A homeowner who removed a wooden board from the wall of their new basement uncovered an entire hidden room, prompting a chorus of warnings from Reddit users to seal it back up.
The homeowner explained on Reddit: "Bought a new place which has a piece of wood screwed to the wall in the basement. Assumed it was just a board for notes or something. Took it off to paint the walls and found this."
Behind the board was a spacious room that appeared to have been used by the previous owner as a dumping ground, filled with plastic packaging and other rubbish. The homeowner confirmed there were no pipes or electrics inside the space.
Reddit users issue the same warning
The vast majority of commenters advised the homeowner to put the board back and leave the room untouched. One user said: "That's where the critters live." Another added: "Put the same poster over it from Shawshank Redemption."
A third commented: "Oh, you put that back and never open it again. Simple solution." One more user joked: "You need about 400 cans of Great Stuff Expanding Foam from your local hardware store." Another said: "I've seen this movie. Put it back and paint a cross on it. Forget it was ever there."
Not the only hidden room discovered
The homeowner is not the only person to have stumbled across a secret room after moving into a new property. Another user previously shared a similar discovery made by their family after buying an old Victorian house with plans to renovate it.
They explained how their dad's cousin and her husband bought the property around 15 years ago, intending to restore it before selling it. After living there for about a month, they noticed something strange while standing outside the house.
The user said: "On the second floor, they recognised their bedroom window, and their daughter's bedroom window by the curtains they had hung, but there was a window in between." When they went back inside to investigate, there was no door leading to the mystery room, leading them to deduce the space had been deliberately concealed.
The user continued: "They went back outside and threw a ladder up to the mystery window and opened it from the outside. On the other side of the window was another bedroom, filled with fur coats, artwork, jewellery, and other misc possessions."
There was also a regular bedroom door inside the hidden room, which they opened before realising it had been boarded up and plastered over from the outside. The user said this meant "you wouldn't even know it was there walking down the hallway". The family's daughter was reportedly seen wearing some of the fur coats to school.
