Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Two Scary True Shorties!
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I should say,
- 0:06Speaker 1: hey and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
- 0:09Speaker 1: there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too, skulking around like a
- 0:13Speaker 1: real ghoul who just wants to dig up a grave
- 0:16Speaker 1: and eat the corpse inside. That's what Jerry does around
- 0:19Speaker 1: this time of year. And this is short stuff. So
- 0:22Speaker 1: let's get going because it's basically Halloween.
- 0:25Speaker 2: That's right, the day before Halloween. We're going to talk
- 0:27Speaker 2: about two scary stories. Big thanks to Medium, People Magazine,
- 0:31Speaker 2: A Cult of Weird, and The Cut and other places
- 0:34Speaker 2: for these two scary stories. The first one about the
- 0:37Speaker 2: Breeziest family of Auburn, Pennsylvania, who moved into a home
- 0:43Speaker 2: for their family of six. They were like, let me,
- 0:46Speaker 2: let's renovate a little bit. Let's take down this wall in.
- 0:50Speaker 3: The living room, and oh my god, what is that?
- 0:55Speaker 2: Basically because what they found within the walls of the
- 0:58Speaker 2: home were dead animal carcasses, bones and skeletons.
- 1:04Speaker 1: Yes, and very quizzically. They were wrapped in newspaper that
- 1:09Speaker 1: dated from the nineteen thirties and forties, and apparently every
- 1:13Speaker 1: wall that they opened up to put insulation in they
- 1:16Speaker 1: found it packed with not only like dead animals, but
- 1:20Speaker 1: also some spices artifacts and by god, I searched high
- 1:26Speaker 1: and low for an example of what the artifacts were,
- 1:28Speaker 1: but everybody just followed the example of whoever first wrote artifacts,
- 1:32Speaker 1: and that's all you can get. So I have no
- 1:34Speaker 1: idea what the artifacts are.
- 1:35Speaker 3: Maybe that was the newspapers.
- 1:38Speaker 1: I guess this qualify as artifacts. Yeah, yeah, all right,
- 1:41Speaker 1: we'll just say that. So spices, newspapers, and dead animals.
- 1:45Speaker 1: And they're like, I don't know what's going on here,
- 1:48Speaker 1: So let's ask some locals what they think is happening.
- 1:51Speaker 1: And it turns out that these people bought their house
- 1:54Speaker 1: smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and
- 1:58Speaker 1: it turns out what had happened they discovered that their
- 2:01Speaker 1: house was being protected via a kind of Dutch magic,
- 2:07Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Dutch magic called pow wow.
- 2:10Speaker 3: That's right.
- 2:11Speaker 2: It has its roots in Pennsylvania there, and it's sort
- 2:14Speaker 2: of like, I mean, Christianity is part of it because
- 2:19Speaker 2: they do use the Christian or I don't know if
- 2:21Speaker 2: they're still around or maybe did use the Christian Bible.
- 2:23Speaker 2: I think it is still around, Okay, but there's definitely
- 2:26Speaker 2: folk magic healing remedies, stuff like that powwow refers to
- 2:32Speaker 2: or it actually came from this German book called The
- 2:35Speaker 2: Long Lost Friends by John George Homan, published in eighteen twenty,
- 2:41Speaker 2: and they believe that it wasn't called pow Wow at first,
- 2:44Speaker 2: but it was renamed that later after the Algonquin word
- 2:48Speaker 2: for you know, pow wow gathering of medicine men, and.
- 2:51Speaker 3: That was it.
- 2:52Speaker 2: It was this book basically that also has kind of
- 2:55Speaker 2: a creepy backstory though, right, well, yeah.
- 2:58Speaker 1: So just a little more about the book. It's a
- 3:00Speaker 1: bunch of folk remedies and spells and recipes and hey,
- 3:04Speaker 1: use this, you know, cat's paw for you know, to
- 3:06Speaker 1: ward off this thing. And it very importantly to me.
