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Many of us dreamed of finding a secret passageway or an underground tunnel as a child. If I grab just the right book from this shelf, I will activate a secret doorway and unlock a whole new realm! Maybe I just read too many mystery novels as a kid, but much to my disappointment, these situations never came true in my real life. Yet for some lucky individuals, their adventurous dreams came to life when they discovered secret spaces right under their noses…
Reddit user Reptilesni reached out asking people who “have found a secret room or space in their house” to share how long they lived there before finding it, what was in it, and what the eventual outcome was of discovering the space, and many readers came through with stories that sound like they belong in film scripts. We’ve gathered some of the most fascinating responses down below, so you can live vicariously through these individuals who evidently picked the best houses to live in. Enjoy reading these stories that might make you want to reread The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and be sure to upvote all of your favorites. Keep reading to also find an interview with Steve Humble, president of Creative Home Engineering, and then if you’re interested in reading another Bored Panda article featuring real-life secret compartments, check out this story next.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Lived in a warehouse in Melbourne. Always thought it would be cool to get on the roof, but there was no access.
After about six months, I’m standing in front of a mirror upstairs when I notice it has hinges.
I push on it, it clicks and opens out, revealing a small attic and roof hatch!
That was pretty cool. Used to sit up there and watch the sun set over the city.
The idea of having a secret passageway or hidden room in your home might sound like a fantasy, but if you're interested in making it a reality, there are experts who can help you out. We reached out to Steve Humble, president of Creative Home Engineering, to hear how his company turns homeowners' dreams into reality by building hidden spaces that seem like magic. First, we asked Steve if he could briefly explain what his company does and how it got started. "Our firm specializes in designing and building secret passageways in homes," he told Bored Panda. "Often our secret doors are extremely high-security, bulletproof, motorized, and/or have clever access control devices like pulling on a book or playing a sequence of notes on a piano. I started the company back in 2004 after a movie scene inspired me to build a motorized secret passageway in my own house. The secret door I wanted to build really required the expertise of a mechanical engineer like myself, and since there were no firms dedicated to this type of work I decided to start my own."
RELATED:
#2
Moved into an 18th century farm house as a little kid and found a small panel door in the back of the large closet in my small room. Turned out to be a small finished room over the eaves that had a small portal window. I spent hours in that room reading and hiding from the world.
We also asked Steve what the most impressive or surprising thing he has ever built in someone's home was. "I once installed several secret doors in the same house, and one of those secret doors is large enough to drive a vehicle through and leads to a 30,000 square foot subterranean shelter that goes 4 levels underground," he said. I would love to take a tour of that home!
We also asked Steve why these secret compartments are great additions to homes. "If you put your valuables into a safe you might as well add a neon sign above it that says 'This is where the good stuff is at!' I hear horror stories all the time about home invasions in which the safe was stolen or broken into," he explained. "In reality, anyone with access to Youtube can break into nearly any safe in just a few minutes so they only way to really protect your valuables (or your family members) is to hide them where a criminal will never find them."
#3
It was about a year into owning our house. We actually found two secret rooms. One was just a room under the stairs that was closed off. Had some toys from the 70s in it. The really crazy one was when we redid the insulation in our attic. One of the workers asked if I new there was a room up there. I had no idea. So we cut open the drywall and there were stacks on stacks of boxes from the 60s. Like a ton of boxes. And they were all full! So I opened them up expecting some cool stuff. And they were full of freaking PINECONES!! One of the bigger bummers of my life.
Lastly, Steve added, "Historically secret doors have been mostly for wealthy people. But recently we’ve launched a new line of pre-designed secret door systems that are very affordable while still maintaining the same great camouflage."
If you're thinking of having a secret passageway installed in your own home or purely interested in checking out some of the amazing creations Creative Home Engineering has built, be sure to visit their website right here.
#4
My family lived briefly in Copenhagen when I was a young child. In the house that the government provided there was a false wall with a pocket which was great to hide in. One day an older neighbor girl (native Danish) was over and said while we were playing that people used to hide in it. Her mother confirmed later that it was a Holocaust hiding space. I'm really grateful my mother took the time to explain to us what that meant, and the history behind it, rather than waiting until I was older.
