He Spied on Guests for 30 Years—What He Discovered Was Pure Sadness

People seem to be desperately eager for their private lives to be exposedto —Facebook, Instagram, WeChat Moments, and even live-streaming apps.They broadcast their joys and sorrows, their trivialities and daily routines, even crossing the street and having sex…From Kim Kardashian to Paris Hilton, people living on the red carpet and under the spotlight try desperately to conceal their true lives while secretly rejoicing in their scandalous affairs appearing on tabloid headlines. And we, behind the screen, consume and enjoy this information, and “imitate” them.In the 1960s, there were no smartphones or social networks. This article will take you into the life of a voyeur of that era, showing how he used a pen and a notebook to record everything he witnessed over thirty years—in a world where the concepts of “exposure” and “privacy” were still vague.

Gerald Foos was a husband and father of two. In the 1960s, he bought a 21-room motel in the Denver suburbs—thus beginning a quarter-century-long voyeuristic career.

With his wife’s help, he sawed rectangular openings in the roofs of more than ten guest rooms and installed fake ventilation openings, which were actually channels through which he spied on the guests from the roof. He lay prostrate on the sloping roof, recording what he saw and heard inside the rooms, and for decades he was never discovered.

I first met Foos in the 1980s. In a letter to me, he said:

“The reason for purchasing this motel was to satisfy my voyeuristic tendencies and compelling interest in all phases of how people conduct their lives, both socially and sexually. . . . I did this purely out of my unlimited curiosity about people and not as just a deranged voyeur.”

“I bought this hotel to satisfy my voyeuristic desires and my curiosity about human relationships—from a sexual and social perspective. So, I am not just a perverted voyeur, but also an explorer with endless curiosity about humanity.”

I came to Denver at his invitation. As soon as I landed at the airport, I saw him smiling as he walked towards me from the baggage carousel. Foos was in his forties, a robust man with a neat head of black hair, and looked like a friendly hotel owner. To protect himself, he asked me to sign a confidentiality agreement—I could not disclose any personal information about him without his permission.

Foos’ parents are German-American. “They were kind-hearted and willing to do anything for me—except discuss sex.” Growing up, Foos never saw his parents having sex or showed any interest in it. Their conservatism, however, fueled his curiosity about sex. As early as nine years old, Foos began spying on his aunt Katheryn, who lived next door. Katheryn was a newlywed, her body vibrant and alluring, like a bamboo shoot glistening with morning dew. She often paced naked in her bedroom, the curtains wide open, fiddling with porcelain dolls on the bed—Foos would hide behind the windmill, watching his aunt’s body for over an hour at a time. Sometimes, he would even see Katheryn and her husband having sex. “I was jealous; I thought Katheryn should be mine.”

Foos’s obsession with Katheryn was so deep that he secretly watched her every day for six years. Even after he grew up and served in the Navy, Katheryn remained the object of his sexual fantasies.

I. What he saw: sex and love

In a thick notebook, Foos meticulously recorded the actions of every couple in the room over the decades: their names, ages, physiques, hometowns, and sexual activities. The small motel became a repository of diverse and fascinating stories: wealthy businessmen having affairs with their secretaries during lunch breaks, married or cohabiting couples, wives having secret rendezvous behind their husbands’ backs, and husbands cheating on their wives. By the 1970s , he began to witness male homosexuality, lesbianism, threesomes, foursomes, group sex, prostitution, and soliciting prostitutes…

Fortunately, Foos’ wife, Donna, did not despise him for his voyeurism. Instead, to satisfy her husband’s needs, she sold their house and moved in with him to a cramped motel room.

“I am very grateful to Donna. She did not distance herself from me because of this. Perhaps it is a quality of her as a medical worker. She has seen everything in the hospital—birth, aging, sickness, death, pain, deformities, madness, depression… Before we got married, I was honest with Donna. She loved me, so she accepted everything about me. It was she who suggested that I write down what I saw.”

In 1966, Foos wrote the first line in his notebook:

“Today, I have finally realized my life’s dream. I can finally release the desires and voyeuristic impulses that I have suppressed for decades.”

Article 1:

Mr. and Mrs. W of southern Colorado

Description: Male, around 35 years old, white-collar worker, appears to be traveling for work, 5’10”, 180 lbs, college graduate; Wife, around 35 years old, 5’4″, 130 lbs, full-figured, dark hair, college graduate, Italian descent, measurements 37-28-37.

The first time I spied on a tenant, I was incredibly nervous. The person I was observing was entirely within my line of sight. For the first time, I felt such a sense of accomplishment, such ecstatic joy—as if everyone was at my feet, completely under my control.

After showering, the wife began to examine herself in the mirror. She mentioned that she was starting to get gray hair. The man began complaining about his job in Denver. At 8:30 p.m., the wife undressed. She was slightly plump, but very sexy. The man seemed uninterested. Later, they lay in bed, smoking, watching TV, kissing, and caressing each other… The man quickly became erect, climbed on top of his wife, and they began to make love. There was no foreplay. The man orgasmed after 5 minutes. The woman did not orgasm and got up to go to the bathroom to wash.

