12 People Who Came Across the Most Disturbing Discoveries

Discovering an eerie object in a public space or even within the familiarity of our homes can be quite unsettling. When we unexpectedly come across a strange find, we rush to figure out why it’s there. Usually, we remember its owner and the reason for its presence. Yet, in some instances, certain found objects remain perpetual mysteries. And the people in our article still get uneasy remembering their peculiar discoveries.

• An ex of mine lived in a pretty old house. Behind one of the bottom cupboards in their kitchen, there was a tiny door just big enough for an adult to crawl through on his or her belly. Once you crawled through, you could stand up in the little enclosed room, maybe 7 feet high and 5’x4′. There was writing and graffiti all over three of the walls, but on one wall, there was this large Elvis statue. © exjentric / Reddit

• My dad worked at a mental hospital. One day, the maintenance guy was called because the elevator wasn’t quite sitting level on the ground floor; it was staying about half an inch too high and both patients and staff had been tripping on it. But all the other floors were no problem.
  My dad arrived to find the maintenance guy cackling, looking into the bottom of the shaft. He found probably tens of thousands of magazines down there. They had to get a bunch of shovels, a small crew, and a rolling dumpster to clear it out. When it was all done, my dad decided to stay behind and pretend to read a newspaper while he sat in the lobby.
  After about half an hour, he sees an elderly patient holding a magazine, shuffling slowly toward the elevator. He stops in front of the doors, glances left, glances right, and quickly stoops down, slides the magazine into the gap, and shuffles away as fast as he can with a huge grin on his face. My dad could not help but laugh hysterically. This guy had probably been sliding magazines in there multiple times per day, every day, for decades. I should ask him whether he reported it or let the guy have his fun. It wouldn’t surprise me if my dad went with the latter. © nibiyabi / Reddit

• We moved into my great-grandmother’s house after she died, and it needed quite a bit of renovation. We were knocking the old plaster off one of the walls so we could put insulation in. My dad took a swing with the sledgehammer, knocked a hole, and 200-year-old children’s shoes fell out of the wall. © kromagnon / Reddit

• I was passing by a garbage bin in Seattle and found an old hypnosis device. It had one vacuum tube lightbulb in it with knobs to set the desired frequency. You could stimulate the alpha, beta, and theta brainwaves with this device. © Unknown user / Reddit

• When my husband was little (around 5 or 6 years old), his mother couldn’t figure out why his room had been getting smellier and smellier over the previous 2 weeks. She finally did some searching and found a “nest” in the back of his closet. He had taken 2 eggs out of the fridge, put them in a little nest he made out of his shirts, and placed a plastic dinosaur on top of the eggs to attempt to hatch baby dinosaurs. In his little kid mind, this seemed like a perfectly logical idea. © troll_wifey / Reddit

• At my school, in the administration building, I found a secret room. It wasn’t secret in the sense that it was hidden, but it was a hatch in the ceiling in the basement that had long been forgotten. My friends and I were trying to find a way to get to the bell tower, and instead, we found this storage space, except it was an open room.
  The lights didn’t work, so we came back with flashlights. There was an old couch inside, a coffee table, some old paintings on slabs of wood, and a bunch of old 1970s bottles with candles melted over the top of them. It definitely looks like it was someone’s chill spot 40 years ago. I plan on going in, cleaning it up a bit, and making it my own. © JayPetey / Reddit

• My wife and I moved into a house, and after a few months, we called a service company to inspect and tune up the central air. He opened the air plenum below the air handler and found a large Walmart bank deposit bag with thousands of checks inside. All of the cash had been removed.
  It turns out that the previous owner of the house had been a suspect in a scam to steal deposit bags at a bank in town. The detective told us later that it had been too long to prosecute him, and he never admitted any wrongdoing. I also found out that his wife was really mad because she never knew about any of that money. © inventor2010 / Reddit

• I was at the beach somewhere. This was years ago when I was quite young. Anyhow, I found this wooden plank, maybe the size of a laptop. It had this really awesome carving of a super old horse and carriage. I always wondered where it came from. I had it in my living room on the mantle for quite some time before it mysteriously disappeared. © hopscotchking / Reddit

• My mom is a teacher. One time, a student was playing with this weird box that was locked, so she couldn’t put it in the confiscated bin. Instead, she placed it on top of a cabinet. About an hour later, it started ringing furiously. It took some effort to get the box open.
  Turns out, this kid’s parent was a professional chef. The child had grabbed every timer in the house, set them for the maximum amount of time, locked the box, brought it to school, and played with it so it would get confiscated and ring loudly. The whole class erupted with laughter and screaming. A true agent of chaos. © Cathy-the-Grand / Reddit

• I was helping a friend move into a house, and in the basement, we found a sheet of paper that was titled “Times Marge Was Right.” It then listed 3 times that Marge was right; the only one I remember was “the weight of the turkey.” © jschaeper / Reddit

• When we moved into my new house, there was an outlet in the bathroom that just wouldn’t work. Eventually, my dad got around to changing it. When he pulled the faceplate off, he realized that there was no electrical wiring. Instead, there was a plastic box attached to the back. Inside was a note from the people who owned the house in the late ’60s, welcoming the new owners (not us) into the house. There were a couple of stories, well-wishing, and $20 to buy something nice for the house. © capoteismyg** / Reddit

• When I was in fifth grade, I was walking to school one morning. No one was around but me. I looked across the street, and on my neighbor’s lawn were all sorts of different birds — pelicans, seagulls, pigeons, storks, ducks — just chilling on the lawn. I ran back home to grab my camera, but when I came back, they were gone.
  I used to live near the Santa Ana River, so I’m assuming they came from there. But still odd that they would all be hanging out on a lawn together. © 5thape / Reddit

Occasionally, we come across intriguing objects whose uses and purposes remain unknown. In this article, people have chosen to unveil their mysterious finds on the Internet, prompting swift and clever responses from netizens.