#5
There was a hidden door behind the wallpaper (obviously the doorknob was taken off, so it blends in with the wall) in the hallway. We lived in this house for 6 years and I found out about this door 2 years ago, when we opened it we saw a skeleton in the corner, not gonna lie that scared me s**tless, although it was just a prop left by the past owners of our house.
#6
I lived in the house or my grandma for a few years, secret “room” beneath a trapdoor on the second floor, which was basically a void between walls on the complicated first floor. Was used to hide Jewish families during WW2.
According to SOSS Door Hardware, any of us could be hiding a secret space in our homes. Especially if your home is old, there’s no telling what secrets it could be concealing. On their blog, SOSS explains that two of the most common reasons a home may have a hidden space are because the owner was eccentric or there were illegal activities taking place. If they were a collector of an embarrassing item, they might have felt safe keeping their beloved items hidden away. But if they were gambling, storing alcohol during prohibition or participating in a host of other crimes, a secret room might have been a necessity.
SOSS also provides some tips for how to detect a secret door. Contrary to popular belief, it probably is not concealed in a bookshelf or by pulling a latch behind a painting. Their first recommendation is to create a sketch of your home. Like any great detective, you want to lay out the entire floor plan and start by deciphering this map. Be sure to take into account any dead space, even if it has been walled in. “For instance, a house was originally heated by a chimney updated to HVAC. Instead of removing the broken chimney, a wall was built around it. Depending on the age and condition of the home, you’ll have some spaces,” SOSS explains.
#7
When clearing out my grandmas house I found a small door in the wall of the basement that led to a tiny room, according to my mother that’s where they hid the family heirlooms when thieving relatives came to town. I was mostly interested in the fact that it was covered in scribbles from my mom and her sisters growing up.
#8
Watched home alone and saw that attic that Macaulay Culkin was staying in and wondered if we had one in our townhouse. Ran around with a step ladder until I found it in my mom’s closet.
Got on my tiptoes on the stepladder and fought the door open (ended up being a big piece of plywood) and peered into the attic.
A mouse colony stared back.
It was like that scene in ratatouille. Decades worth of feces covered the whole space.
My mom was not happy once I told her. We moved shortly after.
Edit: Thanks for the gold kind stranger!
#9
We moved into a house with a door in the kitchen that could not be opened. The real estate tried but failed, assumed it let to the laundry room but was walled off. My older siblings, like any typical teenagers, were not convinced of this and were determined to open it. It was just a normal pantry but they never told our mother they managed to open it, and used it to hide things from her like alcohol, smokes, and weed.
Mihai Mara 2 years ago
Why are adults like that, not wanting to know more? What if on the other side.of the door there was a portal, or a wardrobe that leads to Narnia?
Next, you will want to take a look at those empty spaces. If you’re not interested in poking any holes in your walls, this might be the end of your journey. But if you are brave enough to cause a little damage (no rewards without risks right?) then start digging. “If you’re sure the space isn’t part of the accessible home, drill two holes about half an inch in diameter. Take a powerful flashlight, shine it in one and look through the other. See anything interesting? You can either remove the wall (forsaking your search for the door). Or search for the door and find the way in!”
The last step that SOSS recommends is checking all of your home's fixtures and trim. A door could be disguised as a piece of furniture, or it could be the wall itself. They suggest moving any furniture, taking all items off of the shelves and pushing any trim and spots on the walls. If you still have not had any luck, you might need to completely remove a wall to reveal a hidden space. Perhaps then you can build your own secret door!
#10
A couple of years ago I rented an apartment that was in a massive old architecture style building, no idea how old it was. I remember when I did the showing they showed me a door that had an elaborate staircase that went straight up to the ceiling and explained that it went to the attic, which was sealed up. When I was finally moving out curiosity got the best of me and I pushed on the panel at the top of the stairs until it popped open and hoisted myself up there.
It was completely dark and the floor was covered in at least an inch of dust, and I found that it was an entire extra floor to my unit. There was some old rotting furniture and magazines littered throughout the rooms. I eventually found a small hole in one of the walls that went into the sealed off upstairs of the unit next to mine and decided to go through that one too. I found a smaller hole at the back end of that area that led to the next one. I eventually made my way through about 5 or 6 of these sealed off spaces that had no entrances save these small holes in drywall. The farther I went in, the older the furniture I found, fridges from the fifties or earlier, old dishware, and so much dust over everything.
