Many of us dreamed of finding a secret passageway or an underground tunnel as a child. If I grab just the right book from this shelf, I will activate a secret doorway and unlock a whole new realm! Maybe I just read too many mystery novels as a kid, but much to my disappointment, these situations never came true in my real life. Yet for some lucky individuals, their adventurous dreams came to life when they discovered secret spaces right under their noses…
Reddit user Reptilesni reached out asking people who “have found a secret room or space in their house” to share how long they lived there before finding it, what was in it, and what the eventual outcome was of discovering the space, and many readers came through with stories that sound like they belong in film scripts. We’ve gathered some of the most fascinating responses down below, so you can live vicariously through these individuals who evidently picked the best houses to live in. Enjoy reading these stories that might make you want to reread The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and be sure to upvote all of your favorites. Keep reading to also find an interview with Steve Humble, president of Creative Home Engineering, and then if you’re interested in reading another Bored Panda article featuring real-life secret compartments, check out this story next.
#1
Lived in a warehouse in Melbourne. Always thought it would be cool to get on the roof, but there was no access.
After about six months, I’m standing in front of a mirror upstairs when I notice it has hinges.
I push on it, it clicks and opens out, revealing a small attic and roof hatch!
That was pretty cool. Used to sit up there and watch the sun set over the city.
Image source: redhighways, Laura Chouette
#2
Moved into an 18th century farm house as a little kid and found a small panel door in the back of the large closet in my small room. Turned out to be a small finished room over the eaves that had a small portal window. I spent hours in that room reading and hiding from the world.
Image source: notlikethat1, Diane Picchiottino
#3
It was about a year into owning our house. We actually found two secret rooms. One was just a room under the stairs that was closed off. 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 new 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 freaking PINECONES!! One of the bigger bummers of my life.
Image source: R12356, La Partida Eterna
#4
My family lived briefly in Copenhagen when I was a young child. In the house that the government provided there was a false wall with a pocket which was great to hide in. One day an older neighbor girl (native Danish) was over and said while we were playing that people used to hide in it. Her mother confirmed later that it was a Holocaust hiding space. I’m really grateful my mother took the time to explain to us what that meant, and the history behind it, rather than waiting until I was older.
Image source: mamaneedsacar
#5
There was a hidden door behind the wallpaper (obviously the doorknob was taken off, so it blends in with the wall) in the 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 s**tless, although it was just a prop left by the past owners of our house.
#6
I lived in the house or my grandma for a few years, secret “room” beneath a trapdoor on the second floor, which was basically a void between walls on the complicated first floor. Was used to hide Jewish families during WW2.
Image source: jaap_null, Jean Carlo Emer
#7
When clearing out my grandmas house I found a small door in the wall of the basement that led to a tiny room, according to my mother that’s where they hid the family heirlooms when thieving relatives came to town. I was mostly interested in the fact that it was covered in scribbles from my mom and her sisters growing up.
Image source: KE5TR4L, Lucas Santos
#8
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 and fought the door open (ended up being a big piece of plywood) and peered into the attic.
A mouse colony stared back.
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 after.
Edit: Thanks for the gold kind stranger!
Image source: PerpetuallySl33py, Berit Watkin
#9
We moved into a house with a door in the kitchen that could not be opened. The real estate tried but failed, assumed it let to the laundry room but was walled off. My older siblings, like any typical teenagers, were not convinced of this and were determined to open it. It was just a normal pantry but they never told our mother they managed to open it, and used it to hide things from her like alcohol, smokes, and weed.
#10
A couple of years ago I rented an apartment that was in a massive old architecture style building, no idea how old it was. I remember when I did the showing they showed me a door that had an elaborate staircase that went straight up to the ceiling and explained that it went to the attic, which was sealed up. When I was finally moving out curiosity got the best of me and I pushed on the panel at the top of the stairs until it popped open and hoisted myself up there.
