Creepy Things Found Hidden In People's Homes

We like to think of our homes as places of safety and familiarity. But sometimes, people make discoveries that throw that sense of security into alarming uncertainty. From expansive secret tunnels, to hidden spying equipment and even unwanted lodgers, let's delve into the creepiest things found hidden In people’s homes.

Secret Dungeon

In 2013, Daniel Carley moved into a new apartment in England. The place was pretty decent, if not a little tight on space. Or so Daniel thought. Soon after moving in, he discovered a hatch on the hallway floor. It initially seemed little more than an extra bit of storage space until Daniel looked closer. He quickly realized that behind the paint cans and tools there lay a set of stairs, leading down into the darkness of a hidden basement.

Moved into a new apartment [Warning: Secret Dungeon] by demc7

Braving the descent, Daniel uncovered an expansive set of dungeon-like rooms which reached out underneath his neighbors’ floorboards. The rooms contained strange piles of rubble, newspapers from the 80s, and a creepy platform Daniel thought looked like a bed, or an altar, or maybe even a sarcophagus. Daniel noted that the building was a converted monastery from the 19th century, which makes those latter options eerily possible. But the hidden basement had creepy implications for Daniel’s neighbors too.

It could only be accessed from Daniel’s apartment, meaning, if he were a creepy weirdo, he could easily sit under their floorboards and spy on them. Who’s to say the previous tenant who left this graffiti on the walls didn’t do that? Either way, despite the creepiness, with a little elbow grease, a lick of paint, and maybe an exorcism, this free floor-space could be put to good use!

Family Finds Hidden Room With Toxic Mold

Not all hidden passages are as harmless as the one Daniel Carley found under his apartment. Back in 2008, Jason and Kerri Brown moved into a house in South Carolina, thinking they’d found the perfect place to raise their daughter. But while redecorating the place, they made a disturbing discovery.

Behind some bookcases in a bedroom, Kerri found a secret passageway leading to a hidden room. Inside the empty room, she found a letter from the previous owner. The letter revealed that the house had a black mold problem of such severity, the last owner was forced to move out as it was making his children very sick.

Horrified, the Browns brought in experts to test whether the claims were true, and their worst fears were confirmed. The house’s air contained very high levels of harmful mold, which was growing in the walls. When questioned on their failure to properly announce the problem, the previous owner revealed they’d left the note hidden as they feared it’d just be thrown out otherwise.

He also claimed to have written a letter to the mortgage company, but never heard back, which seems kind of sketchy. The bank responsible for the property gave a similarly sketchy response, claiming they knew nothing about the mold issues. The whole affair proved costly and traumatizing for the Carley family, who had no choice but to move out of their new home.

The case was eventually settled out of court, with the bank buying back the property and the property development team compensating the family. But it just goes to show… you never know what’s lurking within the walls of your home.

Stranger Living In Basement

When a group of students in Ohio moved into their new house, they soon began noticing strange sounds coming from their basement at night. Initially convinced they had a ghost on their hands, the real truth soon made itself clear. A locked door in the students’ basement, which they’d assumed to be a maintenance cupboard, revealed a shocking secret when eventually opened by the property’s realtor. Inside, there was a makeshift bedroom, with clear evidence of someone living in there.

Students discover stranger living in basement by Lantern OSU

As it turned out, another student had gained access to the house and the room via a key from his cousin, a previous resident of the property. He’d been living there in secret, rent-free, but, understandably, as soon as he was caught, he was forced to move out immediately. While the hidden resident wasn’t quite as scary as a basement-dwelling monster, there’s still something very unnerving about having someone living in secret right under your nose. Sometimes, perhaps it’s best not to know why things go bump in the night.

Occult Decor

When Imgur user moved into his new home, he found some disturbing things he probably wished he hadn’t, left by the previous residents. Upside-down crosses and occult symbols of the most devilish variety covered the attic and basement floors and walls. There were creepy messages scrawled onto surfaces, saying things like, “for I am the earth and within me the devil burns.”

All of that, coupled with depictions of the ancient mischief god, Pan, ensured that the first few nights in the new place would be sleepless. In a situation like that, the only reasonable thing to do would be to embrace it and form a death metal band.