The last unit was the most interesting, hand painted scenes on the walls and holes to the attic letting sunlight stream in. I took small videos but they're all on snapchat so they're hard to post. I must have been up there for hours just exploring alone in the dark. I was pretty lucky to have the only room with access up there.
Edit:[Album](https://imgur.com/a/tzGhYYF)
Sorry for the format/captions no idea why I decided video was the way to go.
Strawberry Pizza 2 years ago
Imagine the people in the other units just hearing footsteps in the sealed off attic. Lol I'd have moved out there and then.
#11
My best friend lives in France where I did as well for many years. She lives in a house that has been in her family for over six hundred years. It was built at the top of a hill about an hour outside of Paris and additions had been made to it over the years as one could imagine. Anyway, the house was built kind of at the top of a hill with rooms going down several levels into the side of the hill. The existing kitchen is new and modern and the original one was still intact but not in use as it was basically just one of those big fireplaces with a caldron looking contraption in it.
As her and her husband first moved into the house and started updated and painting etc., they removed the tile from the old kitchen wall behind the fireplace. Behind the tile was some more old tile and beneath that they found a crumbling old brick wall. When they removed the old wall they discovered that it was actually the entrance (or rather ‘exit’) to a tunnel that was an escape route from the town’s (Êpone, France) castle. In case the castle came under attack, the inhabitants could use the tunnel to flee and it came out right in my friend’s house about a kilometer away.
Mind. Blown. when she discovered that!
#12
In my house there was an upstairs bedroom that was made into a game room for me and my sister. When we were about 12 years old we realized that a section of the paneling came off and there was a small closet sized room behind it. We kept it a secret so that when friends came over we would have the ultimate hiding spot for hide and seek. A few years later we were talking about to our parents about what we found and they said that the house was built during the prohibition era, so they most likely used it as a place to hide alcohol!
When I was a kid, I was always jealous of anyone who had a basement because that was the closest thing I had ever witnessed to a secret chamber or compartment. But according to The Economic Times, hidden spaces have become a common element in luxury homes. The concept has apparently gained popularity among individuals looking to protect precious items behind high levels of security, but let’s be honest: they are also just extremely cool elements to add to any home.
#13
Friends of mine rented a holiday villa in Mexico years ago. They stayed there for 3 weeks. It had been advertised as '4 bedrooms, 3 baths' so they were kind of pissed off to find that there were only 2 bathrooms and the fourth bedroom was kind of small.
The day before they were leaving they did a little bit of a cleanup. One of my friends went to put the broom into the closet beside the fridge.
He opened the closet door only to find that it led to a massive room with a bathroom and it's own balcony!
The first night that they had gotten there, one of them had tried the door and thought that it was locked and assumed that that was maybe where they stored cleaning stuff or extra linen. After that, no one thought to try the door again until it was accidentally opened the day before leaving.
#14
It wasn't a room, but after living in our house for a few years, we decided to remodel the basement bathroom. Tore out the old shower enclosure and found a window behind it! Said window was covered on the outside by an apron of siding that came from the cantilevered room upstairs all the way down to the concrete pad. We tore off the siding apron and let some light in. it was much better.
Great Pyrenees 2 years ago
Am I the only one that finds bathroom windows kind of suspicious/weird unless they are just for letting light in and can't be seen through
#15
Hidden closet in basement wall after 20 yrs of living in the house. We found some personal documents of no real interest, a newspaper from the day after Pearl Harbor, and a hand drawn cartoon of a pregnant Lucy yelling “Goddammit Charlie Brown!”
Update:
The newspaper turned out to be a reprint, so not valuable but still fun to look through. The cartoon is just as I remembered. Goes to show what I find important. BUT I had completely forgotten about the photo album! I’m going to try and track these people down and return their memories. Thanks for poking at me to dig this stuff up!!
Detroit Citizen 2 years ago
That hand drawn cartoon is more valuable than the paper just cuz its funny, imo lol
If you own priceless valuables or are concerned about a potential break in, what better way to shield your belongings than through a secret doorway? And in India in particular, these secretive spaces can be traced back to the Mughal era. Back then, hidden rooms were found in buildings and forts to be used for defense purposes and escape routes, as well as the transportation and safe-keeping of precious items owned by royal families. “There has been a vernacular tradition of carving secret places to store exquisite or even common wealth in and around nature as well as architecture,” says Rohit Singh, an architect and managing partner at Meanohara, a Delhi-based firm. But the tradition did not end there; homes today are still being built with these secretive spaces in mind.
