They closed on a six bedroom house on Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey, and treated it like a normal pre move renovation. Paint. Contractors. A couple of trips back and forth. Then, three days after closing, a letter showed up in the mailbox.
It was a white envelope with thick handwriting addressed to “The New Owner.” Inside was a typed note that opened like a friendly hello. It was signed “The Watcher.”
The timing was the first punch. They had not even moved in. The house was still a work site, still half idea and half expense. The letter acted like someone had been waiting for this exact moment.
The second punch was how quickly it got personal. The writer talked about the house like it belonged to a family tradition, and talked about the Broadduses like they had wandered into a story already in progress.
Derek and Maria were not strangers to Westfield life. Maria had grown up there, close enough that this purchase felt like a return. Their kids were already arguing over which fireplace Santa would use.
The letter did not care about any of that. It referenced their presence, their renovations, and their children. It pushed the idea that the house wanted “young blood,” and promised more contact.
Dearest new neighbor at 657 Boulevard, allow me to welcome you to the neighborhood.
How did you end up here? Did 657 Boulevard call to you with its force within?
657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now and as it approaches its 110th
birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming.
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.
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? Once I know
their names I will call to them and draw them to me.
Who am I? 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.
Welcome my friends, welcome. Let the party begin, The Watcher.
Derek read it late at night while standing in a house that still did not feel like a home. He reacted the way people do when fear arrives as paperwork. He locked down the place, then called police.
An officer came, read the letter, and treated it as a real threat instead of a weird joke. The advice was basic but revealing. Assume the writer might be close. Assume the house is being watched.
The next step was the one that turned this into a neighborhood story. Derek and Maria emailed the sellers, John and Andrea Woods, asking if they knew anything about someone claiming the Woods family had “listened” and delivered children to the house.
Andrea Woods wrote back with a detail that would matter later in court and in gossip. She said they had received a similar odd letter just before moving out, after more than two decades in the home, and had thrown it away.
Police also told Maria not to talk about the letters. That meant the new neighbors, the same ones you wave at during renovations, quietly became suspects. The family was asked to keep the entire block in the dark.
Two weeks passed. Maria stopped by the house to look at paint and check the mail. The same thick handwriting was back on another envelope. She called police again before opening it.
This second letter sounded like someone who had been watching the house like a shift job. It mentioned unloading belongings. It talked about the dumpster. It claimed the writer was learning the family’s routines.
Then it did something that made the case hard to shrug off. It identified their children by birth order and even by nicknames Maria had been shouting outside, the kind of detail you do not pull out of a listing photo.
It also asked about a child using an easel inside an enclosed porch, a detail the Broadduses believed was hard to see from the street. The letter treated the house like a map and treated the family like targets moving through it.
All of the windows and doors in 657 Boulevard allow me to watch you and track you as you
move through the house.
Who am I? I am the Watcher and have been in control of 657 Boulevard for the better part of two
decades now.
I am pleased to know your names now and the name of the young blood you have brought to me.
You certainly say their names often.
657 Boulevard is anxious for you to move in. It has been years and years since the young blood
ruled the hallways of the house. 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.
You have changed it and made it so fancy. You are stealing its history. The house was full of life
and young blood. Then it got old and so did my father. But he kept watching until the day he
died. And now I watch and wait for the day when the young blood will be mine again.
After that, they stopped bringing the kids to the property. Renovations can be stressful. Renovations plus letters that talk about your children’s bedrooms is something else. Moving in stopped being a plan and became a debate they could not finish.
A third letter came several weeks later. It was shorter and sharper. It suggested the writer knew they were staying away and wanted to pull them back toward the house anyway.
I will be patient and wait for this to pass and for you to bring the young blood back to me. Come back.
Let the young blood play again like I once did.Let
Let the young blood sleep in 657 Boulevard. Stop changing it and let it alone.
Westfield is the kind of place people describe as safe, polished, and family built. The house sat on a wide, tree lined street with some of the most desirable properties in town. It was built in 1905 and had the look of old money without the drama.
That image mattered because it shaped the first suspect theory. The Woodses had received multiple offers. If someone lost the bidding war, maybe this was retaliation. It was a neat explanation that fit the setting.
Another theory fit even better. The letter writer kept implying proximity, and the mail trail did too. The Cut reported the letters were processed through the Postal Service distribution center in Kearny, and the first was postmarked June 4, before the sale was public.
There was also the easel detail, the detail that kept dragging attention back to the question of who could actually see what. Derek and Maria showed Detective Leonard Lugo where the easel sat and how vegetation blocked it from the street.
A few days after the first letter, they went to a welcome barbecue across the street while keeping the letters secret, per police instructions. Their children ran around the crowd, and the adults who smiled and introduced themselves were also the pool of people police were quietly judging.
It did not take long for one neighbor family to become the obvious focus. The Langfords lived next door. The Cut reported the family had been there since the 1960s, matching the Watcher’s own timeline, and one neighbor described Michael Langford as a Boo Radley type.
Derek thought the case might end right there. One house over, long history on the block, a direct line of sight toward the porch. But “might” is where these stories live. The early suspicion did not become a clean answer.
The Broadduses brought in help of their own. A private investigator staked out the neighborhood and ran background checks. They also consulted former FBI agents for a threat assessment, trying to figure out what the letters said about the writer.
One former agent pointed out details that felt dated, like addressing the envelope to “M/M Braddus,” using weather as a salutation, and double spacing. The assessment leaned toward an older writer, with a controlled tone and a habit of writing.
The police focus stayed on the Langfords, but the logic kept getting messy. The Cut noted a reason the family itself latched onto. Police spoke to Michael Langford before the second letter, which would make sending more letters bold.
