Incredible Things People Found Under Their Bed

From abundances of junk to filthy old socks, there are plenty of interesting things to be found under people’s beds. But in this article, we’re delving beneath beds that have hidden truly extraordinary things.

From treasures worth millions to monsters in every sense of the word, keep reading to see what lies beneath the treasure troves we call beds.

Bedtime Beasts

People often think that monsters under your bed is merely a thing of childhood imagination. But the truth is, when the lights go out, you can never be certain of what phantoms creep below.

Someone who knows this all too well is former Zimbabwean International cricketer, Guy Whittall. In 2013, Guy checked into the Humani Lodge in Zimbabwe. As he tucked into breakfast one morning, he was alarmed by the shriek of a housemaid coming from his room.

He burst in and found the source of the maid’s terror: a beastly 330-pound crocodile prowling beneath the bed. Amazingly, this croc had gone undetected the whole night, as it’s thought to have climbed under there seeking warmth as Guy slept.

Guy even recalled how he’d perched on the edge of his bed when he awoke, and dangled his feet, unaware of the bitey beast below. You’re probably thinking: ‘how could you not notice a 330-pound crocodile under your bed?!’ Well, you’d be surprised at just how sneaky these creatures can be; after all, it’s how they hunt.

With the croc found, it wasn’t long before hotel staff wrangled it back outside from whence it came. Hopefully, the reptile will have the courtesy to book a room in advance next time.

Not So Itsy-Bitsy Spider

If you’re anything like me and the other 100 million people in the U.S. who suffer from arachnophobia, AKA the fear of spiders, then you might want to read this entry with caution. Close encounters with these 8-legged critters can be intimidating, and no one knows this better than photographer, Gil Wizen, who crossed paths with the world’s most venomous spiders in 2021.

Staying at a nature reserve in Napo, Ecuador, he began to notice tiny spiders scuttling around his bed. As he peered beneath it, the root of the problem made itself known: a huge mama spider with a 7 inch leg-span and her skin-crawling offspring.

The spider was identified as the infamous Brazilian Wandering spider, which if you didn’t know, a single bite from this brute can result in nausea, vertigo, blurred vision, severe burning, and sometimes: death. Luckily for Gil, he lived to tell the tale. In fact, his portrait of this spidy family ended up bagging him the Urban Wildlife photographer of the year award in 2021.

Billionaire Bed

In 2019, a financial survey found that 5.4% of American households were ‘unbanked’, meaning they didn’t possess bank accounts. Which begs the question: where do they keep their money? As it turns out, some people keep their hard-earned bread under the bed.

In 2017, U.S. prosecutors revealed they’d seized $20 million in cash found stashed under a bed in Massachusetts. How did so much cheddar end up in one place? Let's untangle a whole web of fraud.

The year is 2012 and James Merrill and Carlos Wanzeler hatch a cunning plan to pose as an internet telecom company under the name of ‘TelexFree’. Their start-up would allegedly sell voice-over-internet telephone services, allowing people to make phone calls over an internet connection.

However, the truth would come to reveal a pyramid scheme that swindled almost 1 million people out of a collective $1.76 billion. Charging their victims joining fees to become ‘promoters’ and getting them to post ads for their product online proved to be the crux of this fraudulent scheme.

By April 2014, the company had filed for bankruptcy, shifting its losses onto the unlucky promoters. Soon after, Merrill was sent to the slammer on fraud charges, while Wanzeler fled to Brazil.

It wasn’t until 2017 that Cleber Rene Rizerio Rocha entered the picture. He was sent to the U.S., on behalf of Wanzeler, to transport $2.2 million in cash.

However, while Rocha carried out his operations, federal agents tailed him back to an apartment complex in Massachusetts, where they came to discover $20 million stacked and stashed beneath a bed.

The money was seized, and the U.S. Department of Justice website claimed that proceeds would be returned to the identified TelexFree victims. The moral of the story is, if you’re gonna defraud 1 million people out of $1.76 billion, you’d better find somewhere better to stash the cash than under your bed!

