• From castles full of secret chambers to crazed squatters living in hidden crawlspaces,
we count eleven of the creepiest rooms found in people’s homes!
11 – Singer Castle, • Singer Castle has so many secret rooms
and passages that the New York Times dubbed it ‘The Castle of Mysteries’.
• It was constructed on Dark Island in 1896 by the president of the Singer Sewing Machine
Company, Frederick Bourne.
If you’re thinking ‘Dark Island’ sounds like some ridiculous Scooby Doo destination,
you’re half right because Singer Castle is packed with hidden secrets and booby traps
– the kind Scooby and the gang might accidentally fall into.
• There are sliding walls that reveal stone staircases, paintings that allow hosts to
eavesdrop on dinner guests, secret wine cellars and a trapdoor in the maid’s dormitory.
There’s also a hidden treasure room accessed by latch disguised as a coat hook and a secret
passageway that leads to an ominous black-gated dungeon.
10 – Hidden Tapes, • In 2014, Reddit user lmbrjack found a
hidden crawlspace while poking around in his attic.
• The crawlspace led to an ominous-looking locked door, behind which was a room that’d
had its walls, floor and ceiling completely covered with soundproofing board and plastic
tarp.
There were four power outlets and a small raised area roughly the size of a single bed,
which was strange for a crawlspace.
• Weirder still, Imbrjack also discovered a mysterious briefcase containing an old jewellery
box, envelopes with paper currency from all over the world and four one-ounce silver ingots.
There was also a sentry safe containing some six VHSC tapes.
Unable to play them, he turned the horror movie fodder – I mean, tapes – into police,
so their contents are still a mystery.
9 – Mont Sainte-Odile, • Mont Sainte-Odile is a monastery located
high up in France’s Vosges Mountains.
Between 2000 and 2002, roughly 1,100 priceless medieval books and manuscripts mysteriously
vanished from its library.
• Baffled police set up cameras to figure out who was behind it and discovered the book
thief had been accessing the library via a long-forgotten secret passage and chamber.
Using the hidden entry point, he would sneak in at night and stuff piles of valuable books
into his pants—I mean, briefcases!
• Footage revealed Stanislas Gosse was behind the thefts.
He’d somehow gotten his hands on a map revealing a secret chamber in the back of a cupboard
that could only be opened by a hidden mechanism.
8 – Creepy Renovation, • In 2012, stay-at-home mum Sarah bought
a new home with her husband.
Not long after moving in, the pair discovered a small hidden room accessible from the corner
of their young son’s room.
• Because of the pitched roof and four-foot Alice in Wonderland-style door, it was impossible
to convert the area into a functional section of their new home.
Unsure of its function, they hid the weird hidden room behind their son’s dresser so
he’d never know about it and proceeded to renovate the creepy room in secret so they
could present it to their son on his fourth birthday.
• They worked on it in secret for a year while their son was at school and, when his
birthday arrived, unveiled it as his new ‘Treasure Room’.
Nice work, mum and dad!
Now the monsters under his bed have a cool new pad!
7 – Nasty Surprise, • In 2005, new homeowners Jason and Kerri
Brown found a secret corridor hidden behind a bookcase.
The couple were preparing to start renovations after scoring a great deal on the five-bedroom
two-bath home.
• Instead of something cool, like a Batcave or a four-year-old’s Treasure Room, the
corridor led them to an empty room with a weird note from the previous homeowner.
The front of the note said: ‘You found it!’
Unfolding it, the previous homeowner explained that the house had a very serious black mould
problem.
It was so bad it had driven the family away and made his children very sick.
• The Browns immediately cancelled their move-in plans and sued the broker who’d
sold them the house.
The incident was like a treasure hunt, but with bad news in place of treasure.
6 – Dunnerden, • Dunnerden is the Aspen home of Brøderbund
Software co-founder Doug Carlston.
From the outside it looks like an ordinary log cabin, but inside it has a staggering
1,700 feet of secret passageways – nearly six football fields’ worth!
• Doug Carlston is responsible for the successful puzzle adventure PC game Myst.
His house reflects his personality, with its innocuous filing cabinets that conceal doors
and dresser drawers that serve as passageways to other rooms.
The bottom of his house is a labyrinth of eerie catacombs full of treasure.
• If you’re wondering where the scary part comes in, Dunnerden also has something
called the Room of Doom, where guests are urged to stand on a rocky ledge behind a waterfall.
There are only two ways out of the Room of Doom: swim through a chute or jump through
the waterfall and hope you land in the swimming pool.
Dr Evil levels of brilliance. 5 – Squatter in Secret Crawlspace,
• Imgur user TwoBiteBrownie dislikes being home these days.