#16
My parents found one when I was a kid! My dad was remodeling our lower level when he noticed that part of the closet wall sounded hollow, and realized there must be something behind it. He had to cut away the wood paneling to get to it. Inside, we found it must have been a little “clubhouse” that some previous owners made for their kids or grandkids a long time ago. There were 4 pegs on the wall, each one had a boy’s name written underneath it. We think they used them as coat hooks.
It was the mid 2000s when we found it, so my parents got my sisters and I some motion-activated lights to stick on the walls, and gave us some old cushions so we could use it as a “clubhouse” too. Good times.
#17
Ahhhhh the story of "the murder room". I grew up in an old farmhouse, 2 floors and a basement. The basement was creepy as hell anyway because it had rickety wood slat stairs, stone walls, was dimly lit, in an L shape with dark corners, and had (i s**t u not) a single hanging lightbulb around one of the corners. Oh and the spiders. Soooo many spiders and cobwebs, *and* these spiders turn bright white when they die for some godforsaken reason. Anyway at the back of the basement it always seemed cut short, so one day brother and i decide to search under our old back porch that was overgrown with weeds at the time. And we found a door to another room that had been walled off from the rest of the basement.
Well "door" is probably an overstatement. It was kind of a hanging half-door made with weathered 2×4's with big metal hinges. It wouldn't move when we tried to open it so for years we jokingly refered to it as "the murder room", daring friends to go inside, which no one would of course, and the legend grew. What could be in this room? If it was for storage, why would it be walled off from the rest of the basement?
Eventually we could lift the door ever so slightly but it was pitch dark inside and when my big brother pushed me in one day our mom would end up telling us to stop messing around back there, that the old door was dangerous if it swung down on us and she didn't want us playing back there anymore. Of course this only made the interest grow but (while freaking out) i had made a discovery while inside. Even tho i couldn't see, the floor was made of dirt! What the hell was going on?
One day our mom had the old carpets thrown out and finally fixed the wood floors under them like she always wanted to. Eventually when cleaning out a tiny closet under some stairs I noticed that some of the boards made a destictive square. It's right over the murder room! I pulled up the square and saw the same dirt floor i felt years before. My girlfriend and i ventured inside and *found*... a small chair and a child's school desk. Take it as you will i guess but.it freaked us out. Later i found out many buildings in our town were linked to the underground railroad. Take it as u will but that was the story of the murder room.
Persephone 2 years ago
It sounds like a coal room tbh. Had a very old house with 1 that had not been sealed off after disuse; had a pencil sharpener hanging on the wall with shelves. It was maybe just used as an activity area after coal fell out of daily use.
#18
We bought a house that had been built in the 1880s, lived in it for seven years and then had to have some wiring work done. The electrician was working down in the basement and wanted to drill through a (brick) wall to the outside for some reason I no longer remember. We give him the okay and go about our business. He starts drilling and then stops, comes upstairs and tells us he just found a bricked up room and what do we want to do about it? Well we kind of still want our wiring situation taken care of, but if there's a body and some amontadillo in there, I definitely want to know. On the other hand, I don't want to let my sister's boyfriend knock the wall down with a sledgehammer. As we are discussing this, the electrician offers to run a scope through the hole he just drilled so we can take a look without doing more damage, or, as he put it, destroying evidence. So our new friend gets his scope set up and we all go down to the basement and watch the monitor.
It's a very small space, maybe 3 by 5 feet. Nothing in there but a really old, gross looking plushie. Not a teddy bear, maybe a dog? It was sewed out of some kind of patterned fabric in a vaguely dog like shape. That's it, nothing else.
Electrician asks us what we want to do. I ask 8f he can seal the hole he just drilled because this is definitely how ghost movies start. He agreed and patched it up, drilled somewhere else, finished the rewiring and we all continued our lives. We moved out 2 years later and as far as I know, Haunted Doggy is still bricked up in the basement of that house.
However, today, these secret compartments requested by wealthy homeowners are not always viewed as a necessity or a security precaution. Sometimes, they are just a whimsical element that homeowners desire to make their houses unique and special. Prashant Chauhan of Zero9 Studio told Economic Times, “It might sound strange, but people do demand spaces which are known only to them and since the supply for such spaces is usually short, interior designers have to put on their creative hats and camouflage their designs to create an illusion, as if it doesn't exist. Almost every home we have worked on, whether in India or abroad, has had a requirement for such a secret chamber."