In conclusion, this is not a happy marriage. The man is ignorant, indifferent, and obsessed with his own advancement and wealth. He has no time to cherish his wife. Despite having a university degree, he is ignorant and indifferent about sex.

Article 2:

The couple was around thirty years old. They talked about money constantly, and once the lights were off, they would fall asleep as fast as logs.

Article 3:

One day in December, two men and one woman moved into a single room.

Among the three people was a couple who appeared friendly and well-mannered; the remaining man was redheaded. Soon, all three were completely naked. The redhead began having sex with the woman, while her husband took pictures of them.

Afterwards, the three of them lay on their backs on the bed and began discussing their vacuum cleaner business.

II. Having witnessed the fickleness of human relationships and the coldness of the world

“I have seen most human emotions in all their humor and tragedy carried to completion. Sexually, I have witnessed, observed and studied the best first hand, unrehearsed, non-laboratory sex between couples, and most other conceivable sex deviations during these past 15 years.”

Years passed, and Foos grew increasingly disappointed with his tenants. Their actions gradually overturned his original understanding of society. All moral ethics, right and wrong, began to become chaotic, blurred, and eventually disintegrated in these cramped cubicles.

“Most people spend their travels in misery. They argue endlessly over money… and only in this pitiful little hotel room do they discover that there is no love between them.”

Not far from the motel was an army medical center, a sanatorium for wounded soldiers from the Vietnam War, so occasionally family members would stay overnight with the wounded soldiers. One night, Foos saw a wounded soldier with a prosthetic leg and his wife staying in a room upstairs.

“Cheers to the only truth in the world!” the man said to his wife, raising a can of Coke.

His wife smiled coquettishly and asked, “Is it…making love?”

“No! Of course it’s money! People will do anything for money. What do you think the Vietnam War was all about? Of course it was for that stinking money.”

Years later, another wounded soldier and his wife checked into the hotel. The wife helped her paralyzed husband out of his wheelchair. The two of them emptied their luggage.

“I’ve come this far, why do you still love me?” the man asked.

His wife comforted him tenderly for a while, and then they began to make love. They both enjoyed it and were very engaged—they loved each other deeply.

On another occasion, a middle-aged woman and a well-dressed young man came here. The woman mixed a drink and took off her clothes. The two made love on the bed, and just as the woman was about to moan wildly, the man suddenly stopped and said, “I want to buy a car soon, but I can’t afford it.” The woman turned to the side, reached into her wallet, and handed him a hundred-dollar bill. Only then did the man continue to enter her from behind.

After satisfying the woman, the man still hadn’t reached orgasm. The woman offered to help him ejaculate, but he coldly refused. “I still need 50 yuan to pay off my debt,” the woman said, handing him another bill. A few minutes later, the man turned and left.

After the woman drove away, Foos, out of curiosity, immediately followed her to her residence—a retirement apartment. The woman stood by the kitchen window, her eyes filled with tears. “Later, I asked around among the neighbors and learned that she was a widow whose husband had died in the Vietnam War a few years earlier,” Foos recalled. “Many women are at the peak of their sexual desire in middle age, but for her, it was a complete tragedy.”

Aside from these couples, or those who were neither couples nor spouses, Foos felt increasingly heavy-hearted and disappointed. They listlessly flipped through TV programs, endlessly talking about money and smoking. They wiped their greasy hands, still wet from handling KFC, haphazardly on the sheets. They didn’t understand sex—the men just engaged in animalistic thrusting, ejaculation, and then fell asleep; the women silently stood up, wiped the semen off with the sheets, and then went back to sleep.

He gradually ceased to be the voyeur he once was—he began to view humanity from a godlike perspective, started to lose control of reality, and began to sink into despair and loneliness. He once believed that his “voyeurism” was essentially a serious scientific experiment contributing to the well-being of society.

“I’ve pondered on occasion that perhaps I don’t exist, only represent a product of the subjects’ dreams. No one would believe my accomplishments as a voyeur anyway, therefore, the dreamlike manifestation would explain my reality.”

He made the following data summary:

In 1973 , of the 296 sexual encounters he observed and recorded , 195 were between white heterosexuals, who preferred the missionary position ; men achieved orgasm in 184 of these encounters, while women achieved orgasm in only 33. The following year, in a total of 329 sexual encounters:

— 12% of men and women have a high sex drive

— 62% of couples or spouses have frequent sex.

— 22% have low libido

— 3% have almost no sex life

Third, having witnessed the ugliness of the world

Foos began to feel annoyed and disgusted with his tenants—they were cunning, deceitful, hypocritical, and untrustworthy.

“Society has taught us to lie, steal, and cheat, and deception is the paramount prerequisite in man’s makeup. . . . As my observation of people approaches the fifth year, I am beginning to become pessimistic as to the direction our society is heading, and feel myself becoming more depressed as I determine the futility of it all.”

He designed an “honesty game”.