It was completely dark and the floor was covered in at least an inch of dust, and I found that it was an entire extra floor to my unit. There was some old rotting furniture and magazines littered throughout the rooms. I eventually found a small hole in one of the walls that went into the sealed off upstairs of the unit next to mine and decided to go through that one too. I found a smaller hole at the back end of that area that led to the next one. I eventually made my way through about 5 or 6 of these sealed off spaces that had no entrances save these small holes in drywall. The farther I went in, the older the furniture I found, fridges from the fifties or earlier, old dishware, and so much dust over everything.
The last unit was the most interesting, hand painted scenes on the walls and holes to the attic letting sunlight stream in. I took small videos but they’re all on snapchat so they’re hard to post. I must have been up there for hours just exploring alone in the dark. I was pretty lucky to have the only room with access up there.
Edit:[Album](https://imgur.com/a/tzGhYYF)
Sorry for the format/captions no idea why I decided video was the way to go.
Image source: fluxelegy
#11
My best friend lives in France where I did as well for many years. She lives in a house that has been in her family for over six hundred years. It was built at the top of a hill about an hour outside of Paris and additions had been made to it over the years as one could imagine. Anyway, the house was built kind of at the top of a hill with rooms going down several levels into the side of the hill. The existing kitchen is new and modern and the original one was still intact but not in use as it was basically just one of those big fireplaces with a caldron looking contraption in it.
As her and her husband first moved into the house and started updated and painting etc., they removed the tile from the old kitchen wall behind the fireplace. Behind the tile was some more old tile and beneath that they found a crumbling old brick wall. When they removed the old wall they discovered that it was actually the entrance (or rather ‘exit’) to a tunnel that was an escape route from the town’s (Êpone, France) castle. In case the castle came under attack, the inhabitants could use the tunnel to flee and it came out right in my friend’s house about a kilometer away.
Mind. Blown. when she discovered that!
Image source: Kkykkx
#12
In my house there was an upstairs bedroom that was made into a game room for me and my sister. When we were about 12 years old we realized that a section of the paneling came off and there was a small closet sized room behind it. We kept it a secret so that when friends came over we would have the ultimate hiding spot for hide and seek. A few years later we were talking about to our parents about what we found and they said that the house was built during the prohibition era, so they most likely used it as a place to hide alcohol!
Image source: thatstheteahoney, djjewelz
#13
Friends of mine rented a holiday villa in Mexico years ago. They stayed there for 3 weeks. It had been advertised as ‘4 bedrooms, 3 baths’ so they were kind of pissed off to find that there were only 2 bathrooms and the fourth bedroom was kind of small.
The day before they were leaving they did a little bit of a cleanup. One of my friends went to put the broom into the closet beside the fridge.
He opened the closet door only to find that it led to a massive room with a bathroom and it’s own balcony!
The first night that they had gotten there, one of them had tried the door and thought that it was locked and assumed that that was maybe where they stored cleaning stuff or extra linen. After that, no one thought to try the door again until it was accidentally opened the day before leaving.
Image source: fionaharris, Kevin Fernandez
#14
It wasn’t a room, but after living in our house for a few years, we decided to remodel the basement bathroom. Tore out the old shower enclosure and found a window behind it! Said window was covered on the outside by an apron of siding that came from the cantilevered room upstairs all the way down to the concrete pad. We tore off the siding apron and let some light in. it was much better.
Image source: goodwid, Christian Mackie
#15
Hidden closet in basement wall after 20 yrs of living in the house. We found some personal documents of no real interest, a newspaper from the day after Pearl Harbor, and a hand drawn cartoon of a pregnant Lucy yelling “Goddammit Charlie Brown!”
Update:
The newspaper turned out to be a reprint, so not valuable but still fun to look through. The cartoon is just as I remembered. Goes to show what I find important. BUT I had completely forgotten about the photo album! I’m going to try and track these people down and return their memories. Thanks for poking at me to dig this stuff up!!
#16
My parents found one when I was a kid! My dad was remodeling our lower level when he noticed that part of the closet wall sounded hollow, and realized there must be something behind it. He had to cut away the wood paneling to get to it. Inside, we found it must have been a little “clubhouse” that some previous owners made for their kids or grandkids a long time ago. There were 4 pegs on the wall, each one had a boy’s name written underneath it. We think they used them as coat hooks.
