Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I should say,
Speaker 1: hey and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too, skulking around like a
Speaker 1: real ghoul who just wants to dig up a grave
Speaker 1: and eat the corpse inside. That's what Jerry does around
Speaker 1: this time of year. And this is short stuff. So
Speaker 1: let's get going because it's basically Halloween.
Speaker 2: That's right, the day before Halloween. We're going to talk
Speaker 2: about two scary stories. Big thanks to Medium, People Magazine,
Speaker 2: A Cult of Weird, and The Cut and other places
Speaker 2: for these two scary stories. The first one about the
Speaker 2: Breeziest family of Auburn, Pennsylvania, who moved into a home
Speaker 2: for their family of six. They were like, let me,
Speaker 2: let's renovate a little bit. Let's take down this wall in.
Speaker 3: The living room, and oh my god, what is that?
Speaker 2: Basically because what they found within the walls of the
Speaker 2: home were dead animal carcasses, bones and skeletons.
Speaker 1: Yes, and very quizzically. They were wrapped in newspaper that
Speaker 1: dated from the nineteen thirties and forties, and apparently every
Speaker 1: wall that they opened up to put insulation in they
Speaker 1: found it packed with not only like dead animals, but
Speaker 1: also some spices artifacts and by god, I searched high
Speaker 1: and low for an example of what the artifacts were,
Speaker 1: but everybody just followed the example of whoever first wrote artifacts,
Speaker 1: and that's all you can get. So I have no
Speaker 1: idea what the artifacts are.
Speaker 3: Maybe that was the newspapers.
Speaker 1: I guess this qualify as artifacts. Yeah, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll just say that. So spices, newspapers, and dead animals.
Speaker 1: And they're like, I don't know what's going on here,
Speaker 1: So let's ask some locals what they think is happening.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that these people bought their house
Speaker 1: smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and
Speaker 1: it turns out what had happened they discovered that their
Speaker 1: house was being protected via a kind of Dutch magic,
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Dutch magic called pow wow.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: It has its roots in Pennsylvania there, and it's sort
Speaker 2: of like, I mean, Christianity is part of it because
Speaker 2: they do use the Christian or I don't know if
Speaker 2: they're still around or maybe did use the Christian Bible.
Speaker 2: I think it is still around, Okay, but there's definitely
Speaker 2: folk magic healing remedies, stuff like that powwow refers to
Speaker 2: or it actually came from this German book called The
Speaker 2: Long Lost Friends by John George Homan, published in eighteen twenty,
Speaker 2: and they believe that it wasn't called pow Wow at first,
Speaker 2: but it was renamed that later after the Algonquin word
Speaker 2: for you know, pow wow gathering of medicine men, and.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 2: It was this book basically that also has kind of
Speaker 2: a creepy backstory though, right, well, yeah.
Speaker 1: So just a little more about the book. It's a
Speaker 1: bunch of folk remedies and spells and recipes and hey,
Speaker 1: use this, you know, cat's paw for you know, to
Speaker 1: ward off this thing. And it very importantly to me.
Speaker 1: Nothing in the book is for casting spells against somebody
Speaker 1: or for hexting somebody. It's all protective or defensive to
Speaker 1: like undo some somebody did on you. So it's basically
Speaker 1: all positive and pow wow doctors who again are still
Speaker 1: around today, they don't take a cent for what they're doing.
Speaker 1: If you want to give them something as a token
Speaker 1: of thanks, they'll accept it, but they do not charge
Speaker 1: for their services or else it won't work. And to
Speaker 1: the people that they're working with and themselves. They are
Speaker 1: a conduit through from God to this person who needs healing,
Speaker 1: and that's what they're serving as, which is where the
Speaker 1: Christianity part comes in.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: And I mentioned the creepy backstory of that book here
Speaker 2: is that because in nineteen twenty eight it was found
Speaker 2: in the Possession of them guy, a murderer named John Blimeyer,
Speaker 2: and there was a local witch in this story named
Speaker 2: Nellie Knowle and what great name, Nellie.
Speaker 1: Hole Yeah or a witch?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 2: John Blimeyer was convinced that he was cursed by one
Speaker 2: of his neighbors and so he went to break into
Speaker 2: that neighbor's house to find this spell book and try
Speaker 2: and reverse this curse. But when he broke in, his
Speaker 2: neighbor was actually there, so they just killed him. They
Speaker 2: mutilated him, and they thought maybe that will lift the curse.