Foos had a suitcase in the closet of one of the guest rooms. When guests checked in, he would pretend to whisper to his wife, Donna, “I heard that a guest called the police because his suitcase, which had several thousand dollars in cash, was left in the closet of one of our rooms.”

Upon hearing this, the guests, feigning composure, went to their rooms and began rummaging through their belongings for the supposed suitcase. Foos observed everything. Once they found the suitcase, the guests hesitated, unsure whether to pick the lock or return it to the hotel.

Among these 15 “guinea pigs” were a mayor, a lawyer, and an army colonel… However, only two people honestly returned the box. The rest all tried various methods to pry it open and then destroyed the evidence—including the mayor, who simply threw the box into the bushes outside his window.

But he saw more than just that.

A young couple in their late twenties moved into room 10. The man was muscular, probably around 180 pounds. From the snippets of conversation he overheard, Foos deduced he was likely a drug dealer who had dropped out of college; the woman was blonde with a bust size of approximately 34D. Both were in their prime and had a very high sex drive—which pleased Foos greatly. However, what bothered Foos was that people would frequently knock on room 10 to buy drugs. He didn’t call the police. One afternoon, while the couple was out, Foos sneaked into the room and flushed all the drugs and marijuana the man had hidden down the drain.

Upon returning to his room, the man discovered the drugs were missing and suspected his girlfriend of stealing them. In his diary, Foos wrote: “After an argument, the two resorted to violence. The man grabbed the woman by the neck, choking her until the veins on his arm bulged, until she died. The man calmly and nonchalantly packed his things and left the hotel.”

The next day, the maid who was cleaning the room discovered the body and called the police.

To this day, the murder in the hotel remains unsolved.

I asked Foos, “Don’t you feel guilty?”

He told me, “I don’t think this is my fault. My role in this is the same as my role in all the rooms: I am floating, transparent, nonexistent and non-interfering. On the contrary, if I called the police and they questioned me about how I knew about the drugs—things would be worse.”

I was speechless for a moment.

Over the next decade, Foos witnessed suicides in the room, including the sudden cardiac arrest of a man weighing over 500 pounds. Because his already large body became even more bloated after death, firefighters had to lift him out of the window.

IV. A Voyeur’s Reflection: Humans Are Born Voyeurs

Donna passed away in 1999.

Foos sold the motel and married a redhead named Anita a few years later.

In 2013, Foos and I met again in Denver. Three years had passed since our first meeting. The world had changed, and both of us had grayed hair; and the world we knew today, filled with high technology, artificial intelligence, and data, seemed so unfamiliar, strange, and bizarre.

Foos has developed a new hobby: studying government surveillance.

“Everyone is a voyeur, and the biggest voyeur in the world is the government.” Technology and new media have left people with virtually no privacy. He said that even the CIA director couldn’t prevent his sex life from making headlines. Governments monitor our every move—our phones, text messages, internet browsing history, credit cards, bank accounts, GPS, flight numbers…

“You might ask, why am I suddenly interested in these things? I guess it’s like this. Maybe one day, the FBI will knock on my door and say, ‘Gerald Foos, we have evidence that you’ve been spying on others all these years. Are you a psychopath?’ At that point, I’ll say, ‘And what are you then, Big Brother? How did you know? Haven’t you been spying on my life all along?'”

Humans are born voyeurs. “Men love to spy on women, and women crave to be spied on. I guess that’s why men watch porn, while women spend so much time and energy on clothes and jewelry,” he said.

However, the internet has distorted the nature of voyeurism. I’m reminded of Erin Andrews, a sports presenter, who was once secretly filmed emerging naked from a shower, and the footage was posted online. The perpetrator was convicted of a felony and served 20 months in prison. Furthermore, Andrews sued the hotel where she was filmed, resulting in a $55 million fine.

Foos’s stance on this matter was as I expected. “While I’ve said that everyone is born with a voyeuristic streak, some voyeurs are despicable scoundrels. They use new technology and the internet to expose their subjects to the public, which is pure violence and vicious revenge. This is completely different from what I do. I haven’t exposed anyone. If I were on a jury, I would also find this person guilty.”

He believes his voyeurism has nothing in common with government surveillance—his voyeurism is harmless, not intended to expose or harm anyone. He also considers himself to be on the same page as Snowden. “Snowden is a whistleblower—he exposed the government’s shady dealings. I am a whistleblower of human nature, although I haven’t yet revealed the shady side of human nature to the world.”

V. Epilogue

In 2014, the original Manor House hotel was sold to a real estate developer. A few days later, the hotel was bombed into ruins.

” Seems that everything is gone. ” Foos said.

It seemed like everything was gone. Foos opened the car door, leaning on his cane, and supported by Anita, he walked unsteadily toward the hotel, which was now nothing but rubble and ruins.

The two lingered for a long time. In the end, they only found a piece of old electrical wire and a fragment of a Manor House neon sign.

“Let’s go home,” Anita said.

“Okay,” Foos said. “I’ve seen too much already.”