#19
There was a small door under some stairs (almost like Harry Potter’s room) in my old apartment in Venezuela. We’d lived there for a year until I leaned on it and felt it wiggle a little and realized it was a small square door. I was too scared to open it so had my dad do it and about 20 or so cockroaches flooded out. Never have I felt so much panic.
#20
Back in college some friends and I rented an old mansion that had been built in the early 1920s from an elderly lady. The place was falling apart, but it was huge and rent was dirt cheap. About two years into living there I went to the basement to do some laundry and momentarily lost my balance, reaching out to steady myself using one of the wall panels. It flexed more than I expected, and after some inspection I found that it was removable. Behind it was a small, mostly empty, very dirty concrete room about 100 square feet. I say mostly empty because right in the middle there was a hole the size of a well that had been previously bricked up. It must have been old because the bricks had eroded at some point and exposed some of the hole, maybe a 2ft diameter circle out of the full 5 feet. After calling my friends down to look at it I got the courage to creep a little closer and peer down into it. There was another room roughly the same size but deep, maybe 15 feet down, and mostly dirt. We shined a flashlight down into it and I could swear there was a teddy bear at the bottom. Unfortunately despite plenty bargaining, none of us were ever able work up the courage (liquid or regular) to tie a rope and climb down for a closer look. Especially after we noticed that the bricks which I thought had fallen in were all accounted for, scattered around the hole as if something had broken out.
At the risk of my account being discovered by my redditor friends, this was in Pittsburgh. We did a little research and think the sub-basement may have been related to prohibition, but honestly I'm just willing to accept that explanation in order to avoid lifelong nightmares.
#21
My family just moved out of our (story-and-a-half) house that we had lived in for around 2 years. From the front of the house it was easy to spot 3 front-facing windows, but upon inspecting the upstairs, there are only two accessible windows. I never investigated as it was my younger siblings' rooms, I was in college, and I didn't like the low ceilings of the upstairs. When I was helping move out, I decided I needed to check out what was up. There was a small (almost unnoticeable) door panel on the slanted ceiling that gave access to the 3rd window. It was filled with old insulation and a very used pillow but was overall a very small space.
My siblings wanted to show me the other secret room they had found also. In the center hallway also upstairs there was a 1/4 sized door, handle and all, stashed behind a cupboard that you could scooch out enough to get behind. It was also insulation filled (without the dirty pillow) but was a much larger space that just seemed unfinished. My siblings used it as a hideout when chores needed done.
This is my first comment ever, excuse anything I did incorrectly and I guess I'm supposed to say I'm on mobile as well.
Due to this trend becoming so common among luxury homes, many architectural and design firms now offer hidden doors, secret passageways, emergency hideouts and concealed chambers. "They may not be elaborate interventions; there might just be concealed compartments in the wardrobe," Rohit Singh added. These hidden elements could be concealing pantries, extra closets, private reading rooms, wine cellars and more. Anything that visitors won’t catch at first glance can be lurking behind a door or wall. In fact, bookshelves and mirrors are two of the most popular elements used to conceal hidden spaces because they can be easily added to any home and designed to fit in perfectly without adding any extra square footage.
#22
My sister and I shared the basement room of a house that we were renting. The owners had slept in that room when they lived in the house, all of the kids slept upstairs. We noticed that one of the panels of the wood wall looked loose so our brother carefully pried it off. Behind that wood panel was a secret room that had monitors lining the wall along with a random assortment of items. The monitors were not hooked up to anything but they explained why each room upstairs had holes in the corners of the ceilings. My Mom ended up asking about it to make sure, and yup, the owners had cameras in their kids rooms and we found the creepy headquarters. We moved out pretty soon after that.
#23
I was pretty young (maybe 7-8) so I don’t remember all the details. But my family moved into a new house (new to us but maybe 20 years old). There was one closet in my older sister’s room (9-10), not that big but it had a very small door in the back wall. It was locked and my parents never showed much interest in it.
I guess I sort of forgot about it over time, until one day I was hanging out in my sisters room and somehow she got it open. An awful smell came over us, I think we just assumed it was because the house was old or something. We didn’t go inside because the doorway was so small and we were already creeped out by how dark it was in there. We shut the door and got distracted by something else pretty quickly.