- 3:11Speaker 1: Nothing in the book is for casting spells against somebody
- 3:15Speaker 1: or for hexting somebody. It's all protective or defensive to
- 3:18Speaker 1: like undo some somebody did on you. So it's basically
- 3:21Speaker 1: all positive and pow wow doctors who again are still
- 3:26Speaker 1: around today, they don't take a cent for what they're doing.
- 3:28Speaker 1: If you want to give them something as a token
- 3:31Speaker 1: of thanks, they'll accept it, but they do not charge
- 3:33Speaker 1: for their services or else it won't work. And to
- 3:36Speaker 1: the people that they're working with and themselves. They are
- 3:41Speaker 1: a conduit through from God to this person who needs healing,
- 3:45Speaker 1: and that's what they're serving as, which is where the
- 3:47Speaker 1: Christianity part comes in.
- 3:50Speaker 3: That's right.
- 3:50Speaker 2: And I mentioned the creepy backstory of that book here
- 3:54Speaker 2: is that because in nineteen twenty eight it was found
- 3:59Speaker 2: in the Possession of them guy, a murderer named John Blimeyer,
- 4:03Speaker 2: and there was a local witch in this story named
- 4:05Speaker 2: Nellie Knowle and what great name, Nellie.
- 4:09Speaker 1: Hole Yeah or a witch?
- 4:11Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely.
- 4:13Speaker 2: John Blimeyer was convinced that he was cursed by one
- 4:16Speaker 2: of his neighbors and so he went to break into
- 4:19Speaker 2: that neighbor's house to find this spell book and try
- 4:22Speaker 2: and reverse this curse. But when he broke in, his
- 4:25Speaker 2: neighbor was actually there, so they just killed him. They
- 4:28Speaker 2: mutilated him, and they thought maybe that will lift the curse.
- 4:31Speaker 2: So that has nothing to do with actually what's in
- 4:35Speaker 2: the book, because like you said, it's a positive book
- 4:37Speaker 2: of protection spells mainly, but it is Halloween, so I
- 4:42Speaker 2: thought it was worth mentioning.
- 4:44Speaker 1: Yeah, and also reverse the curse sounds like a cub's
- 4:47Speaker 1: T shirt from the nineties.
- 4:49Speaker 3: You know, yeah, yeah, totally or red sox maybe.
- 4:52Speaker 1: So yeah. It turns out that the house of Nelson Reemeyer,
- 4:56Speaker 1: the neighbor who was killed by John Blmeyer, it's still
- 4:59Speaker 1: around and his great grandson lives there. And the part
- 5:03Speaker 1: of the floor where Remeier was burned alive is still singed,
- 5:08Speaker 1: and the guy is cut it out and put plexiglass
- 5:10Speaker 1: over it and gives tours of the house.
- 5:13Speaker 2: That's right, and again, has nothing to do with this
- 5:15Speaker 2: home or the dead animals in the wall. They're just
- 5:19Speaker 2: dead animals in the wall. And by all appearances, it
- 5:21Speaker 2: was part of a powwow protection ritual. They don't know
- 5:25Speaker 2: what that house might have been trying to be protected from.
- 5:28Speaker 3: That's kind of creepy.
- 5:29Speaker 2: Yeah, but they took care of everything to the tune
- 5:32Speaker 2: of about twenty thousand dollars because insurance would not cover it.
- 5:35Speaker 1: Nope, they said this existed before your policy. So ts
- 5:39Speaker 1: for you the spookiest part of the story exactly. So
- 5:44Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
- 5:45Speaker 1: about a second real life horror story. How about that.
- 5:49Speaker 3: Let's do it.
- 6:14Speaker 4: Stop you should know, stop, you should I should know?
- 6:26Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, So for the second real life scary story.