It was the mid 2000s when we found it, so my parents got my sisters and I some motion-activated lights to stick on the walls, and gave us some old cushions so we could use it as a “clubhouse” too. Good times.
Image source: graybki
#17
Ahhhhh the story of “the murder room”. I grew up in an old farmhouse, 2 floors and a basement. The basement was creepy as hell anyway because it had rickety wood slat stairs, stone walls, was dimly lit, in an L shape with dark corners, and had (i s**t u not) a single hanging lightbulb around one of the corners. Oh and the spiders. Soooo many spiders and cobwebs, *and* these spiders turn bright white when they die for some godforsaken reason. Anyway at the back of the basement it always seemed cut short, so one day brother and i decide to search under our old back porch that was overgrown with weeds at the time. And we found a door to another room that had been walled off from the rest of the basement.
Well “door” is probably an overstatement. It was kind of a hanging half-door made with weathered 2×4’s with big metal hinges. It wouldn’t move when we tried to open it so for years we jokingly refered to it as “the murder room”, daring friends to go inside, which no one would of course, and the legend grew. What could be in this room? If it was for storage, why would it be walled off from the rest of the basement?
Eventually we could lift the door ever so slightly but it was pitch dark inside and when my big brother pushed me in one day our mom would end up telling us to stop messing around back there, that the old door was dangerous if it swung down on us and she didn’t want us playing back there anymore. Of course this only made the interest grow but (while freaking out) i had made a discovery while inside. Even tho i couldn’t see, the floor was made of dirt! What the hell was going on?
One day our mom had the old carpets thrown out and finally fixed the wood floors under them like she always wanted to. Eventually when cleaning out a tiny closet under some stairs I noticed that some of the boards made a destictive square. It’s right over the murder room! I pulled up the square and saw the same dirt floor i felt years before. My girlfriend and i ventured inside and *found*… a small chair and a child’s school desk. Take it as you will i guess but.it freaked us out. Later i found out many buildings in our town were linked to the underground railroad. Take it as u will but that was the story of the murder room.
Image source: WatertotheTree, Alan Levine
#18
We bought a house that had been built in the 1880s, lived in it for seven years and then had to have some wiring work done. The electrician was working down in the basement and wanted to drill through a (brick) wall to the outside for some reason I no longer remember. We give him the okay and go about our business. He starts drilling and then stops, comes upstairs and tells us he just found a bricked up room and what do we want to do about it? Well we kind of still want our wiring situation taken care of, but if there’s a body and some amontadillo in there, I definitely want to know. On the other hand, I don’t want to let my sister’s boyfriend knock the wall down with a sledgehammer. As we are discussing this, the electrician offers to run a scope through the hole he just drilled so we can take a look without doing more damage, or, as he put it, destroying evidence. So our new friend gets his scope set up and we all go down to the basement and watch the monitor.
It’s a very small space, maybe 3 by 5 feet. Nothing in there but a really old, gross looking plushie. Not a teddy bear, maybe a dog? It was sewed out of some kind of patterned fabric in a vaguely dog like shape. That’s it, nothing else.
Electrician asks us what we want to do. I ask 8f he can seal the hole he just drilled because this is definitely how ghost movies start. He agreed and patched it up, drilled somewhere else, finished the rewiring and we all continued our lives. We moved out 2 years later and as far as I know, Haunted Doggy is still bricked up in the basement of that house.
Image source: purplhouse, Toshiyuki IMAI
#19
There was a small door under some stairs (almost like Harry Potter’s room) in my old apartment in Venezuela. We’d lived there for a year until I leaned on it and felt it wiggle a little and realized it was a small square door. I was too scared to open it so had my dad do it and about 20 or so cockroaches flooded out. Never have I felt so much panic.