Family Discover Ancient Chapel Under Their House

If most of us moved into a house with a mysterious, old, metal grate in the hallway, we’d probably want to find out what was under it straight away. But the Farla family of Telford, England lived in their home for 3 years before curiosity got the better of them, leading them to finally investigate this grate by their front door.

When they finally pried it away from the brickwork, they realized it led to a small, eerie cellar, with stone benches and a long-rotten wooden cross in the middle. It soon became clear that the room was some kind of hidden chapel, concealed right below the family’s feet!

Understandably perplexed, the family called in local history experts. The historians determined the discovery to be a place of Christian worship, likely used in secret by Catholics during their persecution in England in the 1700s. It’s a little eerie, but it’s probably better than the demonic attic shrine mentioned earlier. Unless you’re into that sort of thing.

Derinkuyu: Underground City Found In Man’s Basement

Discovering a hidden cellar or chapel in your house is amazing in itself. But what one resident of the Nevşehir Province of Turkey found in his home in 1963 was almost beyond belief. After knocking down a wall in his basement during renovations, the man was surprised to find a mysterious room, with walls of ancient stone.

But that was only the beginning. He ventured further in, and found a seemingly-endless network of tunnels, branching off into dozens of rooms and stairwells. It soon dawned on him that he’d discovered the entrance to an entire ancient underground city!

Needless to say, this discovery soon gained the interest of historians worldwide. The enormous expanse was found to reach 250 feet down into the surrounding rock, and is thought to have been initially carved out by the Phrygian people nearly 3,000 years ago.

At its peak, the underground city, now known as Derinkuyu, is believed to have been home to as many as 20,000 people. It served as a safe retreat for communities under attack during wars of the past. The city’s impressive ventilation system of air-holes remains intact, pulling in air from the surface, and its wells connect to an underground river, which served as the past inhabitants’ water source.

Despite the once-booming populace, over time, various wars in the area ultimately contributed to its abandonment in the early 20th century. It lay forgotten until its rediscovery in 1963, by one man who never could’ve dreamt how his home renovation would turn out! Can you imagine the feeling, knowing that just beyond what you thought were the cozy confines of your home, lay an entire, expansive city of tunnels?

Time-Out Room

In 2014, Reddit user NukeStorm moved into a new house, which seemed totally normal at first. That was, until he headed up into the attic. At the back of the space, there stood a small, 4ft-tall door with a strange metal mesh covering a window hole. Inside, NukeStorm was unnerved to find a tiny, mint-green room with a light, some shelves, and a rudimentary bed with only a foam pad as a mattress.

The strangest part was that the door showed evidence of previously having a hook lock, but only on the outside. This meant, of course, that whoever, or whatever, was at one point using that bed, could be locked in by someone on the outside. The room hadn’t been mentioned by the realtor, so had the previous owner, the head of a local church, been trying to keep it secret? What had the room been used for?

Snakes In A House

When Ben and Amber Sessions moved into their new home in 2009, they soon began noticing some disturbing things. They could hear movement inside the walls of the house, and they noticed the tap water had a disgusting taste to it. Something was clearly wrong, and when they began spotting garter snakes slithering all around their yard, and later, inside the house, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together.

It turned out, the whole house, including their water tank, was absolutely infested with thousands of snakes. It was so bad, that in a single day, the family captured 43 snakes! The family then made the shocking discovery that the previous residents had been featured on local news with the same problem back in 2006.

Snakes in a house by Aaron Kunz

The realtor had tried to claim that the previous tenants’ claims were exaggerated, but with so much evidence to the contrary, the Sessions family had had enough. They moved out 3 months after moving in, leaving the reptile-ridden nightmare house far behind.

Attic Filled With Bats

Staying on the topic of hellish creatures making human houses their homes, one family in Chiliwack, British Columbia made a discovery in July 2019 straight out of a Dracula novel. A day after moving into their new house, the Hamel family began noticing bats flying around their chimney. On investigation, they were gobsmacked to count not just a few, or even a dozen, but over 150 bats living in their walls, attic, and chimney!

Worst of all, due to the wildlife laws of the area, the family couldn’t lay out traps or even disturb the bats by trying to move them out. They had to put up with their unwanted lodgers until they migrated south at the end of the summer. It’s like when a guest won’t take the hint to leave, except these guests came with a risk of rabies.