Fancy Fiddle

Fluent in the language of prestige and high society, the violin has been around for over 500 years. With the world’s most expensive valued at $20 million, it’s no wonder these instruments exude the very essence of la-di-da.

The Vieuxtemps Guarneri is the world’s second most valuable violin, valued an astonishing $16 million.

It was conceived in 1741 by the renowned Italian instrument craftsman, Giuseppe Guarneri. During the 19th century, the famed fiddle fell into the hands of Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps, who, as you can guess, was responsible for its nickname.

In fact, Henri’s love affair with the instrument was so profound that he allegedly wanted to be buried with it, though for whatever reason, this never happened.

Some years later, this Italian-stallion violin trotted into the hands of a British financier and philanthropist, Ian Stoutzker. Though the sad truth is that Ian kept the ol’ girl hidden beneath a bed, where it did nothing more than collect dust for 50 years.

However, in 2010, Ian remembered about his insanely significant under-bed item and decided it was time to auction it off. It was soon snapped up by a mystery buyer for 16 million big ones! Whoever the buyer was, they were extremely generous, as they donated the violin to world-class player, Anne Akiko Meyers.

Greek Chic

From philosophy and astrology to the Olympics and feta cheese, we have a lot to thank the ancient Greeks for. They pioneered the modern-world and remnants of it can still be found today under people’s beds.

That was proven in 2016 when an elderly British man, who remains anonymous, was decluttering his house. And part of the ‘clutter’ was actually a 2,300-year-old Greek artifact that had haphazardly been bunched in newspaper and tossed under a bed.

This gold wreath crown was authenticated and expected to value anywhere in the region of $130,000 to $262,000. But how does an old British guy come to casually own a millennia-old Greek artifact?

Well, the exact story of its acquisition remains unclear, though the owner believes he inherited it from his late grandfather. His grandfather was a collector who was fascinated by archeology and the ancient world, and likely obtained it during his frequent travels in the 1940s.

The crown depicts the branches of laurel, myrtle, oak and olive trees, and experts revere the great condition of this exceptionally rare find. Due to their extreme fragility, these wreaths would be worn only on special occasions, and they were often placed in the graves of aristocrats, which was likely the story for this crown, as bits of dirt were be seen embedded into it.

This historically rich crown likely made the old man very rich too, when it sold in June 2016, though the exact sum remains unknown.

Foot Loose

It's easy to imagine the questionable items that populate hotel lost-property boxes far and wide. Though hotel employee, Jim Angelton, discovered something particularly bizarre that overstepped the mark.

People often say, ‘I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on’, and apparently, that can also apply to feet. Yes, one person actually left a foot under their hotel bed, a prosthetic one, that is. Nevertheless, someone managed to hobble out of the hotel with one less foot than when they arrived.

We can speculate; maybe it was a spare one, or perhaps even belonged to a door-to-door prosthetic foot salesman, who knows?! Either way, Jim explained how he quickly had a security person remove the miscellaneous prosthetic foot in a garbage bag as he didn’t want to touch it himself.

Safe to say if someone standing slightly askew shows up at the lost and found, Jim can probably assume what they’re there for!

The Case of Josh Dinning

In 2017, British mom, Michelle Dinning, reported her 9-year-old son, Josh, as missing at 9:15 in the morning. Having not seen him since bedtime the night before, she feared the worst for her son’s whereabouts.

It wasn’t long until the police were searching the house, nearby rivers, and scouring the local area by helicopter search. Dozens of neighbors pitched in with the search, as they handed out images of Josh, but he was nowhere to be found.

3 hours passed and reality was looking bleak. In a last-ditch effort, Michelle asked the police to search the family home again, which is when they made the shocking discovery: Josh’s body under a bed.

As you can imagine, the family were shocked to the core, especially considering he was alive! Yes, Josh was completely fine. He just really didn’t want to go to school! Indeed, 3 hours of heartache and grief all because this guy wasn’t in the mood for learning.

Fearing his cunning plan had gotten out of hand, Josh explained how he could hear people searching for him, but was scared of getting in trouble, so decided to stay put under his bed. All things considered, his plan to bunk off school technically worked. Well played, Josh.

