Terrorized Couple Sell Creepy ‘Watcher House’ for a Big Loss
Terrorized Couple Sell Creepy ‘Watcher House’ for a Big Loss
realtor.com
A New Jersey couple thought they were buying their dream house. Instead, their purchase was the beginning of a five-year nightmare that terrorized the couple and their three children, pitted neighbors in their affluent town against one another, and resulted in the couple losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now they can finally close that chapter of their lives.
After years of trying, Derek and Maria Broaddus finally sold the “Watcher House,” as it’s called, at a roughly $500,000 loss last month, according to property records cited by Bloomberg. The Broadduses had been determined to unload the six-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom house after being plagued by sinister letters from a mysterious stalker called “The Watcher” after they bought the property for $1.4 million in 2014.
They renovated the turn-of-the-century Dutch Colonial in Westfield, NJ, the 99th-richest town in the country, according to Bloomberg. But they never moved in because of the frightening—and increasingly threatening—letters.
“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.
“The Watcher” also welcomed the couple’s “young blood,” aka their children, and used their names in the letters.
“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,” another of the letters said.
The identity of “The Watcher” remains unknown. Local police have interviewed neighbors, but have never been able to apprehend the writer. The Broadduses have tried to sell the home at least three times and even sued the former owners of the home for not disclosing the letters. But the negative publicity surrounding the home and the creepy letters have scared off potential buyers.
In addition to losing money on the sale of the house, the couple are also out the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent on renovations to the house, security, and private investigators.
Calls to their attorney for comment were not immediately returned.
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