Image source: carthy101, mountainamoeba
#20
Back in college some friends and I rented an old mansion that had been built in the early 1920s from an elderly lady. The place was falling apart, but it was huge and rent was dirt cheap. About two years into living there I went to the basement to do some laundry and momentarily lost my balance, reaching out to steady myself using one of the wall panels. It flexed more than I expected, and after some inspection I found that it was removable. Behind it was a small, mostly empty, very dirty concrete room about 100 square feet. I say mostly empty because right in the middle there was a hole the size of a well that had been previously bricked up. It must have been old because the bricks had eroded at some point and exposed some of the hole, maybe a 2ft diameter circle out of the full 5 feet. After calling my friends down to look at it I got the courage to creep a little closer and peer down into it. There was another room roughly the same size but deep, maybe 15 feet down, and mostly dirt. We shined a flashlight down into it and I could swear there was a teddy bear at the bottom. Unfortunately despite plenty bargaining, none of us were ever able work up the courage (liquid or regular) to tie a rope and climb down for a closer look. Especially after we noticed that the bricks which I thought had fallen in were all accounted for, scattered around the hole as if something had broken out.
At the risk of my account being discovered by my redditor friends, this was in Pittsburgh. We did a little research and think the sub-basement may have been related to prohibition, but honestly I’m just willing to accept that explanation in order to avoid lifelong nightmares.
Image source: -banned-, Gary Meulemans
#21
My family just moved out of our (story-and-a-half) house that we had lived in for around 2 years. From the front of the house it was easy to spot 3 front-facing windows, but upon inspecting the upstairs, there are only two accessible windows. I never investigated as it was my younger siblings’ rooms, I was in college, and I didn’t like the low ceilings of the upstairs. When I was helping move out, I decided I needed to check out what was up. There was a small (almost unnoticeable) door panel on the slanted ceiling that gave access to the 3rd window. It was filled with old insulation and a very used pillow but was overall a very small space.
My siblings wanted to show me the other secret room they had found also. In the center hallway also upstairs there was a 1/4 sized door, handle and all, stashed behind a cupboard that you could scooch out enough to get behind. It was also insulation filled (without the dirty pillow) but was a much larger space that just seemed unfinished. My siblings used it as a hideout when chores needed done.
This is my first comment ever, excuse anything I did incorrectly and I guess I’m supposed to say I’m on mobile as well.
Image source: Tacticalpanda45
#22
My sister and I shared the basement room of a house that we were renting. The owners had slept in that room when they lived in the house, all of the kids slept upstairs. We noticed that one of the panels of the wood wall looked loose so our brother carefully pried it off. Behind that wood panel was a secret room that had monitors lining the wall along with a random assortment of items. The monitors were not hooked up to anything but they explained why each room upstairs had holes in the corners of the ceilings. My Mom ended up asking about it to make sure, and yup, the owners had cameras in their kids rooms and we found the creepy headquarters. We moved out pretty soon after that.
Image source: remmyowlbean
#23
I was pretty young (maybe 7-8) so I don’t remember all the details. But my family moved into a new house (new to us but maybe 20 years old). There was one closet in my older sister’s room (9-10), not that big but it had a very small door in the back wall. It was locked and my parents never showed much interest in it.
I guess I sort of forgot about it over time, until one day I was hanging out in my sisters room and somehow she got it open. An awful smell came over us, I think we just assumed it was because the house was old or something. We didn’t go inside because the doorway was so small and we were already creeped out by how dark it was in there. We shut the door and got distracted by something else pretty quickly.
A day or two later, my sister mentioned it to my parents, they seemed a little confused but mostly just amused and my dad went to go check it out. After a couple of minutes he called my mom upstairs, she goes upstairs and a little later she comes back down. I just remember her asking us if we want to go to the park. My dad stayed behind. According to my sister, mom was acting strange.
When we get back home, there were bags in the car with our stuff. Apparently our grandma had invited us to stay with her for a couple nights. So we drove the 20 mins to her house and stayed there for 3 nights… then 4…. I think it was maybe a week until we got back home. But when we did, the door was sealed shut. Eventually replaced with more drywall.
My parents never talked about what was behind the door. I always wanted to ask them, but they both died in a car accident when I was 15.
