What Is A Dumbwaiter From Episode One Of Netflix's ‘The Watcher’?

They're still being used today.

Netflix’s new limited series The Watcher tells the terrifying story of a couple who buys their dream house, only to receive threatening and disturbing letters from someone who claims to be “the watcher” of their home.

The series is based on the real-life story of Derek and Maria Broaddus, who bought a $1.3 million house at 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey in 2014. New York Magazine later wrote a story about their experience, and it was recently updated and republished in The Cut. That story details how the couple started receiving letters from an anonymous person who threatened Derek and Maria, along with their kids, and seems to have intimate knowledge of the home.

One letter included this terrifying snippet, per The Cut: “Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone. I would [be] very afraid if I were them. It is far away from the rest of the house. If you were upstairs, you would never hear them scream.”

One thing that’s come up in the series is a dumbwaiter. In the first episode, Dean is looking at the house and ends up discussing the dumbwaiter with a woman who says she’s president of the local Preservation Society. The woman says that the dumbwaiter is a national treasure, among other things.

Dean’s son later finds the dumbwaiter and mistakenly thinks it’s an elevator, only to be shown by Dean how it actually works. OK, but asking for a friend here: What’s a dumbwaiter? Here’s what you need to know.

A dumbwaiter is a small elevator or lift that’s used to carry things between floors in a building, per Wise Geek. Think: groceries, meals, and books. Dumbwaiters are more common in restaurants and older private homes. They can be powered by a system of pulleys and ropes, or with an electric motor that moves things from floor to floor.

Yes! The Inclinator Company of America, for example, offers up residential dumbwaiters in customizable sizes. They’re also found in some restaurants and older homes.

In general, though, dumbwaiters have been replaced by full-size elevators…or people will simply carry things from floor to floor.

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