Speaker 2: So that has nothing to do with actually what's in
Speaker 2: the book, because like you said, it's a positive book
Speaker 2: of protection spells mainly, but it is Halloween, so I
Speaker 2: thought it was worth mentioning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also reverse the curse sounds like a cub's
Speaker 1: T shirt from the nineties.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, yeah, totally or red sox maybe.
Speaker 1: So yeah. It turns out that the house of Nelson Reemeyer,
Speaker 1: the neighbor who was killed by John Blmeyer, it's still
Speaker 1: around and his great grandson lives there. And the part
Speaker 1: of the floor where Remeier was burned alive is still singed,
Speaker 1: and the guy is cut it out and put plexiglass
Speaker 1: over it and gives tours of the house.
Speaker 2: That's right, and again, has nothing to do with this
Speaker 2: home or the dead animals in the wall. They're just
Speaker 2: dead animals in the wall. And by all appearances, it
Speaker 2: was part of a powwow protection ritual. They don't know
Speaker 2: what that house might have been trying to be protected from.
Speaker 3: That's kind of creepy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they took care of everything to the tune
Speaker 2: of about twenty thousand dollars because insurance would not cover it.
Speaker 1: Nope, they said this existed before your policy. So ts
Speaker 1: for you the spookiest part of the story exactly. So
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
Speaker 1: about a second real life horror story. How about that.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 4: Stop you should know, stop, you should I should know?
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, So for the second real life scary story.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the saga of Derek and
Speaker 1: Maria Brotus, who bought a dream home essentially in Westfield,
Speaker 1: New Jersey in twenty fourteen. They paid over asking for it,
Speaker 1: which is also very scary. They paid one point four
Speaker 1: million for it. And this house was a fourth bathroom,
Speaker 1: six bedroom Dutch colonial, which should be the opposite. It
Speaker 1: was built in nineteen oh five, and they loved the house.
Speaker 1: They thought it was amazing. What they didn't know is
Speaker 1: that there was a stock watching the house who called
Speaker 1: themselves appropriately the Watcher.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: This is, of course the basis of the Netflix show
Speaker 2: The Watcher. And we should also say we're going to
Speaker 2: cover this in about six or seven minutes. And this
Speaker 2: is a very dense story, so there is a lot
Speaker 2: more out there about the Watcher, and this is the
Speaker 2: broadest of overviews about the broadest family like that. But
Speaker 2: this house was originally built in nineteen oh five. About
Speaker 2: a month before closing, the Woods family, who was selling it,
Speaker 2: got a letter from someone that called themselves the Watcher.
Speaker 2: Sure was hand typed, and they claimed to be watching
Speaker 2: the house in one of a long line of people
Speaker 2: in their family that had been watching the house since
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one little note about the letters. The letters
Speaker 1: were tight, but the envelopes were hand handwritten in a
Speaker 1: block script. Yeah, yes, And that to me suggests strongly
Speaker 1: that the watcher couldn't figure out how to type onto
Speaker 1: an envelope, which I finally as.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty funny.
Speaker 2: So six fifty seven Boulevard is where this house is,
Speaker 2: and the Woods family had lived there for twenty three years,
Speaker 2: and they were like, this letter's kind of weird. It's
Speaker 2: a little creepy, but we're selling it and let's just
Speaker 2: not tell anybody.
Speaker 1: That, right. So, yeah, apparently it was the first letter
Speaker 1: they ever got. No one never seems to have intimated
Speaker 1: that they got one prior to this, so they just
Speaker 1: kind of threw it away and were just like whatever.
Speaker 1: And then over the course of the next month, as
Speaker 1: the Brotuses started moving their stuff in, three days after
Speaker 1: closing in June, they received a letter, their first letter,
Speaker 1: and it was essentially the watcher introducing themselves to this
Speaker 1: new family who'd moved into this house at six five
Speaker 1: seven Boulevard, that the watcher was the third generation to
Speaker 1: watch this house.
Speaker 3: Hey, Dave.
Speaker 2: Maybe we could Dave producer Dave for the shorties. Make
Speaker 2: we have some scary music when we read these letters. Yeah, great,
Speaker 2: So cue the scary music. And here we go with
Speaker 2: letter two. My grandfather watched the house in the nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties and my father watched in the nineteen sixties. It
Speaker 2: is have b and of course put the little parenthetical sic.
Speaker 1: In there, which I'm not the dummy. They're the dummy.
Speaker 2: It is have be put in charge of watching and
Speaker 2: waiting for its second coming. You don't want to make
Speaker 2: unhappy talking about the house. Do you need to fill
Speaker 2: the house with the young blood I requested? I asked
Speaker 2: the previous owners to bring me young blood.