Spiders Bleeding Out Of Walls

Snakes and bats living in your walls are certainly horrible, but picture this scene for a second. You’re relaxing at home in your living room, when all of a sudden, thousands of spiders begin crawling out your walls. Terrifying, right?

Unfortunately, that horror movie moment is pretty close to what actually happened to the Trost family, when an infestation of venomous brown recluse spiders began oozing out from their walls in 2007.

Between 4,500 and 6,000 of the spiders, whose hemotoxic venom can cause horrific necrosis, or rotting of the flesh, were found in their home. The family were forced out while pest control thoroughly gassed their home, aiming to kill all the spiders and their eggs.

But the spiders kept coming back every year, and eventually the Trosts were forced to move out, leaving the spider house in the hands of the Federal National Mortgage Association. At this point, though, it might be time to give up and admit that the spiders have won.

Hidden Wells

For 25 years of living in his home, Colin Steer of Plymouth, England wondered about the cause of an indentation in the floor of his living room. The slightly sunken spot left him scratching his head until 2012, when he decided to dig down into the concrete with the help of a friend.

It soon became clear that the indentation was the opening of a vertical stone tunnel, filled with dirt. Once the whole thing had been excavated, Colin realized he’d happened upon an old well, thought to be from the Medieval period.

Grandad Finds 17ft Medieval Well In His Living Room by Caters Clips

Along the digging process, he also found an ancient-looking, rusted sword buried in the dirt, raising the question, why did someone throw their weapon down the well? Was a medieval criminal disposing of evidence? For now, this question remains unanswered, but with the help of some lighting, the well has become an intriguing, if not a little unnerving, feature of Colin’s living room. Much to his wife’s annoyance.

But there are creepier real-world examples than Colin Steer’s living room well. Like the one found under a trapdoor in a Redditor’s basement. It might’ve been a water source at some point, but now it’s just a source of nightmares. Which is probably the reason they’ve weighed down the door with cinder blocks, in the image below.

And in line with the spooky reputation horror movies have given old wells, a truly nightmare-fuel incident involving one occurred in Connecticut in June 2020. While helping move furniture into a room in a friend’s 177-year-old house, Christopher Town heard a creaking sound. Before he could react, the floorboards below his feet had cracked and given way, and he was falling into darkness.

He fell almost 30 feet into what he soon realized to be an old well, splashing down into ice-cold water that came up over his head. It turned out, the well had been built more than a century previously, but no one bothered capping off the well before building a single layer of wooden floorboards over it. Over time, the wood had rotted, leading to Christopher’s unfortunate accident.

With no easy way out, he had no choice but to hold onto the stone walls to keep himself above the water until the fire department arrived. By the time they lowered ropes and pulled him out, he was growing hypothermic, but after a short hospital visit, his minor injuries were treated, and he warmed back up. However, nothing could heal his newfound fear of wooden floorboards, and worse, whatever lies beneath.

Secret Railroad Room

After she noticed some cracks in the basement floor and walls in her childhood home, Alexandra Polous of Lasdowne, Pennsylvania called in workers to fix them up. While they were carrying out the repairs, however, they made a shocking discovery: those cracks led to a secret room 14 feet below the basement.

Homeowner Finds Secret Room That May Be Part of Underground Railroad by ABC News

The room was empty, but Alexandra soon developed a theory regarding its purpose. Lasdowne’s area of Pennsylvania was once known for helping fleeing slaves in the 19th century. Alexandra believes the hidden room may once have served as a hiding place for slaves being hunted by their masters.

Whether Alexandra’s theory is true has yet to be confirmed, but loose stones along the walls of the hidden room suggest there may be more to uncover. Unfortunately, though, removing too much of the wall may threaten the structural integrity of the house, so it could take some time and money before this mystery is solved for good.

World War Remnants In Attic

At the end of the Second World War, German migrants living in Czechoslovakia were officially banished from the country. In the aftermath, countless Germans, many of whom had fled their home country in disagreement with the Fascist leadership that had taken control, were subjected to acts of violent revenge. With life becoming too dangerous to stay there, one German family was forced to flee, having no choice but to leave many of their most cherished possessions behind.

For 70 years, one of the family’s children, Rudi Schlattner, assumed all his family’s abandoned possessions had been lost forever. That was, until he finally returned to his childhood home in 2015. Much of the house had been changed, and his family’s items were nowhere in sight, until he entered the attic. By chance, he spotted a piece of string dangling from the wooden ceiling, and when he pulled it, a secret panel opened up.

