An adult sitting in an office chair, back turned, who slowly turns their head to follow you. It does nothing else.
Testimony
“I looked away for a second and the chair wasn’t where it had been. When I looked back, someone was sitting there, watching me with their back turned.”
The Watcher is an adult sitting in an office chair, back turned to you. When you approach, it slowly turns its head and follows you with its gaze. It does nothing else, neither speaks nor groans, and what frightens you is the gaze.
Description
It is immortal and does not attack. As long as you are in its line of sight it follows you with its head, and if there are several survivors, each one feels it is looking at him. Many people take it for a mannequin until it moves, and after that the feeling doesn’t leave them.
An office chair up close, like the one a Watcher occupies
How to recognize it
The sign is always the same: a chair that is no longer where it was when you look back. If you pass through a corridor with loose chairs and one seems turned a little more than before, don’t touch it. If you see the back of an occupied chair, don’t turn it around either.
Where it appears
About one chair in three can have a Watcher, roughly thirty percent. You never see them arrive, because they place themselves between 24 and 72 meters from you, always out of your line of sight. A survivor won’t meet more than twelve at once, and in all of Level 0 there are never more than forty-eight.
Behavior
It stays seated until someone approaches.
It slowly turns its head to follow each onlooker.
It makes no sound.
It doesn’t chase. But the chair changes place when you aren’t looking.
How to survive
Don’t run. Nothing is chasing you, and running only gives your fear away.
Don’t stand there staring at it, which seems to be what it wants.
If your sanity drops, move away from rooms with chairs. See Sanity.
Note where you saw an empty chair. If it’s occupied when you come back, the Watcher has been waiting.
What people say
Now and then, every ten minutes or so, a murmur is heard coming from the chair. It is also unknown whether any Watcher gets up or attacks, because nobody has seen it and everyone prefers not to find out. The Vestibule Receptionist is also described as a variant of it.
You can compare the Watcher with the rest in the Field Guide. It belongs to the same family of silent presences as the Smiler, the Children and the Skinstealer.
