What happened to The Watcher’s real-life Broaddus family – and who lives in the creepy house now? Inside Netflix’s new No 1 TV show, a true crime thriller starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale
- Ryan Murphy’s latest mystery thriller The Watcher premiered on Netflix on October 13, starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale as proxies for Maria and Derek Broaddus
- The seven-episode miniseries is based on a true story from New York Magazine, about a family in New Jersey who move into their dream home and begin receiving threatening letters …
Netflix’s chilling new drama The Watcher premiered last week on October 13, and it’s already beat Dahmer as the streaming giant’s No 1 show. While the twists and turns of the series may seem too scary to be true, the show is actually based on a real-life story.
The show faithfully portrays the horrifying experience of the real-life Broadduses, who bought their dream home in Westfield, New Jersey in 2014, but were then plagued by a series of mysterious letters that praised the couple for bringing their children, or “young blood” into the home, among other creepy statements.
What happened to the real-life Broaddus family who inspired Netflix’s The Watcher?
The Broadduses’ story was first told in a November 2018 article published by New York Magazine. In the article, titled “The Haunting of a Dream House,” reporter Reeves Wiedeman detailed the unsettling things that happened to the family after they bought a home at 657 Boulevard in Westfield.
Per Wiedeman’s article, the first letter the Broadduses received from “The Watcher” began relatively innocuously, but the correspondence quickly morphed into something darker.
“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?” the letter read, in part. After telling the Broadduses that they would learn their children’s names, “The Watcher” concluded: “Welcome my friends, welcome. Let the party begin.”
They then signed the letter “The Watcher” in cursive, and there was no return address on the envelope – meaning that any of the Broadduses’ new neighbours could have theoretically been responsible. According to the article, Derek and Maria Broaddus soon learned that the family who’d sold them the house had also received a similar letter shortly before moving out. The Broadduses then went to the police with their findings.