Speaker 1: So this is not the kind of letter you would
Speaker 1: want to get when you're moving into your new house,
Speaker 1: especially because you have kids. In this person, it's this
Speaker 1: anonymous letter writer is mentioning young blood that you apparently
Speaker 1: brought to them, and they the watcher said that the
Speaker 1: Woods had told the house because the watcher asked them to,
Speaker 1: and they were doing the watcher's bidding, something that the
Speaker 1: watcher liked to apparently think about themselves, that they were
Speaker 1: in control of everything that happened. With this house. And
Speaker 1: two weeks later another letter arrived. It was addressed to
Speaker 1: mister and missus Braddis. They left the O out this time,
Speaker 1: and it got even more detailed about the kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking about their birth order, their nicknames,
Speaker 2: and this is very creepy. But it asked who would
Speaker 2: be in the street facing rooms and said it will
Speaker 2: help me to know who was in which bedroom then
Speaker 2: I can plan better.
Speaker 1: Man, don't forget the music their day. So Derek Brotus
Speaker 1: did what every normal father and husband would do in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, he set up webcams in the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and they hadn't moved in, by the way.
Speaker 2: In fact, it never moved in. They had moved some
Speaker 2: of their stuff in, but given what was happening, they
Speaker 2: were slow rolling, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So weeks after the second letter, so this
Speaker 1: is a couple months after they closed down the house,
Speaker 1: they got another letter that said where have you gone to?
Speaker 1: Six fifty seven Boulevard is missing you? And that's fairly creepy,
Speaker 1: but at least it wasn't a threatening letter this time.
Speaker 1: But it also showed that the watcher was clearly watching
Speaker 1: the house. And so a year went by a year, Chuck,
Speaker 1: where these people who paid almost one and a half
Speaker 1: million dollars for their house never moved into it because
Speaker 1: they were too scared of whoever this person was, and
Speaker 1: they also grew very paranoid. I don't think the Netflix
Speaker 1: special took any liberties with that. I think it was
Speaker 1: like an actual depiction of like how this family, especially
Speaker 1: the Dag, kind of descended into paranoia and suspecting anyone
Speaker 1: and everyone of being the Watcher. They just couldn't take
Speaker 1: this at all, so they just never moved in the
Speaker 1: house and they tried to sell it and it did
Speaker 1: not go over it.
Speaker 2: Well, I thought a second ago you were going to say,
Speaker 2: these people didn't move into their one point for me
Speaker 2: dollar house for a year because they were too scared
Speaker 2: and privileged.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just won't move in.
Speaker 1: So one other thing too, I called it a Netflix special,
Speaker 1: which I think kind of outed me as almost.
Speaker 3: Fifty right in a program.
Speaker 1: It was the Netflix movie of the week.
Speaker 3: You're watching your program.
Speaker 2: So they went to court and said, hey, these Woods
Speaker 2: people got this, they knew about this, they didn't disclose this.
Speaker 2: Now we've got this scary haunted house, or maybe not haunted,
Speaker 2: maybe being stalked by a real dangerous person, and.
Speaker 3: The Woods were like, no, no, no, that's not true.
Speaker 2: That didn't happen, And so news started getting hold of this,
Speaker 2: they started reporting it. They actually did DNA testing and
Speaker 2: found that woman's DNA on the envelopes and letters, and
Speaker 2: that they had any postmarks on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's twenty miles away and closer to New York.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we said this whole thing takes
Speaker 1: place in uh, what is it, Westfield, New Jersey? Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, New Jersey. Okay, so the cops are involved.
Speaker 1: Now the prosecutor's office is actually involved or spending money
Speaker 1: testing this stuff for DNA, like you said, And they
Speaker 1: started theorizing of who it could be, and that they
Speaker 1: thought maybe it was one of the other prospective buyers
Speaker 1: who was mad that they've been outbid by the.
Speaker 3: Brotuses did get them out of there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, could yeah, exactly. Could have been one of the neighbors,
Speaker 1: like the watcher, essentially intimated. And then there was a
Speaker 1: lot of suspicion on the Brotus family too, that they
Speaker 1: were essentially like the family from the Amityville horror that
Speaker 1: they had they were trying to basically create a sellable story,
Speaker 1: which is what turned out to be the case. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: or buyer's remorse too, that's another one too. But they
Speaker 1: that would be a terrible, terrible thing to do if
Speaker 1: you just wanted to sell the house, And there were
Speaker 1: other people who had offered over, asking why would you
Speaker 1: like saddle it with a now famous stalker rather than
Speaker 1: just being like, we're gonna sell it and we'll try
Speaker 1: to sell it at least break even.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure. That doesn't make much sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in twenty sixteen, they try to subdivide the
Speaker 2: property into a couple of lots, get rid of that house,
Speaker 2: build two more.