- 6:29Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the saga of Derek and
- 6:31Speaker 1: Maria Brotus, who bought a dream home essentially in Westfield,
- 6:36Speaker 1: New Jersey in twenty fourteen. They paid over asking for it,
- 6:41Speaker 1: which is also very scary. They paid one point four
- 6:45Speaker 1: million for it. And this house was a fourth bathroom,
- 6:49Speaker 1: six bedroom Dutch colonial, which should be the opposite. It
- 6:53Speaker 1: was built in nineteen oh five, and they loved the house.
- 6:56Speaker 1: They thought it was amazing. What they didn't know is
- 6:58Speaker 1: that there was a stock watching the house who called
- 7:02Speaker 1: themselves appropriately the Watcher.
- 7:05Speaker 3: That's right.
- 7:06Speaker 2: This is, of course the basis of the Netflix show
- 7:09Speaker 2: The Watcher. And we should also say we're going to
- 7:11Speaker 2: cover this in about six or seven minutes. And this
- 7:14Speaker 2: is a very dense story, so there is a lot
- 7:17Speaker 2: more out there about the Watcher, and this is the
- 7:19Speaker 2: broadest of overviews about the broadest family like that. But
- 7:25Speaker 2: this house was originally built in nineteen oh five. About
- 7:28Speaker 2: a month before closing, the Woods family, who was selling it,
- 7:32Speaker 2: got a letter from someone that called themselves the Watcher.
- 7:36Speaker 2: Sure was hand typed, and they claimed to be watching
- 7:39Speaker 2: the house in one of a long line of people
- 7:42Speaker 2: in their family that had been watching the house since
- 7:45Speaker 2: nineteen oh five.
- 7:46Speaker 1: Yeah, and one little note about the letters. The letters
- 7:49Speaker 1: were tight, but the envelopes were hand handwritten in a
- 7:54Speaker 1: block script. Yeah, yes, And that to me suggests strongly
- 7:59Speaker 1: that the watcher couldn't figure out how to type onto
- 8:02Speaker 1: an envelope, which I finally as.
- 8:05Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty funny.
- 8:07Speaker 2: So six fifty seven Boulevard is where this house is,
- 8:12Speaker 2: and the Woods family had lived there for twenty three years,
- 8:15Speaker 2: and they were like, this letter's kind of weird. It's
- 8:18Speaker 2: a little creepy, but we're selling it and let's just
- 8:21Speaker 2: not tell anybody.
- 8:22Speaker 1: That, right. So, yeah, apparently it was the first letter
- 8:27Speaker 1: they ever got. No one never seems to have intimated
- 8:29Speaker 1: that they got one prior to this, so they just
- 8:32Speaker 1: kind of threw it away and were just like whatever.
- 8:35Speaker 1: And then over the course of the next month, as
- 8:38Speaker 1: the Brotuses started moving their stuff in, three days after
- 8:42Speaker 1: closing in June, they received a letter, their first letter,
- 8:47Speaker 1: and it was essentially the watcher introducing themselves to this
- 8:51Speaker 1: new family who'd moved into this house at six five
- 8:54Speaker 1: seven Boulevard, that the watcher was the third generation to
- 8:58Speaker 1: watch this house.
- 9:00Speaker 3: Hey, Dave.
- 9:00Speaker 2: Maybe we could Dave producer Dave for the shorties. Make
- 9:03Speaker 2: we have some scary music when we read these letters. Yeah, great,
- 9:07Speaker 2: So cue the scary music. And here we go with
- 9:09Speaker 2: letter two. My grandfather watched the house in the nineteen
- 9:12Speaker 2: twenties and my father watched in the nineteen sixties. It
- 9:16Speaker 2: is have b and of course put the little parenthetical sic.
- 9:21Speaker 1: In there, which I'm not the dummy. They're the dummy.
- 9:25Speaker 2: It is have be put in charge of watching and
- 9:27Speaker 2: waiting for its second coming. You don't want to make
- 9:31Speaker 2: unhappy talking about the house. Do you need to fill
- 9:36Speaker 2: the house with the young blood I requested? I asked
- 9:40Speaker 2: the previous owners to bring me young blood.
