet, and on Tuesday evening, the Washington Post reports, Westfield Mayor Andrew Skibitsky talked to locals at a town council meeting and asked folks who knew anything about The Watcher to come forward: “Our police department conducted an exhaustive investigation based on the factual circumstances and evidence available…Although it would not be appropriate to discuss the details of the investigation. … We have spoken with the Union County Prosecutor’s Office to make sure no stone is left unturned.”

The freaked-out family is now suing the Woods family (the previous homeowners) for common law fraud, equitable fraud and emotional distress for not telling them about The Watcher before selling them the creepy abode.