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