- 9:43Speaker 1: So this is not the kind of letter you would
- 9:45Speaker 1: want to get when you're moving into your new house,
- 9:48Speaker 1: especially because you have kids. In this person, it's this
- 9:51Speaker 1: anonymous letter writer is mentioning young blood that you apparently
- 9:55Speaker 1: brought to them, and they the watcher said that the
- 10:00Speaker 1: Woods had told the house because the watcher asked them to,
- 10:02Speaker 1: and they were doing the watcher's bidding, something that the
- 10:05Speaker 1: watcher liked to apparently think about themselves, that they were
- 10:09Speaker 1: in control of everything that happened. With this house. And
- 10:12Speaker 1: two weeks later another letter arrived. It was addressed to
- 10:16Speaker 1: mister and missus Braddis. They left the O out this time,
- 10:20Speaker 1: and it got even more detailed about the kids.
- 10:23Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking about their birth order, their nicknames,
- 10:27Speaker 2: and this is very creepy. But it asked who would
- 10:31Speaker 2: be in the street facing rooms and said it will
- 10:33Speaker 2: help me to know who was in which bedroom then
- 10:36Speaker 2: I can plan better.
- 10:39Speaker 1: Man, don't forget the music their day. So Derek Brotus
- 10:43Speaker 1: did what every normal father and husband would do in
- 10:47Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, he set up webcams in the house.
- 10:49Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and they hadn't moved in, by the way.
- 10:53Speaker 2: In fact, it never moved in. They had moved some
- 10:54Speaker 2: of their stuff in, but given what was happening, they
- 10:57Speaker 2: were slow rolling, I think.
- 10:59Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So weeks after the second letter, so this
- 11:02Speaker 1: is a couple months after they closed down the house,
- 11:05Speaker 1: they got another letter that said where have you gone to?
- 11:09Speaker 1: Six fifty seven Boulevard is missing you? And that's fairly creepy,
- 11:15Speaker 1: but at least it wasn't a threatening letter this time.
- 11:18Speaker 1: But it also showed that the watcher was clearly watching
- 11:21Speaker 1: the house. And so a year went by a year, Chuck,
- 11:26Speaker 1: where these people who paid almost one and a half
- 11:29Speaker 1: million dollars for their house never moved into it because
- 11:32Speaker 1: they were too scared of whoever this person was, and
- 11:36Speaker 1: they also grew very paranoid. I don't think the Netflix
- 11:39Speaker 1: special took any liberties with that. I think it was
- 11:42Speaker 1: like an actual depiction of like how this family, especially
- 11:48Speaker 1: the Dag, kind of descended into paranoia and suspecting anyone
- 11:51Speaker 1: and everyone of being the Watcher. They just couldn't take
- 11:55Speaker 1: this at all, so they just never moved in the
- 11:57Speaker 1: house and they tried to sell it and it did
- 11:59Speaker 1: not go over it.
- 12:00Speaker 2: Well, I thought a second ago you were going to say,
- 12:03Speaker 2: these people didn't move into their one point for me
- 12:05Speaker 2: dollar house for a year because they were too scared
- 12:08Speaker 2: and privileged.
- 12:11Speaker 3: Yeah, we just won't move in.
- 12:12Speaker 1: So one other thing too, I called it a Netflix special,
- 12:15Speaker 1: which I think kind of outed me as almost.
- 12:18Speaker 3: Fifty right in a program.
- 12:21Speaker 1: It was the Netflix movie of the week.
- 12:23Speaker 3: You're watching your program.
- 12:26Speaker 2: So they went to court and said, hey, these Woods
- 12:30Speaker 2: people got this, they knew about this, they didn't disclose this.
- 12:34Speaker 2: Now we've got this scary haunted house, or maybe not haunted,
- 12:39Speaker 2: maybe being stalked by a real dangerous person, and.
- 12:42Speaker 3: The Woods were like, no, no, no, that's not true.
