Rooftop watcher¶
The rooftop watcher is an unidentified man with binoculars and a small electronic device who is seen on rooftops in Radford, Virginia, and whose white van, fitted with fake plates, tails the task force.
| Type | NPC (unidentified) |
| Aliases | man on the post office roof; man in the white van; white van crew |
| Affiliation | Unknown; not the sheriff's department |
| Status | Unknown |
| First appearance | Radford Horror 01 |
| Played by | Andre |
Description¶
In Radford Horror 01 the watcher is a man in black with hair and no hat, holding binoculars; he ducks when he realizes he has been noticed and is more careful afterward (Radford Horror 01). In the cold open of Radford Horror 02, the man on a rooftop has close-cropped light brown hair, sunglasses and a nondescript dark suit, and carries a flashlight, a briefcase and a small electronic device (Radford Horror 02). The episodes never say outright whether these are the same man.
History¶
Radford Horror 01¶
While the team eats at the Lonely Mountain Diner, Kurt goes out to use a payphone and spots a man in black with binoculars on the roof of the post office across the street, apparently looking in the team's direction. He phones the sheriff's station and asks Deputy Underhill whether the sheriff's department has any stakeouts or surveillance in the area; she says, "No, not to my knowledge." Kurt memorizes the cars in the post office lot (a Sharp roll of 13) on his way back and quietly warns the team. The waitress, Sheila, checks the window and sees the man but does not recognize him. Kurt tells her that around 85% of the time it is just a birdwatcher (Radford Horror 01).
Radford Horror 02¶
The episode opens with a cold open on a rooftop. A man watches something through binoculars, is startled by what he sees and swears under his breath, sets a flashlight aside, keys at a small electronic device from his briefcase, snaps the case shut, runs down the fire escape, gets into a white van and speeds off (Radford Horror 02).
Radford Horror 03¶
Driving back from a stakeout, the team realizes a white van is tailing their car at a discreet distance. They pull into a McDonald's drive-thru to break the van's line of sight; the van parks across the street in the Radio Shack lot, then pulls away while they are still ordering. The team gets its license plate number (Radford Horror 03).
Radford Horror 04¶
Kurt asks the sheriff to run the plates of the van that was tailing them, noting that it fled when the team tried to approach it. The team's rooms at the Pay n' Stay are searched the same day, but nothing ties the search to the watcher (Radford Horror 04).
Radford Horror 05¶
The plates come back invalid: they belong to someone else. Molly Underhill puts out an APB for an unmarked white van, and the diner's waitress asks whether the van is connected to "the guy on the roof" (Radford Horror 05).
Radford Horror 06¶
The team remarks that their sedan is the car "that's been clocked by the guys that are tailing us." The U-Haul that kidnaps Dr. Lori the same night is a different vehicle, driven by Derek Augustine (Radford Horror 06).
Trivia¶
- The episodes never reveal who the watcher and the van crew work for, why they followed the task force, or what the electronic device does. Their plates were borrowed, and no link to the cleanup crew or the NSA is ever stated.