A day or two later, my sister mentioned it to my parents, they seemed a little confused but mostly just amused and my dad went to go check it out. After a couple of minutes he called my mom upstairs, she goes upstairs and a little later she comes back down. I just remember her asking us if we want to go to the park. My dad stayed behind. According to my sister, mom was acting strange.
When we get back home, there were bags in the car with our stuff. Apparently our grandma had invited us to stay with her for a couple nights. So we drove the 20 mins to her house and stayed there for 3 nights... then 4.... I think it was maybe a week until we got back home. But when we did, the door was sealed shut. Eventually replaced with more drywall.
My parents never talked about what was behind the door. I always wanted to ask them, but they both died in a car accident when I was 15.
Aboredpanda 2 years ago (edited)
I'm going to guess it was a body, and the police came and then it was cleaned up and renovated, and that's why you kids had to leave. That they didn't want you to know. And why your grandmother all of the sudden invited you over; your dad arranged it whilst uou were in the park. Meaning your grandma would know what happened. And probably several other relatives. You should ask. :)
#24
Bought a very rugged cabin with acreage a few years back. Cabin was built in the 70s. A friend of mine discovered a large attic which was surprising. There was no easy way into the attic. I knew there was space, but it did not appear to be as big as it was. Inside the the attic was evidence someone was living in there at one point... including a bloodied mattress. There were no lights, no comfort, just a sheet blocking off the part of the attic that didn't have some semblance of a floor, and a bloody mattress. This was all above my room. I got hella weird vibes in that house after that, and an earthquake ended up taking out the cabin shortly after. I tore it apart, salvaged a bunch of wood, and rebuilt a new cabin without the creepy vibes.
The most unnerving part about the cabin was the previous owner, upon finding news I had bought the land, came back just before I got the keys from the realtor and left a note that simply read "good luck" in the center of the living area. Just recently found a massive old tree on the land that had been previously scorched by fire, decades ago, and survived. If that land could talk I'm sure it would have stories.
The trend of secret compartments has been around for many years and has popped up in many places around the world. The Denver Post reported in 2019 how a local woman accidentally discovered a small, dark room in her home that appears to have been a secret bar from the prohibition era. But apparently many homes in Colorado are still being built with similar elements today for the amusement and peace of mind of the homeowners. Dan Polimino, a realtor in Denver, also explained that hidden spaces are an attractive selling point for many buyers. He said that he has sold homes with concealed rooms that have been panic rooms or spaces to hide valuable computers and servers. Professional athletes are even interested in secret spaces to have somewhere to store their awards and athletic memorabilia. So if you are a real estate agent, it might be worth doing your own investigation to find hidden spaces in homes as well. They might help you make a sale!
#25
I used to do evictions and clean houses before they were put back on the market. Well this 2 million dollar house was abandoned because nobody could afford it, and some teens decided to throw a rager in it. My job was to clean the whole house. They have this huge office with beautiful wooden bookcases around the whole room. As I’m cleaning the alcohol off of them, I notice one of them had a crack between the others. So I tug on it, and sure enough it opens up with a hidden door behind it. I was so excited that I found a secret room, and was pumped to open the door. When I did, it was a bathroom......
who uses a secret door for a shitter. :(
Kathryn Baylis 2 years ago
To hide it in their office. Not everyone wants the bathroom visible from their office.
#26
I went to visit my Grandparents a few months after they had moved into a new house out in the country. I got into a bit of horseplay with a cousin and got shoved into a wall. It broke a big hole and we realized there was a large empty space back there.
With grandpa's help we tore the wall down and found a little room full of planting trays and grow lamps. There were a number of books about horticulture and one specifically about growing marijuana.
There was no secret way in as far as we could tell. Someone had just walled the entire room off for some reason.
#27
Not my house but my elementary school, small one, country side.
In 1990, after some PE hours, a friend of mine and I were horsing around downstairs in the basement outside the locker rooms. In the process we tackled each other with shoulder pushes and my friend flew into a panel at some point, where a screw popped out of panel that revealed over-painted screws that revealed a panel door.
The janitor thought it was just the ducts for air or water pipe maintainance under the school, when we told him about the door and asked and said he came to the school in 1971 but never had been in there.