- 12:45Speaker 2: That didn't happen, And so news started getting hold of this,
- 12:50Speaker 2: they started reporting it. They actually did DNA testing and
- 12:53Speaker 2: found that woman's DNA on the envelopes and letters, and
- 12:58Speaker 2: that they had any postmarks on them.
- 13:02Speaker 1: Yeah, that's twenty miles away and closer to New York.
- 13:04Speaker 1: I don't know if we said this whole thing takes
- 13:07Speaker 1: place in uh, what is it, Westfield, New Jersey? Right, yeah,
- 13:11Speaker 1: of course, New Jersey. Okay, so the cops are involved.
- 13:16Speaker 1: Now the prosecutor's office is actually involved or spending money
- 13:20Speaker 1: testing this stuff for DNA, like you said, And they
- 13:23Speaker 1: started theorizing of who it could be, and that they
- 13:27Speaker 1: thought maybe it was one of the other prospective buyers
- 13:30Speaker 1: who was mad that they've been outbid by the.
- 13:32Speaker 3: Brotuses did get them out of there.
- 13:35Speaker 1: Yeah, could yeah, exactly. Could have been one of the neighbors,
- 13:38Speaker 1: like the watcher, essentially intimated. And then there was a
- 13:42Speaker 1: lot of suspicion on the Brotus family too, that they
- 13:44Speaker 1: were essentially like the family from the Amityville horror that
- 13:48Speaker 1: they had they were trying to basically create a sellable story,
- 13:52Speaker 1: which is what turned out to be the case. Actually, yeah,
- 13:56Speaker 1: or buyer's remorse too, that's another one too. But they
- 14:00Speaker 1: that would be a terrible, terrible thing to do if
- 14:04Speaker 1: you just wanted to sell the house, And there were
- 14:06Speaker 1: other people who had offered over, asking why would you
- 14:10Speaker 1: like saddle it with a now famous stalker rather than
- 14:16Speaker 1: just being like, we're gonna sell it and we'll try
- 14:18Speaker 1: to sell it at least break even.
- 14:20Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure. That doesn't make much sense.
- 14:22Speaker 2: Yeah, So in twenty sixteen, they try to subdivide the
- 14:25Speaker 2: property into a couple of lots, get rid of that house,
- 14:27Speaker 2: build two more.
- 14:28Speaker 3: The zoning board in the town said no, no, big
- 14:32Speaker 3: slap in the.
- 14:32Speaker 2: Face, and they rented the place and the renter was like, yeah,
- 14:37Speaker 2: I mean, I know about this watcher thing, but like,
- 14:40Speaker 2: I wasn't too freaked out.
- 14:41Speaker 3: It was fine.
- 14:41Speaker 2: It was a good house to rent, and I did
- 14:43Speaker 2: have a clause and out clause in my lease in
- 14:45Speaker 2: case another.
- 14:46Speaker 3: Letter popped up.
- 14:47Speaker 2: Smart, And another letter did pop up, and this was
- 14:51Speaker 2: a really creepy one, and I think you should.
- 14:53Speaker 3: Read this one.
- 14:53Speaker 1: Oh well, the whole thing. Okay, violent winds and bitter
- 14:56Speaker 1: cold to the vile and spiteful Derek and his wench
- 15:00Speaker 1: of a wife, Maria. Do you wonder who the Watcher is?
- 15:03Speaker 1: Turn around, idiots, Maybe you even spoke to me, one
- 15:06Speaker 1: of the so called neighbors who has no idea who
- 15:08Speaker 1: the Watcher could be. Or maybe you do know and
- 15:11Speaker 1: are too scared to tell anyone. Good move. I walked
- 15:14Speaker 1: by the news trucks. Remember this whole thing had become
- 15:17Speaker 1: like a media circus by now when they took over
- 15:20Speaker 1: my neighborhood and mocked me. I watched as you watched
- 15:23Speaker 1: from the dark house in an attempt to find me.
