By Tim Binnall
A home in New Jersey that was at the center of a strange saga involving unsettling letters that were sent to its new owners by a person calling themselves 'The Watcher' has reportedly been sold. The bizarre tale began five years ago when a family purchased the abode in the town of Westfield and subsequently received creepy missives from a mysterious individual who was apparently unhappy that they had bought the house.
The cryptic, rambling letters from 'The Watcher' suggested that the home possessed some kind of dark secret and seemed to tease that something terrible would befall the children in the family. As one can imagine, the letters terrified the new owners and they turned to the police for help. Eventually, the story got out into the public and sparked worldwide headlines and even a TV movie.
While the initial tumult from the Watcher letters eventually died down, the family never settled into the home, for obvious reasons, and wound up getting bogged down in lawsuits and legal difficulties while trying to rid themselves of the cursed place. Presumably to their profound relief, their nightmare would appear to be over as the family finally sold the home this week.
In coverage of the sale, much has been made about how the now-former owners ended up selling the house for around $400,000 less than they had paid for it, probably due to the unusual, to put it mildly, circumstances attached to the property. However, the family may come out on top in the end as Netflix is said to have paid a proverbial king's ransom for the rights to their story.
As for the Watcher, we're left to wonder if the eerie stalker will take up the letter-writing campaign once again now that the home has new owners or if the 2014 affair was an isolated incident. And, maddeningly, it remains to be seen if the mysterious stranger will ever be unmasked so that this story can come to a satisfactory ending or if it's destined to go unsolved.