Clutter Sucker

Are you tired of useless junk filling up your house? Endless amounts of underbed clutter got’cha down? Well, with a simple relocation to Guatemala City in Guatemala, you can kick back, relax, and wait while the sinkholes declutter your house for you!

But sinkholes are no laughing matter, as 65-year-old Guatemala resident, Inocenta Hernandez, would tell you. On an ordinary day back in 2011, Inocenta was watching her grandchildren play on her patio, when a huge boom suddenly rumbled through her home.

Assuming it to be a car crash or an exploding gas canister, she rushed out to the street to investigate, yet she saw nothing. It was then that a passerby approached her to inform her the noise had actually come from her own house.

Shocked, she headed back in, only to discover a 31-inch-wide, 39-foot-deep sinkhole had appeared beneath her bed in her downstairs bedroom.

These treacherous sinkholes are common in Guatemala and other areas of the world that typically have rock below the surface that is naturally dissolved by groundwater. As water from rainfall travels through the soil, these rocks begin to dissolve, which results in underground cavities being formed.

Everything above the ground appears completely normal while this process is happening, until one day, boom.

And they can be catastrophic. In fact, in 2007 another Guatemalan sinkhole, that was 492-feet-deep, swallowed up several homes and a truck, claiming three lives in total.

So, it seems Inocenta got off easy this time. Just imagine being in bed, while a gaping void to the abyss emerges below you, talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed!

Gross Ghost

It’s now time for a ghost story of sorts. This spooky tale takes us back to 2014, when a Seattle couple, Brian and Bridgett O’Neill, returned to their apartment, only to discover things weren’t quite as they’d left them.

Lotion had been smeared on their doorknobs, junk mail shredded open, paint poured down the toilet, and perhaps the strangest of all, soles prized out of 20 pairs of shoes. Their world had literally been turned upside-down, which they initially suspected at the hands of a burglar.

However, a police inquisition would prove nothing had been stolen, which, the couple concluded, could only mean one thing: a poltergeist. After the cops left, the O’Neills began to hear strange, spooky noises, noises they could only liken to a dying possum.

The sounds of the quote-unquote “poltergeist” seemed to be coming from under the couple’s bed, but for their peace of mind, the O’Neills had the police come and take a look under there for them, just in case.

That’s when the chilling truth was revealed. There was no ghost under there, nor even a dying animal. It was a woman. A heavily intoxicated woman. Lurking beneath their bed, armed with a kitchen knife and a hypodermic needle, was a 27-year-old ‘lanky and wild-eyed woman’, who, we’ll call Mrs. Crystal Methany.

Our pal Crystal had been there at least 2 hours and later admitted to the police how she’d been on a substance-addled rampage for several days. In her intoxicated haze, the police suspected she’d climbed into the house via the bedroom window and unleashed sheer chaos, before eventually retiring to safety under the bed.

Yet, even with paint down the john and soleless shoes, the O’Neills didn’t feel contempt towards this woman so much as they did sympathy. Bridgett even said she felt bad for the woman, though I’m sure her attitude changed later, when she was nursing her sore feet on account of her soleless shoes.

But if you want an even creepier story, then just check out this reddit post from ‘taymhaston’ in 2016. As all good horror films start, her parents had just moved into a new house.

As the redditor checked the place out, they flopped onto their back on the bed in one of the rooms, only to discover something truly chilling. That is, a faint, ghostly message on the ceiling, that read ‘I’m under the bed’.

While presumably a prank left by a previous resident, the Redditor was able to share the post, so we can assume there weren’t actually any killers or ghouls under the bed. But I’d probably still recommend burning the house down anyway, just to be sure.

Stranger Danger

While it’s no secret that finding a person under your bed is a thoroughly frightening idea, that concept reaches its terrifying peak in this next encounter, shared online by Redditor, ‘myhra’.

When Myhra was around 20, she’d just moved into her first apartment and was on the phone to her boyfriend while collecting her mail from the building’s entrance. As she returned to her room, she perched on the edge of the bed, only to lose grip of her phone.