- 15:25Speaker 1: Telescopes and binoculars are wonderful inventions. Six fifty seven Boulevards
- 15:30Speaker 1: survived your attempted assault and stood strong with its army
- 15:33Speaker 1: of supporters barricading its gates. My soldiers of the boulevard
- 15:37Speaker 1: followed my orders to a tee. They carried out their
- 15:40Speaker 1: mission and saved the soul of six fifty seven Boulevard
- 15:43Speaker 1: with my orders. All hail the Watcher. Pretty full of themselves, right.
- 15:50Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of came across as a smarmy a
- 15:53Speaker 2: hole in that one. Remember this watcher, is.
- 15:55Speaker 1: He or she don't forget they found female DNA on
- 15:57Speaker 1: the envelope.
- 15:58Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's true. This sounds like something got I
- 16:00Speaker 2: would do. Though they did mention the renter in that letter.
- 16:04Speaker 2: The renter was a little bit spooked, but it was like,
- 16:07Speaker 2: but I'll stay here, you know, I like this place.
- 16:11Speaker 2: Get some of those cameras in there, and I'll be fine.
- 16:15Speaker 2: And then there was one last spooky, spooky tag on
- 16:19Speaker 2: this letter about the revenge that might befall them. Maybe
- 16:22Speaker 2: a car accident, maybe a fire, Maybe something as simple
- 16:25Speaker 2: as a mild illness that never seems to go away
- 16:28Speaker 2: but makes you feel sick day after day after day
- 16:32Speaker 2: after day after day. Maybe the mysterious death of a pet.
- 16:37Speaker 2: Loved one suddenly die. Planes and cars and bicycles crash,
- 16:40Speaker 2: bones break.
- 16:42Speaker 1: They threatened to make a plane crash.
- 16:45Speaker 3: Hey, that's pretty scary.
- 16:48Speaker 1: So how the whole thing end up? The Bronus family
- 16:50Speaker 1: finally did sell the house about five years after they
- 16:53Speaker 1: bought it, right.
- 16:55Speaker 2: Yeah, at a four hundred thousand dollars loss. And that
- 16:58Speaker 2: is the end of the story. What I don't know
- 17:00Speaker 2: was how the Netflix show that. Surely it just doesn't
- 17:02Speaker 2: wrap up that way.
- 17:03Speaker 1: There's Oh, you haven't seen it, No, have you? Yeah?
- 17:06Speaker 1: It's good? Oh is it good?
- 17:08Speaker 3: You watch the whole thing?
- 17:09Speaker 1: Yeah, it's How.
- 17:10Speaker 3: Does it end? Well, don't tell me how it ends.
- 17:11Speaker 3: I guess on air, but.
- 17:12Speaker 1: I honestly don't remember how it ends. But I don't.
- 17:15Speaker 1: It didn't seem to It didn't seem to be like
- 17:18Speaker 1: a succinct ending, like everything was wrapped up, if I
- 17:20Speaker 1: remember correctly. But it's nuts, man, it's off the rails.
- 17:26Speaker 2: It's got and and you know, I'm sure they fictionalize
- 17:28Speaker 2: a lot of it, but it's got what's his name,
- 17:31Speaker 2: the guy like Roseburn's husband, Bobby kind of ali.
- 17:34Speaker 1: Oh, he's married to Rosebrnd. I didn't know that.
- 17:36Speaker 3: Yeah, one of my favorite couples.
- 17:37Speaker 2: And I sat next to him in a lounge at
- 17:39Speaker 2: the LaGuardia Airport one time and he smiled at me.
- 17:42Speaker 3: So, yeah, I think we got something brewing their friendship one.
- 17:45Speaker 1: I think so too. Well, you should definitely watch the
- 17:48Speaker 1: Netflix special on the Watcher because you need something to
- 17:52Speaker 1: talk about with him.
- 17:54Speaker 2: That's right, And thanks to everyone for indulging this extra
- 17:56Speaker 2: long two parts shorty and be safe tomorrow.
- 18:00Speaker 3: Happy Halloween, everybody.
- 18:01Speaker 1: Halloween Everybody Short, Stuff's Out.
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