Image source: creepygirl420
#24
Bought a very rugged cabin with acreage a few years back. Cabin was built in the 70s. A friend of mine discovered a large attic which was surprising. There was no easy way into the attic. I knew there was space, but it did not appear to be as big as it was. Inside the the attic was evidence someone was living in there at one point… including a bloodied mattress. There were no lights, no comfort, just a sheet blocking off the part of the attic that didn’t have some semblance of a floor, and a bloody mattress. This was all above my room. I got hella weird vibes in that house after that, and an earthquake ended up taking out the cabin shortly after. I tore it apart, salvaged a bunch of wood, and rebuilt a new cabin without the creepy vibes.
The most unnerving part about the cabin was the previous owner, upon finding news I had bought the land, came back just before I got the keys from the realtor and left a note that simply read “good luck” in the center of the living area. Just recently found a massive old tree on the land that had been previously scorched by fire, decades ago, and survived. If that land could talk I’m sure it would have stories.
Image source: ckjm, Paul Sableman
#25
I used to do evictions and clean houses before they were put back on the market. Well this 2 million dollar house was abandoned because nobody could afford it, and some teens decided to throw a rager in it. My job was to clean the whole house. They have this huge office with beautiful wooden bookcases around the whole room. As I’m cleaning the alcohol off of them, I notice one of them had a crack between the others. So I tug on it, and sure enough it opens up with a hidden door behind it. I was so excited that I found a secret room, and was pumped to open the door. When I did, it was a bathroom……
who uses a secret door for a shitter. :(
Image source: austinvkemp
#26
I went to visit my Grandparents a few months after they had moved into a new house out in the country. I got into a bit of horseplay with a cousin and got shoved into a wall. It broke a big hole and we realized there was a large empty space back there.
With grandpa’s help we tore the wall down and found a little room full of planting trays and grow lamps. There were a number of books about horticulture and one specifically about growing marijuana.
There was no secret way in as far as we could tell. Someone had just walled the entire room off for some reason.
#27
Not my house but my elementary school, small one, country side.
In 1990, after some PE hours, a friend of mine and I were horsing around downstairs in the basement outside the locker rooms. In the process we tackled each other with shoulder pushes and my friend flew into a panel at some point, where a screw popped out of panel that revealed over-painted screws that revealed a panel door.
The janitor thought it was just the ducts for air or water pipe maintainance under the school, when we told him about the door and asked and said he came to the school in 1971 but never had been in there.
Of cause, the two of us being 6th graders, had to go on a hunt and later returned with a screwdriver after school hours (school was not locked due to after-school club same place) and entered with a flashlight.
It was a secret basement of ducts at first, super dusty and metal stamps revealed at least something in the coridors were built in 1959. The school was built in the 1950s.
But the fun part was when the 1×1 meters ducts suddenly ended out in a slightly larger room, 2 meters tall and probably 5×2 m in total. Had old equipment, like tables and stuff with military emblems on it and we thought of cause it could have been an old Nazi HQ or so, not adding two and two together that the school was built later than 1945.
But it was an old nuclear shelter thing that later was revealed to be a cancelled part of the school. Like planned and built, but never executed properly due to budgets and the ducts had been the old ducts for maintainace of water and sewage pipes.
So exciting but in the end, just a budget cut nuclear shelter with closets, blankets, tables and a little kitchenware of military origin.
But holy s**t did it feel like Indiana Jones at some point.
Image source: Adler4290
#28
My parents bought a house from an old family member to help her pay for nursing home care (she hadn’t lived in the house for years at that point). She was a hoarder and we were tasked with cleaning up the house of the course of a summer in order to make it livable prior to the start of school. Rat carcasses fused to the carpet, old tax documents from the 60s, etc. Well, we were scraping up the linoleum tiling (covering the original hardwood floor, disappointingly enough) in a side room when I made the joke about the previous resident being a secret mass murderer and that there was a trapdoor under the linoleum full of dead bodies.
I pulled up a huge section of tiling only to find…a trapdoor underneath. Scared the s**t out of me, but when we finally built up enough courage to open the damned thing, we discovered there was nothing under there. It was a walled off section of the basement with a dirt floor. We suspect it was an old root cellar from back when farmers had to store their s**t in a cold, dark place to prevent it from spoiling.