Inside the hidden compartment, after all this time, were the items his parents, now long-dead, had left behind. There were dusty, eerie old toys, antique inkwells, photos and documentation, alongside clothing and other bits-and-bobs. All gathered there, like a morbid tribute to the life that might’ve been, had the turmoil of the war never torn the life Rudi once knew apart.

All those years, the new occupants of the house had no idea such a significant chunk of history had been waiting in their attic. And with all of it being deserted out of fear of persecution, it gave the whole discovery an undeniable air of tragic eeriness.

In-Home Razor Blade Disposal Slots

If you were redecorating your home, and found a heap of razor blades hidden behind a wall in your bathroom, wouldn’t you feel a little creeped out? The various people who’ve made discoveries like this over the years certainly have been.

But it turns out there isn’t anything sinister behind these razorblade collections at all. These edgy assortments are actually the product of a time when slots were commonly cut into bathroom walls, so that used razorblades could be discarded. The blades were intentionally left to accumulate within the wall cavity rather than being collected at any point.

Of course, the discoveries years later left a few people slightly nervous, but it’s really nothing to worry about. The same can’t be said if you find a collection of butcher’s knives behind your bathroom wall. If that’s the case, run.

Hidden Mummified Cats

In 2009, workers renovating a house in Devon, England were alarmed to discover the dried-out remains of a very old cat inside a wall. The cat, it turned out, had been mummified around 400 years prior, and placed there as part of an ancient practice that was thought to ward off witches and evil spirits.

It had stayed in place, like many other examples around the world, for centuries before the workers found it. Unsurprisingly, the homeowners were a little hesitant about putting it back. But then again, the house had been free of witches until now, so maybe if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?

Cursed Image In Closet

Imagine clearing an old closet, when all of a sudden, you spot these glowing eyes staring back at you. Pretty creepy, right? That’s the sight that met Reddit user, NotSkirtWeather, at the back of a closet in her home.

But as cursed as it looks, there’s a rational explanation for this unnerving image. It’s actually a photo of the Redditor as a child, which had become damaged and badly faded over the years, turning a once-happy smile into the gaze of death.

Listen Up

When thr strange device in the tweet below was discovered in the home of Reddit user M-I-G-Y, she turned to the subreddit r/WhatIsThisThing for answers. Disturbingly, the device was found to be a voice recorder, which the Redditor quickly deduced must’ve been left by her jealous, paranoid boyfriend to spy on her.

After she found more evidence of spying equipment in their home, it confirmed her suspicions. She confronted him, and while he denied it all initially, he eventually confessed apologetically. But the damage had been done, and trust had been violated. The Redditor deleted her account shortly after, with the discovery reportedly being the final straw in encouraging her to move out and away from her extremely overbearing boyfriend.

Hidden Camera In AirBnb

Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? Well, if these next stories are anything to go by, you just might be. In 2017, Derek Starnes and his wife were staying in an Airbnb in Florida, when they noticed an unusual hole in their bedroom’s smoke alarm. Inspecting it, Derek found a spy camera hidden inside.

When the police were called to investigate and question the Airbnb owner, the whole truth was uncovered. It turned out the owner had been using hidden cameras to record his guests during their most intimate moments.

He was charged with video voyeurism, though I doubt the sentencing was of much comfort to the Starnes, pictured here (in the image below) in a photo taken by the Airbnb’s hidden camera. With their trust violated, they now likely question their privacy whenever they stay anywhere away from home.

An even seedier set-up was uncovered in Alexandria, Australia in 2017, after a fire broke out at a shipping container yard. Once the fire had been extinguished, emergency services realized the shipping yard was being used as a makeshift shantytown, with residents living in tiny converted shipping containers. But that wasn’t the worst part.

Unbeknownst to the residents, the owner of the complex had set up cameras in the residents’ bedrooms to spy on them. He’d rigged the cameras, which were concealed in light fixtures and smoke alarms, up to a secret central hub, where he’d sit and watch them for hours at a time. With his entire sinister operation exposed, the man responsible was sentenced to 18 months in jail with a $210,000 fine. Anyone else feeling kind of paranoid all of a sudden?

I hope you were amazed at the creepy things found hidden in people's homes! Thanks for reading.