One day he was screwing around with his brother in their parents’ bedroom and fell hard
into a built-in bookshelf.
It opened, revealing a hidden room with a scary-as-fuck spiral staircase.
• With clenched teeth, the brothers descended the steps.
They led to a strange crawlspace full of Halloween candy and a fresh-looking banana peel.
• ‘Someone was living in our walls,’ TwoBiteBrownie wrote.
‘That is my Halloween candy.
Someone came into my room, took from my bag and brought it back in here.
Thirty seconds after taking a picture, we realised what it meant and got the fuck out
of there.’
• The squatter’s other items included an elephant carving, a skeleton key and some
creepy dolls.
Using forensic science and observing the lack of supplies, police determined the squatter
was only living there temporarily.
• There were no other entrances to the secret passage, meaning the person could only have
gained access through the parents’ bedroom.
Police never found the person, so the parents boarded the room up as a precaution.
4 – Family Builds Secret Castle, • We’re going to have to stretch the definition
of rooms here, as this man hid not just a secret room but an entire secret castle.
Robert Fidler’s dreamt of building a Tudor-style castle with a rampart, cannon, turrets and
an entertainment centre for his family.
Apparently it was his right as an Englishman.
• Unfortunately, the land was only zoned for industrial purposes and Robert couldn’t
attain the necessary permissions.
He decided to build it anyway and somehow hid the construction behind the forty-feet-high
haystacks surrounding his property.
• Construction was completed in two years and he and his family lived there in secret
for over four years, with no incidents from his neighbours or the pesky local government.
• In time, Robert tried to apply for a certificate of lawfulness, reasoning that since the home
had been there for four years without any complaints it would be granted to him because
of a statute of limitations loophole.
For the first time, he pulled down the haystacks and unveiled his home.
• Word got out and the local councilmen came over for scones and tea.
Just kidding – they frowned and ordered the castle be demolished.
Robert took the case to High Court, but lost.
Another victory for The Man.
3 – Hidden Room in World War II-Era Attic, • A Reddit user from Norway posted some
disturbing photos of the hidden room they discovered in the attic of their shared accomodation.
It’s believed the room had been there, undisturbed, since World War II.
• The resident, who posts under the name mYNDIG, said their houselord told them their
home had a hidden room, but was vague about where.
Instead of studying for exams, mYNDIG began an epic scavenger hunt through each room.
They found it by accident by stretching out, accidentally kicking the attic wall.
• Inside the dark secret room was a sign, which, translated from Norwegian, reads: ‘If
you have a bad stomach, then you don’t have access’.
There was also a ‘lamp alarm’, which is used to warn anyone nearby when someone enters;
a map of West Europe; and the pièce de résistance: a horror movie-esque doll’s shoe.
2 – Squatter in Secret Room, • A group of Ohio State University students
were regularly spooked by strange noises at night and cupboard doors that seemed to open
on their own.
They believed their shared accommodation was haunted, but their ghostly roommate was actually
a man living in a secret room in their basement.
• They had assumed the secret room was a maintenance cupboard but, after forcing the
door open, discovered a small Hobbit-sized room with a double bed, framed photographs
and textbooks.
The students quickly changed the locks and left a note on the door advising the mystery
roommate that he’d been voted off the island.
• The squatter’s name, it turns out, was Jeremy.
Jeremy used the basement sink to wash his clothes, but honoured the hermit code by not
stealing any of the boys’ food.
He apparently gained access to the house via his cousin, who was a previous resident.
• The students had no hard feelings towards Jeremy, with one saying: ‘I feel bad for
him.
It’s just, he wasn’t supposed to be living there.
It's funny now, but it potentially could have been extremely dangerous given that some random
guy had a key to our house …’ • A perfect segue for …
1 – The Murder Castle, • In 1889, Herman W. Mudgett built a hotel
in Chicago in anticipation of the huge tourist boom that was expected with the upcoming 1893
World’s Fair.
However, instead of a conventional hotel, Mudgett built a weird mystery fun house, with
trapdoors, hidden stairways and surprise chutes to the basement.
• It turned out that Herman W. Mudgett was the real name of H.H. Holmes, America’s
first ‘famous’ serial killer, who used the upper floors of his hotel to torture and
kill hundreds of people – most of whom were women.
Eventually he came unstuck and was forced to confess to his crimes.
He was duly executed.
• When police raided what had became known as the Murder Castle, they discovered secret
windowless rooms, false floors, rooms with no escape from the inside, soundproof bedrooms
and gas chambers.
• The Murder Castle burned down shortly after Holmes’ capture and a post office
was built on the site in 1938.
It still stands today and is almost certainly haunted.