Of cause, the two of us being 6th graders, had to go on a hunt and later returned with a screwdriver after school hours (school was not locked due to after-school club same place) and entered with a flashlight.
It was a secret basement of ducts at first, super dusty and metal stamps revealed at least something in the coridors were built in 1959. The school was built in the 1950s.
But the fun part was when the 1x1 meters ducts suddenly ended out in a slightly larger room, 2 meters tall and probably 5x2 m in total. Had old equipment, like tables and stuff with military emblems on it and we thought of cause it could have been an old Nazi HQ or so, not adding two and two together that the school was built later than 1945.
But it was an old nuclear shelter thing that later was revealed to be a cancelled part of the school. Like planned and built, but never executed properly due to budgets and the ducts had been the old ducts for maintainace of water and sewage pipes.
So exciting but in the end, just a budget cut nuclear shelter with closets, blankets, tables and a little kitchenware of military origin.
But holy s**t did it feel like Indiana Jones at some point.
Kathryn Baylis 2 years ago
Considering the school’s “vintage”, it was mob shelter for the kids to go during bomb drills, I bet. I was born in 1960, and started school in 1966. We still did those drills, in addition to regular fire drills, back then, and we were herded into the schools’s basement. By the time I was in fourth grade, so about 1970, they stopped doing that kind of drill, and just did fire drills—-where we were herded outside on the school lawn instead.
This list is inspiring me to do a bit of detective work myself, but unfortunately, I reside in an apartment that certainly has no hidden rooms. But if any of you pandas live in homes that might be concealing something, please go looking for me! You never know what you might discover. Enjoy the rest of these fascinating stories, and keep upvoting all of your favorites. Then let us know in the comments below what you would turn a hidden room into if your home had one. I think I would make a tiny bowling alley or an indoor pool if I had the chance...
#28
My parents bought a house from an old family member to help her pay for nursing home care (she hadn't lived in the house for years at that point). She was a hoarder and we were tasked with cleaning up the house of the course of a summer in order to make it livable prior to the start of school. Rat carcasses fused to the carpet, old tax documents from the 60s, etc. Well, we were scraping up the linoleum tiling (covering the original hardwood floor, disappointingly enough) in a side room when I made the joke about the previous resident being a secret mass murderer and that there was a trapdoor under the linoleum full of dead bodies.
I pulled up a huge section of tiling only to find...a trapdoor underneath. Scared the s**t out of me, but when we finally built up enough courage to open the damned thing, we discovered there was nothing under there. It was a walled off section of the basement with a dirt floor. We suspect it was an old root cellar from back when farmers had to store their s**t in a cold, dark place to prevent it from spoiling.
Kathryn Baylis 2 years ago
I assume the Lino tiles being scraped up were in the kitchen, so the little room adjoining it was the pantry and the trap door was the access to the root cellar beneath it.
#29
After 15 years, we found a second basement in our farmhouse. My father had removed one of the large rocks that makes up the basement wall. I crawled under the log frame a few feet and there was a wall made of baseball sized rocks. I knocked those down and entered an old root cellar. There were shelves and shatter mason jars. And bones. lots and lots of bones. We dug a tunnel so we could access the room.
Found many secret areas in my current house behind wood panels. First secret door was in the basement, it lead to a underground bomb shelter with separate air intake and water line. I knew of it prior to buying the home and was a major selling point for me. Stocked with a radiation detector, used for storage.
Second room was only three feet high, had a light a bunch of toys, crayons and drawings. That one I didn't find for a few months. After about two weeks I discovered a few hidden panels with shelves with toys, magazines, books and some clothing. Nothing interesting.
After a year or two, I located a suspicious wood panel on the floor, pried it open a bit and was able to see a full length staircase leading to a brick wall. I haven't bothered to fully open the panel yet.
#30
I found a secret space in my closet when my mom and I were moving out of the house she was renting to move into my stepdad’s house. I never noticed it because junk covered the section of the wall that was covering a small entrance to a room that was sealed off with boards and plywood. I couldn’t pry it open but I could see light shining in it and a single mason jar filled with what I assumed was water. The air was cold in there like as if the central heating didn’t even reach that part. I showed it to my mom and she told me that she doesn’t remember seeing that there when we had moved in 8 years prior but since we were moving out, it didn’t matter. The room gave me the creeps for whatever reason. I know why it was sealed off or why there was a single mason jar filled with water in the center of the room.