Other odd details cropped up too. A private investigator found two registered child sex offenders within a few blocks, according to the reporting. A painter working on the house said he once saw an older man sitting in lawn chairs facing the Broadduses’ property.
By the end of 2014, the investigation had stalled. No digital trail. No fingerprints. Nothing that turned a creepy letter into a charge. Police told the family they were running out of options. The Broadduses asked a priest to bless the house.
Around this time, another Watcher letter arrived with a different kind of energy. It sounded less like a performance for new owners and more like someone spiraling, talking as if the house itself had moods and grudges.
To the vile and spiteful Derek and his wench of a wife Maria. You wonder who the watcher is?
Turn around idiots.
657 Boulevard survived your attempted assault and stood strong with its army of supporters barricading its gates.
The letter went on to suggest what might happen to the family.
Maybe a car accident. Maybe a fire.Maybe
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.
The renovations finished, including a new alarm system, but the fear did not. The big question was simple and brutal. Can you let your kids play outside when someone keeps writing about the house like it is a trap?
The Broadduses sold their old home and moved in with Maria’s parents while still paying for 657 Boulevard. They kept the letters tight within a small circle, which meant other people filled the silence with guesses about divorce or “legal issues.”
Six months after the letters started, they decided to sell the house. Rumors were already moving faster than listings. They insisted on warning serious buyers, even when an agent suggested they were oversharing for suburban real estate.
By spring 2016, they put 657 back on the market again and held an open house. They researched the visitors and compared handwriting. Interested buyers backed out once they saw the letters. The story was now baked into the sale.
They still had to do something, and “do something” eventually turned into a plan that sounded crazy until you saw the math. Sell to a developer. Tear it down. Split the lot into two houses. Start over with different walls.
The problem was local rules. The two proposed lots would be slightly under the mandated width, meaning they needed an exception from the Westfield Planning Board. Once the plan went public, Westfield Facebook groups lit up, and so did the suspicion.
This is where the case stopped being only about a letter writer. Plenty of locals decided the entire thing was a hoax. The Cut described how some neighbors publicly argued it was a “ploy,” or even a con, and how the Broadduses became outcasts.
In January 2017, the planning board meeting drew more than 100 residents. The hearing ran for hours, filled with neighbors arguing about trees, garages, and the look of the block. The Watcher barely came up compared with property values and aesthetics.
The board unanimously rejected the plan late at night. A judge later denied their appeal. The family was stuck paying the mortgage, taxes, and ongoing upkeep on a house they could not live in and could not easily escape.
Not long after the board’s decision, a renter finally agreed to move in. The renter had adult children, two big dogs, and a clause allowing an exit if another letter showed up. Two weeks later, another letter showed up anyway.
Derek went to the house to deal with squirrels in the roof. The renter handed him the envelope. It opened with a weather line, then went straight for insult, calling Maria a “wench,” and telling them to “turn around.”
The letter tracked the public story. It referenced news trucks. It referenced Derek watching from the dark house. It framed the failed tear down attempt as an “assault” that 657 Boulevard survived with an “army of supporters.”
Then it laid out the part no parent can ignore, a list of threats dressed up as “maybes,” including accidents and illness that never goes away. When Maria described reading it, she said it felt like being back at the beginning.
It opens like a dramatic forecast, “Violent winds and bitter cold,” then attacks Derek and Maria and throws the big line, “Turn around idiots,” implying you may have met The Watcher already. It brags about watching the media frenzy and warns of harm as “maybe” scenarios like “Maybe a car accident. Maybe a fire,” plus illness, pet death, and sudden losses.
Derek took the letter to police. A detective traced a wide circle around the house on a map and suggested the Watcher had to be somewhere inside it. Derek’s own guess was narrower. He believed it came down to a small cluster of homes.
After the February 2017 letter, the case still did not produce a public culprit. When the story became widely known, a second problem grew beside the first. The Watcher was never caught, and the neighborhood never fully agreed on what it had witnessed.
Years later, the investigation got a jolt from the kind of detail people expect to be decisive. Saliva was found on an envelope flap, and DNA analysis suggested the letter was licked shut by a woman. Authorities asked neighbors on the block to submit DNA samples.
The neighbors, by and large, cooperated. The match never came. The Cut reported that some people were not home during canvassing and that two people refused swabs, including at least one “close neighbor,” but prosecutors declined to say more.
The Broadduses pushed for forensic genealogy, offering to pay for it, and later asked prosecutors to close the case and return the evidence so they could pursue that route themselves. The prosecutor’s office declined. The update framed the remaining paths as a confession or a DNA match.
Meanwhile, the house stayed expensive even while empty. In March 2019, the Broadduses listed it again for $999,000, hoping a builder would buy it and tear it down. A local young family bought it for $959,000, a loss of about $400,000 before all the other costs.
Those other costs were not small details. The Cut update lists property taxes, utilities, insurance, renovations already started, and the money spent on lawyers and investigators. Derek even forwarded the reporter confirmation of a mortgage payment on a house they never lived in.
At the closing, they passed a note to the new owners through their attorney, wishing them peace and quiet. They also included a photo of The Watcher’s handwriting in case more letters arrived. The update says none have been reported since.
Then Netflix arrived and the story widened again. Many locals assumed the family made a fortune. The Cut update says the Netflix money did not cover their losses, and that the family asked the production not to use their names or make the on screen family resemble them.
That is where it stands. A house bought in June 2014 became unlivable for the people who owned it. Letters came close enough to family life to force them out, and the person behind them stayed unproven. The house sold. The signature never did.
