The house at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey, which inspired the Netflix series 'The Watcher'

See ‘The Watcher’ House at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey Plus Details About Who Lives There in 2022

See the real-life house at 657 Boulevard that inspired the story in the Netflix series 'The Watcher,' plus find out who lives there today.

by Lauren Anderson

Published on October 17, 2022

2 min read

Netflix’s ‘The Watcher’ is based on the true story of the Broaddus Family

The Watcher features a star-studded cast including Naomi Watts, Bobby Canavale, Jennifer Coolidge, and Mia Farrow, to name a few. Watts and Canavale play fictional couple Nora and Dean Brannock, who exhaust their savings to purchase the home at 657 Boulevard. After moving in, they started receiving letters signed “The Watcher.”

“657 Boulevard has been the subject of my family for decades now,” the watcher writes in his first letter. “As it approaches its 110th birthday, I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming. My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched in the 1960s. It is now my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what lies within the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? I will find out.”

The Netflix series is based on Maria and Derek Broaddus, who purchased the real-life home in June 2014. The story of “The Watcher” was first published in New York Magazine in 2018 by Reeves Wiedeman.

New residents own the house from ‘The Watcher’ at 657 Boulevard

According to a Google Maps image from November 2020, the home at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey is still standing. ABC 7 New York states Andrew and Allison Carr purchased the home in 2019. Per Zillow, they paid $959,000 for the property. Based on Zillow’s data, the house has not been sold again.

Authorities never caught the person watching 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey

Despite repeated efforts to find the mysterious “watcher,” authorities never caught the person sending the anonymous letters to the family at 657 Boulevard. Police and private investigators sifted through various suspects to no avail.

Initially, the Broaddus Family suspected their neighbor, Michael Langford. He lived at home with his 90-something-year-old mother and his siblings, who were all in their 60s. Langford’s neighbors described him as “a bit odd” but “harmless” and a “kind of Boo Radley character,” according to Wiedeman’s article — likely Jasper Winslow (Terry Kinney) in the Netflix series. However, despite their hunch, police investigation turned up nothing on the Langfords.