14 Repairmen Who Stumbled Upon Shocking Secrets in People’s Homes

Although some people go to great lengths to hide their secrets within their homes, those mysteries don’t always stay buried. Over time, walls, floors, and ceilings can reveal the secrets they were meant to keep. Check what these repairmen uncovered while working in other people’s houses.

• A couple hired me to remodel their basement. While removing old drywall, I discovered a small, sealed-off doorway. Curious, I pried it open, and inside was a hidden room no bigger than a closet.
  The room had a small wooden chair, a single candle on the floor, and strange symbols etched into the walls. The homeowners had no idea it was there, and they swore the house had no additions or alterations. I suggested they leave it alone, but they decided to turn it into storage. I still think about who used that room and for what purpose.

• "I was helping my former boss, a historic preservationist and carpenter, with some renovations on a historic home in upstate New York, and we found an alarming amount of old barbie dolls (like from the '70s?) stashed behind a wall in the living room. It was very creepy. I hate old dolls." QueenMoogle / Reddit

• Last year, I was remodeling a bathroom in an old house owned by a man whose wife had passed a few years ago. While tearing down a wall, I found a small tin box wedged between the studs. Curious, I opened it. Inside was a lock of dark hair tied with a ribbon and a folded piece of paper. The note read: "For my sweet Emma. Always with me, even if only a part of you remains."
  I showed the box to the homeowner. He looked shocked, then explained that the house once belonged to his aunt Emma, who had died young in the 1950s. Her husband, heartbroken, had cut a piece of her hair before the funeral and kept it as a keepsake.
  When he moved out and remarried, he must’ve hidden it in the wall so no one would find it. The man decided to keep the box, saying it was a piece of family history. It wasn’t just creepy, it was heartbreaking. That tiny box held so much love and loss.

• "One of my friends is a construction contractor, and he was sent to a newly built house to investigate a mold problem. It was a new house, one of those prefab homes, but it already had mold in the walls.
  Cut open the drywall to find garbage, mostly soda bottles and fast food wrappers. The people who built the house put their trash behind the drywall, and it eventually grew mold in the walls. The owners even said they randomly smelled McDonald's food sometimes, but never thought much of it." Cats***-Dogf*** / Reddit

• "It was 1989, and I was installing a furnace system into a home that had been built in the 1970s. When I took the sheet rock off of a wall, sitting on the top plate behind the sheet rock was an open package of Twinkies. One was still in the package.
  It looked brand new. It must have been left there by one of the original workers. It was still soft, and appeared to be untouched by nearly twenty years of waiting. No. I didn't taste it." cartoona****** / Reddit

• "A big pile of razor blades. My house was built in the 1950s, before disposable razors, obviously. Apparently the bathroom originally had a slot in the wall where you could dispose of your used razor blades when they got dull. The old blades would simply fall down behind the wall and pile up between two of the studs.
  I've since learned that this was pretty common, but I'd never heard of it before. So I was surprised to see all of these blades come falling out when I pulled the wallboard off." PaulsRedditUsername / Reddit

• "My dad was renovating an old farmhouse with a friend of his, and they noticed a car sitting on the road, but the people in the car weren’t bothering them, so my dad didn’t worry too much about it. One day, they rip down a wall and discover a whole bunch of gold chains. That car on the road? It drove down the driveway and the people inside promptly got out, took it all from my dad and his friend except for one they were nice enough to let them keep.
  Turns out the homeowner was in the mob. This took place in upstate NY." LostInGA / Reddit

• "My sister and brother-in-law bought a widow’s house. When he tore out a wall to remodel the basement, he found a pile of household trash. Underneath all the old newspapers and plastic Coke bottles was a cardboard box labeled, 'Cremated Remains.' Yep. It was the widow’s husband." ageniusawizard / Reddit

• "I used to be a computer repairman, and one time I popped open the computer and roaches just came boiling out. It was so filthy inside that I didn't even try to repair it, and after that I always put on rubber gloves before opening the case." Unknown author / Reddit

• I was working on a house built in the 1920s, tearing out old paneling in what used to be a child’s bedroom. Behind one of the walls, I found a message scrawled in crayon: 'Don’t let him in.' There were stick figure drawings of a child standing next to a tall figure with no face.
  When I showed the homeowner, they went pale and said their daughter had been complaining about “a man with no face” standing by her bed at night. I finished the job quickly and got out of there.

• I was repainting a bedroom when I decided to remove some old wallpaper that had started peeling in one corner. As I stripped away the layers, I uncovered something faintly written in pencil on the drywall beneath. It said: "I know what you did. 1983."
  I showed the homeowner, and she looked just as confused as I was. She told me they’d moved into the house in the early '90s, long after 1983, and had never done anything to the walls. We joked nervously about what it could mean, but I noticed she kept glancing at the wall while I finished the job, like it might hold more secrets she wasn’t sure she wanted to uncover.

• I was called to replace the flooring in a home office. Underneath the old carpet, I found a tiny, outdated camera lens embedded in the floorboards, pointing straight up. There were no wires attached, and it looked like it hadn’t been used in decades.
  The homeowner was horrified. She had recently bought the house and had no idea why someone would need a hidden camera aimed at the desk. She asked me to check the rest of the house, but thankfully, I didn’t find anything else.

• "My friends bought a house that needed a lot of work. They didn’t find anything particularly odd while working on the house, but when they started digging up the yard a bit to landscape, they found a bag of teeth.
  Adult teeth, not kids teeth. And it was a lot of teeth. Like it seemed like they were from more than one person. They called the police, who took a report and the bag of teeth, but they never heard anything more about it. Still no idea why that was there." redredgreen17 / Reddit

• I was repairing cracks in a backyard patio when I noticed a child-sized footprint set in the concrete. It wasn’t unusual, except for the fact that it was the only print, and the date stamped next to it read: 'June 12, 1974.' The homeowner said the patio wasn’t even poured until 1990.

Some people have lived through experiences so terrifying, they feel ripped straight from the script of a real-life horror movie.