Image source: Errohneos, Onur Bahçıvancılar
#29
After 15 years, we found a second basement in our farmhouse. My father had removed one of the large rocks that makes up the basement wall. I crawled under the log frame a few feet and there was a wall made of baseball sized rocks. I knocked those down and entered an old root cellar. There were shelves and shatter mason jars. And bones. lots and lots of bones. We dug a tunnel so we could access the room.
Found many secret areas in my current house behind wood panels. First secret door was in the basement, it lead to a underground bomb shelter with separate air intake and water line. I knew of it prior to buying the home and was a major selling point for me. Stocked with a radiation detector, used for storage.
Second room was only three feet high, had a light a bunch of toys, crayons and drawings. That one I didn’t find for a few months. After about two weeks I discovered a few hidden panels with shelves with toys, magazines, books and some clothing. Nothing interesting.
After a year or two, I located a suspicious wood panel on the floor, pried it open a bit and was able to see a full length staircase leading to a brick wall. I haven’t bothered to fully open the panel yet.
Image source: B0BA_F33TT
#30
I found a secret space in my closet when my mom and I were moving out of the house she was renting to move into my stepdad’s house. I never noticed it because junk covered the section of the wall that was covering a small entrance to a room that was sealed off with boards and plywood. I couldn’t pry it open but I could see light shining in it and a single mason jar filled with what I assumed was water. The air was cold in there like as if the central heating didn’t even reach that part. I showed it to my mom and she told me that she doesn’t remember seeing that there when we had moved in 8 years prior but since we were moving out, it didn’t matter. The room gave me the creeps for whatever reason. I know why it was sealed off or why there was a single mason jar filled with water in the center of the room.
Image source: PraetorKiev, Kier In Sight
#31
Found it moving in. Latch at bottom of corner of closet. Cape cod style house, crawl space to basically uncarpetted room with two windows over garage. Fell through one time.
Image source: Slylizardcue, Henry Burrows
#32
My old house had this weirdly large concrete slab in the corner of the yard that was covered by a ton of leaves when we moved in. I thought it was maybe foundation for a shed, but it was in a very odd location. Years later when I was getting ready to move, it bugged me that I didn’t know what it was for. I got a friend to help me come dig around it, expecting to confirm that it was just an old foundation.
We dug for days in the middle of August. We had to start digging at night to protect ourselves from the heat. We got about 15 feet down and the concrete wasn’t showing any signs of ending. We eventually struck a pipe with a nozzle, and discovered that there was more concrete moving towards the center of the yard.
About a week later my Dad came home and almost had a stroke when he saw that we were digging up half the yard. We had sold the house and were expected to leave by September first. He made us fill it all in and I left home never finding out what it was. Some of my teachers who were longtime town residents told me that my neighborhood had been farmland before development and that there may have been several bomb or fallout shelters in that area. I would have loved to have found an entrance into the bunker, if that’s what it was.
Image source: anon, Dineda Nyepan
#33
Not necessarily secret, but my old house was a duplex. There was a hobbit-sized door on the bottom floor and I glanced in there a few times but only saw pipes and different electrical units and stuff. There was some of the landlord’s/maybe past resident’s junk in the corner. After a few years I explored behind it and realized it leads to the other half of the house.
Image source: skogvarandersson, David Quigley
#34
I bought a house back in 2010. There was a wooden box next to an old oak tree in my backyard. It had no doors and no way to look into it. The box was about as big as a love seat and it looked as old as the house. (about 30 years) but very well kept, no bug damage.
I waited for about 2 years until I got the nerve to open it… it was empty.
Image source: shaka_sulu, Andrej Lišakov
#35
Helping my granddad move house, we accidentally found access to the under floor area (not even big enough to really call a crawl space I don’t think, spotty memory).
There was a small pile of trash from the 60s/70s (juice cans, chocolate bar wrappers and crumpled newspapers) and bits of discarded construction debris and some broken tools. We think it must have been used by the builders in lieu of a trash can. It was cool, an accidental time capsule.
Image source: Bathoriel, Michael Jin
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