657 Boulevard

In June 2014, Derek and Maria Broaddus closed on the house of their dreams.

It was a big, gracious, six-bedroom Dutch Colonial built in 1905, on a tree-lined street called Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey — a prosperous suburb about twenty-five miles from Manhattan, with good schools, a charming downtown, and the kind of neighborhood where kids ride bikes in the street and neighbors wave from their porches. Derek had grown up nearby. They paid more than a million dollars. They had three young children, and they planned to renovate the house before moving in.

Three days after the closing, Derek went over to the house to do some painting. He checked the mailbox. Inside, among the bills and cards congratulating them on their new home, was a white envelope addressed in thick, clumsy handwriting to “The New Owner.”

The letter inside welcomed them to the neighborhood. And then it went on.

The First Letter

The writer explained that 657 Boulevard had been the subject of their family’s attention for decades. They said their grandfather had watched the house in the 1920s, their father had watched it in the 1960s, and now it was their turn. They asked whether the Broadduses had moved in yet. They said they knew about the work being done on the house, and that they knew the family had children.

They mentioned that the house had been waiting for “young blood.”

They signed the letter “The Watcher.”

Derek called the police that night.

More Letters

Two weeks later, a second letter arrived. This one was more specific, and more frightening. The Watcher now knew the names of the Broadduses’ children — and used the nicknames the family used. The writer commented on the children’s activities, asked whether they had found what was hidden in the walls, and said they could see the children from the street. The writer asked which bedroom each child would sleep in, so they could “plan better.”

A few weeks later, a third letter came, with more of the same.

The Broaddus family were terrified. They stopped bringing their children to the house. They never moved in.

Who Was Watching?

The Westfield police investigated. So did private investigators the Broadduses hired, as well as former FBI agents. They tested the envelopes for DNA. They analyzed the handwriting and the language. They looked at the neighbors, many of whom had lived on Boulevard for decades. They looked at a family across the street whose adult children lived at home. They looked at people who had worked on the house.

They never identified the Watcher.

The Broadduses soon learned something that made them furious. The previous owners of the house, a couple who had lived there for twenty-three years, had received a letter from the Watcher themselves, just days before the sale closed. It was the first such letter they had ever gotten, they said, in all their years in the house, and they had thrown it away. They hadn’t told the Broadduses about it. The Broadduses sued them, arguing that they should have disclosed it. The lawsuit was later dismissed.

The House Nobody Wanted

The Broaddus family were trapped. They couldn’t live in the house, but they owned it, and they were still paying the mortgage on it while also paying for the home they’d moved back into.

They tried to sell. When word got out about the Watcher, potential buyers backed away. They tried to get permission to tear down the house and build two smaller homes on the lot; the town’s planning board rejected the plan. They rented the house out for a time. The renters reportedly received another letter.

The story became public in 2015, when it was reported in the local press, and then it went viral. In 2018, New York magazine published a long investigation of the case that brought it to national attention. Strangers drove by the house to gawk. Theories spread online. Some even accused the Broadduses of writing the letters themselves, to get out of a purchase they regretted — an accusation the family denied and investigators found no evidence to support.

In 2019, the Broadduses finally sold the house — for about four hundred thousand dollars less than they had paid for it.

The Watcher on Screen

In 2022, Netflix released a dramatized series based on the case, starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale. It took many liberties with the facts, adding characters, events and theories that never happened. It also renewed the public’s fascination with the real case.

The real Watcher was never found.

The Most Frightening Thing

What makes this case so unsettling isn’t anything supernatural. It’s the idea that someone — a neighbor, a passerby, a stranger — could be watching your home, your children, your daily life, and you might never know who.

Most of the stories in this book involve houses where something terrible happened long ago. At 657 Boulevard, nothing terrible ever happened, as far as anyone knows. No one was hurt. No one died. And yet a family lost their dream home, their savings, and their peace of mind, because of three letters written by someone who has never been found.