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, Cult of Weird, and The Cut and other places for these two scary stories.
The first one about the Britziest 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 1930s and 40s.
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 qualifies 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 is they discovered that their house was being protected via a kind of Dutch magic, Pennsylvania Dutch magic called powwow.
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 1820.
And they believe that it wasn't called powwow at first, but it was renamed that later after the Algonquin word for powwow, gathering of medicine men.
And that was it. It was this book basically that also has kind of a creepy backstory there, 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 cat's paw to ward off this thing.
And very importantly to me, nothing in the book is for casting spells against somebody or for hexing somebody.
It's all protective or defensive to like undo some hex somebody did on you.
So it's basically all positive.
And powwow 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 1928 it was found in the possession of a guy, a murderer named John Blimeyer.
And there was a local witch in this story named Nellie Knoll, what?
Great name, Nellie Knoll?
Yeah, for 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 the spell book and try and reverse this curse.
But when he broke in, his neighbor was actually there.
And 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 90s.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Or Red Sox maybe. So yeah, it turns out that the house of Nelson Remeyer, the neighbor who was killed by John Blimeyer, it's still around and his great grandson lives there.
And the part of the floor where Remeyer 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.
No, 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.
Okay, Chuck. So for the second real -life scary story, we're going to talk about the saga of Derek and Maria Brodus Who bought a dream home essentially in Westfield, New Jersey in 2014?
They paid over asking for it, which is also very scary They paid 1 .4 million for it and this house was a four -bathroom six -bedroom Dutch colonial Which should be the opposite it was built in 1905 and they loved the house They thought it was amazing what they didn't know is that there was a stalker 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 gonna 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 You like that?
But this house was originally built in 1905 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 and one of a long line of people in their family that had been watching
the house since 1905 Yeah, and one little note about the the letters the letters were typed but the envelopes were hand handwritten in a block dress script Yes, and that to me suggests strongly that the watcher couldn't figure out how to type on Yeah, that's pretty funny so 657 Boulevard is where this house
is and The Woods family had lived there for 23 years.
They were like this letter is 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 ever 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 the course of the next month as the Brodus is starting 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 It's 6 5 7 Boulevard that the watcher was the third generation to watch this house Hey, Dave, maybe we could Dave producer day for the shorties.
Maybe we have some scary music when we read these Great.
Alright, so cue the scary music and here we go with letter 2 My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s It is have be and of course put the little parenthetical sic in there, which means that I'm not the dummy They're the dumb.
Yeah 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.
Mm -hmm. 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 and this person is this anonymous letter writer is mentioning
young blood that you apparently brought to them and they the the watcher said that the woods had sold the house because the watcher asked them to and they were doing the watchers 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 mr.
And mrs. Brattice. 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 is in which bedroom then I can plan better.
Mm -hmm Man, don't forget the music third day So Derek Brodus did what every normal Father and husband would do in 2014.
He set up webcams in the house.
Yeah Yeah, and they hadn't moved in by the way in fact never moved in they had moved some of their stuff in Mm -hmm, but given what was happening they were slow rolling.
I think yeah, so weeks after the second letter So this is a couple months after they closed on the house They got another letter that said where have you gone to?
657 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 dad 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 that house and they tried to sell it and it did not go very well I thought a second ago you were gonna say these people did move into their 1 .4 million 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 is almost 50 right Program it was the Netflix movie of the week You 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 that didn't happen and so news Started getting hold of this they started reporting it they actual did DNA testing and found that Woman's DNA on the envelopes
and letters and that they had Kearney Postmarks on them.
Yeah, that's 20 miles away and closer to New York I don't know if we said this this whole thing takes place in What is it Westfield, New Jersey, right?
Yeah, of course, New Jersey.
Okay, so The cops are involved now the the prosecutor's office is actually involved.
They're spending money testing this stuff for DNA Like you said and they started theorizing of who it could be In that they thought maybe it was one of the other prospective buyers who was mad that they've been outbid by the vertices Get them out of there.
Yeah, could yeah exactly could have been one of the neighbors like the the watcher essentially intimated and then there was a lot of suspicion on the Brodus family to that they were essentially like the The family from the Amityville horror that they had they were trying to basically create a sellable
story Which is what turns out to be the case actually.
Yeah, or buyers remorse too.
That's another one too But they that was 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 us 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 didn't make much sense Yeah So in 2016 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 claws 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 the whole thing.
Okay Violent winds and bitter cold to the violent spiteful Derek and his wench of a wife Maria 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 657 Boulevard 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 657 Boulevard with my orders all hail the watcher Oh Pretty full of themself, right?
Yeah, he kind of came across as a smarmy a -hole in that one Whoever this watcher is he or she don't forget they found female DNA on the envelope.
Oh, yeah, that's true It sounds like something a guy would do though They did mention the renter in that letter The renter was a little bit spooked but 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 ones suddenly die planes and cars and bicycles crash bones break They threatened to make a plane crash Hey That's
pretty scary So how'd the whole thing end up the brodis family finally did sell the house about five years after they bought it, right?
Yeah at a four hundred thousand dollar loss and that is the end of the story What I don't know is 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.
Do you watch the whole thing?
Yeah, it's it. Is it in?
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 Sustained ending like everything was wrapped up if I remember correctly But nuts man, it's off the rails It's got a and you know, I'm sure they fictionalized a lot of it But um, it's got
what's his name the guy like Roseburn's husband Bobby kind of Ali.
Oh, he's married to Roseburn I didn't know that yeah One of my favorite couples and I sat next to him in a lounge at LaGuardia Airport one time and he smiled at me Yeah, I think we got something brewing there friendship wise.
I think so too Well, then you should definitely watch the Netflix special on the watcher because you need something to talk about with me That's right.
And thanks to everyone for indulging this extra long two -part shorty and uh, be safe tomorrow.
Happy Halloween. Everybody Everybody short stuff's out Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