It slid beneath her bed, leading her to a terrifying discovery. As she bent down to pick it up, her heart stopped as she discovered a man lying under her bed with his back to her.

Thinking fast, she picked up the phone, loudly stating to her boyfriend how she was going to get in the shower. She immediately fled to the bathroom and discretely locked the door. With her room being on the bottom floor, she was able to escape to safety out the bathroom window.

The police were alerted, and what they discovered inside was a thin, tired looking man waiting outside her bathroom door, armed with a kitchen knife. Had the girl not been so calm and collected, we may not have been hearing her version of events today.

Now, considering this story’s only been shared anonymously online makes its credibility problematic. That being said, unfortunately, things like this aren’t unheard of in the world of verified news.

In 2014, for example, British 18-year-old, Kyle Ravenscroft decided he would send a series of sinister text messages to a 16-year-old girl he’d become obsessed with.

The poor girl was so afraid that she decided to sleep in her mother’s room that night. But, as her head hit the pillow, her phone lit up again – ‘I’m watching you. I am in your house’, the texts read. It seemed like an impossible, baseless threat, but nonetheless incredibly unnerving.

But here’s the worst part: when she returned to her room the next morning, things weren’t quite as she’d left them. Something in the air felt wrong, very wrong. Peering beneath her bed, the girl found Kyle Ravenscroft, seemingly lying in wait.

The girl’s mom yelled at Kyle and immediately alerted the police, while he ran like the wind, stealing the girl’s phone while fleeing. Later inspection would find that the handle to the girl’s bedroom window had been completely snapped off, concluding that the creepy Kyle had broken his way into her room in the night.

It’s pretty horrifying to think about what might’ve happened had the girl not slept in her mother’s room that night, but unbelievably, in the end Kyle got off light.

He was merely being fined £100 and made to undergo a behavioral rehabilitation course, with the court's defense labeling him a ‘a bright young man capable of change’. Indeed, change, and God knows what else! Check under your beds, folks, there’s a creature on the loose who answers to the name ‘Kyle’.

Mattress Mania

Picture the scene: a single ray of sun shimmers through your curtains. The primal melodies of birdsong that have sung to man ever since his first dawn enter your consciousness, as you depart from the realm of dreams and awaken to yet another beautiful morning.

As your feet touch the ground, you stretch and release a yawn, all while a stranger slowly emerges from inside your mattress. What?! Well, this bizarre scene could well have come true, if a strange plan that went badly wrong had a different, equally strange outcome.

In 2018 on the border of the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the African landmass, Spanish border officers decided to inspect two mattresses that were being transported into Melilla.

Sensing something was odd about the mattresses, the officers peeled back the layers of plastic, cut into the fabric, and were soon confronted with a shocking discovery. Two men were hiding inside the mattresses. It appeared that they’d excavated the mattresses and fashioned what almost resembled coffins.

And coffins they might’ve ended up being, considering the mattresses were also wrapped in a thick layer of plastic, which would’ve been insanely hot, not to mention less-than-ideal for breathing.

Dazed, speechless, and barefoot, it’s assumed they were attempting to sneak through customs to migrate to Europe for a better life. Though on this occasion, commuting via mattress of course proved unsuccessful for these two gents.

Promiscuous Pensioner

Old people were once young. And just because they’re old doesn’t always mean they don’t still like some horizontal refreshment. You get the idea. And while we all would rather not think about granny and grandpa playing “hide the cannoli”, one pensioner in Philadelphia made the news, due to his fondness of "women of the night".

The saucy 70-year-old, who was living in an old people’s home, was stripped of his housing subsidy after the staff found a woman hiding beneath his bed. Specifically, the kind of woman that can show you a real good time and I don’t mean a rollercoaster attendant.

Though this tale only gets more unbelievable. It turned out, the old-timer managed to fund his love of the ladies by profiting off other residents, as he peddled alcohol to them. He was described as one of the more ‘mobile’ residents and capitalized on this by going on booze runs for neighbors.

Though as you can guess, this wasn’t the only way he was active. This man is everything I aspire to be in old age, and more!