Speaker 3: The zoning board in the town said no, no, big
Speaker 3: slap in the.
Speaker 2: Face, and they rented the place and the renter was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I know about this watcher thing, but like,
Speaker 2: I wasn't too freaked out.
Speaker 3: It was fine.
Speaker 2: It was a good house to rent, and I did
Speaker 2: have a clause and out clause in my lease in
Speaker 2: case another.
Speaker 3: Letter popped up.
Speaker 2: Smart, And another letter did pop up, and this was
Speaker 2: a really creepy one, and I think you should.
Speaker 3: Read this one.
Speaker 1: Oh well, the whole thing. Okay, violent winds and bitter
Speaker 1: cold to the vile and spiteful Derek and his wench
Speaker 1: of a wife, Maria. Do you wonder who the Watcher is?
Speaker 1: Turn around, idiots, Maybe you even spoke to me, one
Speaker 1: of the so called neighbors who has no idea who
Speaker 1: the Watcher could be. Or maybe you do know and
Speaker 1: are too scared to tell anyone. Good move. I walked
Speaker 1: by the news trucks. Remember this whole thing had become
Speaker 1: like a media circus by now when they took over
Speaker 1: my neighborhood and mocked me. I watched as you watched
Speaker 1: from the dark house in an attempt to find me.
Speaker 1: Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions. Six fifty seven Boulevards
Speaker 1: survived your attempted assault and stood strong with its army
Speaker 1: of supporters barricading its gates. My soldiers of the boulevard
Speaker 1: followed my orders to a tee. They carried out their
Speaker 1: mission and saved the soul of six fifty seven Boulevard
Speaker 1: with my orders. All hail the Watcher. Pretty full of themselves, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of came across as a smarmy a
Speaker 2: hole in that one. Remember this watcher, is.
Speaker 1: He or she don't forget they found female DNA on
Speaker 1: the envelope.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's true. This sounds like something got I
Speaker 2: would do. Though they did mention the renter in that letter.
Speaker 2: The renter was a little bit spooked, but it was like,
Speaker 2: but I'll stay here, you know, I like this place.
Speaker 2: Get some of those cameras in there, and I'll be fine.
Speaker 2: And then there was one last spooky, spooky tag on
Speaker 2: this letter about the revenge that might befall them. Maybe
Speaker 2: a car accident, maybe a fire, Maybe something as simple
Speaker 2: as a mild illness that never seems to go away
Speaker 2: but makes you feel sick day after day after day
Speaker 2: after day after day. Maybe the mysterious death of a pet.
Speaker 2: Loved one suddenly die. Planes and cars and bicycles crash,
Speaker 2: bones break.
Speaker 1: They threatened to make a plane crash.
Speaker 3: Hey, that's pretty scary.
Speaker 1: So how the whole thing end up? The Bronus family
Speaker 1: finally did sell the house about five years after they
Speaker 1: bought it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at a four hundred thousand dollars loss. And that
Speaker 2: is the end of the story. What I don't know
Speaker 2: was how the Netflix show that. Surely it just doesn't
Speaker 2: wrap up that way.
Speaker 1: There's Oh, you haven't seen it, No, have you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's good? Oh is it good?
Speaker 3: You watch the whole thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's How.
Speaker 3: Does it end? Well, don't tell me how it ends.
Speaker 3: I guess on air, but.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't remember how it ends. But I don't.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem to It didn't seem to be like
Speaker 1: a succinct ending, like everything was wrapped up, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly. But it's nuts, man, it's off the rails.
Speaker 2: It's got and and you know, I'm sure they fictionalize
Speaker 2: a lot of it, but it's got what's his name,
Speaker 2: the guy like Roseburn's husband, Bobby kind of ali.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's married to Rosebrnd. I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of my favorite couples.
Speaker 2: And I sat next to him in a lounge at
Speaker 2: the LaGuardia Airport one time and he smiled at me.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I think we got something brewing their friendship one.
Speaker 1: I think so too. Well, you should definitely watch the
Speaker 1: Netflix special on the Watcher because you need something to
Speaker 1: talk about with him.
Speaker 2: That's right, And thanks to everyone for indulging this extra
Speaker 2: long two parts shorty and be safe tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Happy Halloween, everybody.
Speaker 1: Halloween Everybody Short, Stuff's Out.
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