Jill Hojnacki 2 years ago
That mason jar may well have been filled with moonshine, if the house dates to prohibition.
#31
Found it moving in. Latch at bottom of corner of closet. Cape cod style house, crawl space to basically uncarpetted room with two windows over garage. Fell through one time.
#32
My old house had this weirdly large concrete slab in the corner of the yard that was covered by a ton of leaves when we moved in. I thought it was maybe foundation for a shed, but it was in a very odd location. Years later when I was getting ready to move, it bugged me that I didn't know what it was for. I got a friend to help me come dig around it, expecting to confirm that it was just an old foundation.
We dug for days in the middle of August. We had to start digging at night to protect ourselves from the heat. We got about 15 feet down and the concrete wasn't showing any signs of ending. We eventually struck a pipe with a nozzle, and discovered that there was more concrete moving towards the center of the yard.
About a week later my Dad came home and almost had a stroke when he saw that we were digging up half the yard. We had sold the house and were expected to leave by September first. He made us fill it all in and I left home never finding out what it was. Some of my teachers who were longtime town residents told me that my neighborhood had been farmland before development and that there may have been several bomb or fallout shelters in that area. I would have loved to have found an entrance into the bunker, if that's what it was.
#33
Not necessarily secret, but my old house was a duplex. There was a hobbit-sized door on the bottom floor and I glanced in there a few times but only saw pipes and different electrical units and stuff. There was some of the landlord’s/maybe past resident’s junk in the corner. After a few years I explored behind it and realized it leads to the other half of the house.
#34
I bought a house back in 2010. There was a wooden box next to an old oak tree in my backyard. It had no doors and no way to look into it. The box was about as big as a love seat and it looked as old as the house. (about 30 years) but very well kept, no bug damage.
I waited for about 2 years until I got the nerve to open it... it was empty.
Down With Agent Hedgehog! 2 years ago
There was a weird plywood board covering a space of the yard in the house I used to live in. My cousin told me that she bet there was a haunted old tomb down there with probably valuable stuff from older times, and so to prove she was right i charged the board with an electric drill during a night. Turns out it was just a sealed-off basement, but what really was weird was a bunch of rat skeletons piled up on one corner and cat prints and cat fur on the thick dust. For all we knew the room was completely sealed off, it had stone walls and the board wouldn’t have cats going through it.
#35
Helping my granddad move house, we accidentally found access to the under floor area (not even big enough to really call a crawl space I don't think, spotty memory).
There was a small pile of trash from the 60s/70s (juice cans, chocolate bar wrappers and crumpled newspapers) and bits of discarded construction debris and some broken tools. We think it must have been used by the builders in lieu of a trash can. It was cool, an accidental time capsule.
What do you think ?
IamMe 2 years ago
My grandmother's house was built in 1801. One day, my brother and I were moving some furniture from one bedroom to another, when we accidentally caught the corner of a dresser on a panel of the wall. It opened a little bit. Once we figured out we hadn't broken the wall and it was actually a hidden, half sized door, we just had to look. There was a small room, built right in the middle of the house around the chimney. But, not really small, too big for a closet or simple access space. We found some candle stubs on a wooden box and what I think was an old mattress cover. I don't think it would have been an actual bedroom, because it would have been much,too hot in the winter, and the shape would have made it impractical. I have no idea what it could have been. This was in rural Massachusetts.
Poultry Geist 2 years ago
I have a reoccurring dream that I find a room in my house or a friends house ! It’s always furnished and awesome and I’ve had the dream so many times!
IamMe 2 years ago
My grandmother's house was built in 1801. One day, my brother and I were moving some furniture from one bedroom to another, when we accidentally caught the corner of a dresser on a panel of the wall. It opened a little bit. Once we figured out we hadn't broken the wall and it was actually a hidden, half sized door, we just had to look. There was a small room, built right in the middle of the house around the chimney. But, not really small, too big for a closet or simple access space. We found some candle stubs on a wooden box and what I think was an old mattress cover. I don't think it would have been an actual bedroom, because it would have been much,too hot in the winter, and the shape would have made it impractical. I have no idea what it could have been. This was in rural Massachusetts.
Poultry Geist 2 years ago
I have a reoccurring dream that I find a room in my house or a friends house ! It’s always furnished and awesome and I’ve had the dream so many times!
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