19 Houses and Apartments That Have More Secrets Than an Antique Casket

In order to not turn the purchase of new lodging into a scene from the Ratatouille movie, a horror movie, or a detective thriller, one needs to have a thorough approach to the process. But as the characters from our compilation have figured out, there is no way to stave off surprises.

Bright Side decided to try to protect you from unforeseen situations with new houses with the help of these stories. You’ll find a variety of tales among them — from comedies to real horror.

• Apartments in our building don’t have load-bearing walls between bathrooms. It’s just your bathroom and the mirrored bathroom of your neighbor several inches away. A space of about 4 inches is there between the so-called walls. One family decided to renovate their home and demolished all the walls in their bathroom and glued their new tiles to the so-called wall of their neighbor in order to enlarge their room by 4 inches!!! Of course, they didn’t inform the neighbor about it. After a couple of years, the this-side neighbor decided to start his renovation and cut a window into his neighbor’s bathroom, having unwillingly broken their new tile. © volotimir / Pikabu

• My friend rented a small house consisting of only one room. The entrance to her shower cabin passed through a closet. All her visitors got shocked every time they saw it. The way to the toilet also passed through the closet, but one had to choose a different door to get there. © Kseniya Fedotova / Facebook

• Watched Home Alone and saw that attic that Macaulay Culkin was staying in and wondered if we had one in our townhouse. Ran around with a step ladder until I found it in my mom’s closet. Got on my tiptoes on the stepladder, pushed the door open (ended up being a big piece of plywood), and peered into the attic. A mouse colony stared back at me. It was like that scene in Ratatouille. Decades’ worth of feces-covered the whole space. My mom was not happy once I told her. We moved shortly afterward. © PerpetuallySl33py / Reddit

• My neighbor shared this story with me. He and his wife bought a house. It was old and not in very good shape, but it was their own space. There were a lot of utensils and furniture left in the house, which made my neighbor even happier. After several years, they decided to de-clutter the attic where they found money kept in jars hidden under pieces of clothing. He said the amount of money was much larger than the actual cost of the house. © Elena Budrevich / Facebook

• I live on the ground floor. Once, the landlady called me and said, “The residents of apartment 7B are going to replace their stove tomorrow, so someone from the gas company will come to you and shut off the supply of natural gas to them.” At that moment I thought that what she was saying was nonsense, but I was wrong. Turns out, there is a valve in my kitchen unit and with the help of this valve, I can stop the supply of natural gas to our entire block. © 2kilo / Pikabu

• There was a hidden door behind the wallpaper (obviously the doorknob was taken off, so it blended in with the wall) in my hallway. We lived in this house for 6 years and I found out about this door 2 years ago, when we opened it we saw a skeleton in the corner. Not gonna lie that scared me a lot, although it was just a prop left by the past owners of our house. © Jarkoface / Reddit

• We bought a new apartment last month. It looked perfect. When we started the renovation, we noticed there was the top of a big tree right in front of our windows and that there was a lot of trash on it: hygienic pads, plastic bags, and even bags with food. There are 5 more apartments above us that used this as a trash can. Had I seen it earlier, I would have never agreed to buy this apartment. © Overheard / ideer

• First week freshman year, my new roommate and default best friend tells me we’re going to a board game night somewhere. I agreed. So we go, and end up having an alright time with some people who only seem a little weird, but not enough to really throw me off. So the game wraps up and my roommate and I are about to go home, when the host says, “Wait! You haven’t seen the bathroom yet! You’ve gotta see it, everyone sees my bathroom!”
  Okay..... So we open the door and walk into this little bathroom where every single square inch of the walls, sink, toilet, ceiling, and floor are covered in Elvis memorabilia. Posters, tickets, photos, albums, lyric sheets, everything you can imagine. And mounted above the toilet is a creepy, mostly realistic Elvis animatronic, singing head. It was beyond being a fan or obsessive or any of that. It was really frightening. So we turn around to him holding a guest book for us to sign. Obviously, I made up an email and phone number so he wouldn’t email me or call me. © lespaulbro / Reddit

“A neighbor of mine has one wall in their house papered like this. Every time a new guest comes in, they are asked to color-in a character and initial it.”

• We bought a new apartment. One day when my husband left for work, I went there to look at it once again and do some cleaning. I mopped the floor, lied down on the clean floor, and started to dream about how we are going to furnish it and get a cat. Suddenly someone knocks on my door. Turned out, it was our neighbor from the lower floor. She says, “Finally, you are home. Maybe it’s time you stopped making noise? I can hear you breathing at me right from the ceiling.” At that moment, I realized why the seller gave us such a big discount. © Moskma / Pikabu

• About 25 years ago, we bought a house in a small town. The former owners who were about 70-75 didn’t have kids and used to live there alone. They left all the furniture, even giving us a discount because we took it. When we first got to this house, we got a feeling that it was a museum of beds. There were 2 beds on the terrace, there were 4 beds in the sitting room, 2 more beds in the bedroom, and several more beds in the backyard. At the same time, there was not a single closet in the whole house. © Anna Lem / Facebook

• It was about a year into owning our house. We actually found 2 secret rooms. One was just a room under the stairs that was closed off. It had some toys from the 70s in it. The really crazy one was when we redid the insulation in our attic. One of the workers asked if I knew there was a room up there. I had no idea. So we cut open the drywall and there were stacks on stacks of boxes from the 60s. Like a ton of boxes. And they were all full! So I opened them up expecting some cool stuff. And they were full of PINECONES!! One of the bigger bummers of my life. © R12356 / Reddit

• I was 8-9 when we got new neighbors who we shared one common wall with. They would play loud music till midnight every day. My little brother couldn’t sleep and would cry every night. My father tried to ask them several times to stop, but they ignored his request. Once, I was doing my homework and they started to play the music again. At this point, I noticed that the music sounded extremely loud from the socket. That’s when I figured it out! I turned the electricity down, unscrewed the socket, and saw a hole to the neighbors’ apartment. After one week, whenever my neighbors switched on loud music, their plugs would short circuit. That’s how I decided to train them, being a young boy. They stopped playing loud music, while I started to attend courses to be an electrician. © PivBear / Pikabu

• We bought an apartment from one woman. As she was moving out she removed all switches, sockets, handles, and wallpaper. We moved into a bare concrete box. © Tatiana Zueva / Facebook

"I just assumed that those were the colors of the tiles when I bought the house."

• We used to own an old house from the ’50s that was built on the foundation of a different house. It was far from the city and it was quite expensive to get there every time, so my mom sold it to her colleague. After 1.5 years, the colleague’s son went to the basement with his father, stretched his hand between 2 big boulders of the old foundation, and took out a big bundle. When they opened it, they found many valuable gold and silver coins. Some of them were rare and had historical value. Eventually, this family bought a new apartment, a car, and a new house near the city, having sold the old one. When I heard this story, I was extremely upset because I liked to spend time in that basement and would investigate every crack in there. © StaPerRa / Pikabu

• We changed 17 rented apartments within 12 years. We would clean toilets in those apartments, find dirty underwear under the bed that were left by the previous tenants, we had a shower in a closet, and spaghetti coming out of a drain because of the wrong installation of some plumbing. All these were complemented by a constant fear that we wouldn’t be able to find the money for the rent that next month. Yesterday we finally bought our own place! I wish everyone this kind of happiness! © Overheard / ideer

What surprises shocked you the most in other people’s homes? What difficulties have you come across when renting or buying a shelter?