10 Shocking Property Discoveries

Past owners or renters have been reported to leave utmost bizarre belongings to the newcomers. It’s frequent to find questionable items in an old house, like adult magazines, family heirlooms and memorabilia, but there have been more than a handful of cases and reports that state discoveries of inexplicable contents.

There are cases where lucky newcomers find valuables like gold, silver, cash or even art for million pounds. Other tenants or property owners find disgusting and horrifying items that stay in their nightmares for years.

Men and women who work in the property industry like renovation specialists, handymen, movers, tenancy cleaners , often have tales to share about what they’ve found and seen in people’s homes. These are some of their stories.

1. An Ancient Well

Colin Steer – a Plymouth Englishman owned his home for almost twenty years, before discovering an ancient well in his living room. If you’ve experienced a variety of homes and rentals, you’d know, each one has it’s own little twitch. A weird bump here, a curved wall there, a room with no 90 degree angles and so on.

That’s probably the reason Steer never went about to see why the area under the sofa had dug in a bit over the years.

Some years ago, the home-owner decided to replace some floor joints and doing so, uncovered a brick shaft filled with landmass. His curiosity made him dig a bit, only to find out the shaft continued pretty far below the construction. His wife made him seal it back, due to little children running around in the house. So, he cleaned the mess and continued his life as if there was nothing irregular with his living room.

However, when Colin Steer retired, and you know how newly retired people always look for something to keep themselves busy, his desire to know what lied on the bottom of the brick construction sparked an insatiable curiosity.

So, he started to excavate his couch footing area. He and a friend of his dug through 33ft of dirt and soil, until they reached the bottom of a 17th century well. Not only that, but during the process, they found a rusted metal sword lodged in between the bricks. Steer’s research of the building and land, led him to believe it belonged to a peasant, due to the method of craftsmanship.

Well, (pun intended) his wife might not be the happiest person in the world, but Colin himself is thrilled by this discovery and since has turned the well into a core feature of his living room interior design. He installed lights and a trap door to accommodate the newly found feature of his home.

2. A Chapel

When Pat and Diane Farla moved into their new home – a detached Victorian house, the only weird thing was a metal grid on the floor inside the home. It was bizarre at start, but it can have many explanations – flood protection, storage space, or something else, so the family didn’t worry about it at all.

However, one day, after some cheerful celebration of Good Friday, accompanied by quite some drinks, the Shropshire folk, decided they just had to know what lied bellow the plate. When they lifted it up, there was a hole only big enough for the younger members of the family to squeeze through.

After they did, Gareth and Matthew ended up in a dark open space with a lot of stale air inside. When they brought some light in, they realised it was by any chance an underground chapel, built in secretly.

Some research of the land points out the buildings dates back 230 years – in the 1700’s. Back then, being a Catholic was deemed a crime and the found guilty were brutally prosecuted. The fallen cross is the only indication of this hypothesis, however, it fits perfectly with the age of the construction.

Weirdly enough, such hideouts were used by a special division of the military back in WWII. It’s said Churchil himself elected a small group of soldiers, which were to hide in such spaces, if by any chance Germany won the war and established rule over Great Britain. These troops were to then sabotage by any means possible the Nazi rule.

Deemed cowards back when everybody was fighting on the front-lines, these soldiers were probably the bravest of all, taking in consideration they would be effectively mice in a trap if what they were preparing for ever came true.

3. Bottles With Human Waste

In 2009, in Greenwich, England, a particularly nasty surprise was uncovered in the walls of an old home. A bottle full of urine, nail clippings and hair was excavated out of the walls of an unfortunate homeowner.

The contents of the bottle identify it as a “witch-bottle”, dating back to the 17 century, again. Apparently the sixteen hundreds were just as wacky as the sixteens of teenagers.

Since witchcraft was still a hot topic during that time, so were anti-curse recipes. The particular one where you make your wife pee in a jar and then add her nails and hair to the concoction later sealing it into the lovely masonry of your newly-built homes was conducted when in doubt of a curse over the family, or the wife being a witch.

Over 200 of these bottles were discovered to this day, but this is the only artifact still encapsulated in the cutting-edge cork tap of the old times. Scientists have had a go at it, only to identify that the woman who produced the body excess was a smoker, based on the pee and somebody of high social status, based on the clean, flawless manicure.

Further research points out to a record from the Old Bailey Court of 1682. According to the document, a man was advised by the Spitalfields apothecary to create the anti-witch talisman, due to beliefs of witchcraft in the face of his beloved. Since his wife obviously didn’t bother to clean up the place, I’d much rather the option of divorce than anti-witchcraft, but those were the times.

4. Old, Used Razor Blades

Some anonymous homeowners decided to renovate their new home – an old house. When they started to demolish one of the walls, what fell on the ground beside rubble and bricks were a couple of handfuls of used razor blades.

Before you engage in a psychotic sadistic fantasy, all of it turned more dumb than freaky.

There used to be an old medicine cabinet with a razor disposal slot (I guess it was useful back in the day). It turned out to empty itself in the cavity between the walls, rather than the rubbish bin, thus the unlikely discovery.

Yeah, you can sleep calm, The Shaving Man is not coming to kill you. Regardless, It could have still injured somebody careless enough to work with no protection.

5. The Snake House

The snake house is actually accurate to it’s name. When a family bought their dream home – a five room house in Idaho, the Sessions thought they’re set for life. What they found when they moved in, however, resembled more of a nightmare. The entire house, including the space between the walls was infested with snakes. At first it was only a few, so the family members simply threw them away, further from the house.

In time, they realised it wasn’t just a couple of garter snakes, but thousands and thousands of them. There were so many that the smelly mucous they excrete found it’s way into the tap water and the showers as well. They could be heard at night slithering into every crevice of the building. When Mr. And Mrs. Sessions bought the house, they signed a document noting the snake problem, but were assured by the agent it was nothing more than a story from the previous occupants, in order to get out of their mortgage.

One day, they watched a similar couple talk on the television about having the same problem. Minutes after, the Sessions found out the people they were watching were actually the previous owners of their property.

After living for a couple of months in these hellish circumstances, the family moved out of their 180 thousand dollar purchase and filed for bankruptcy.

6. Bleeding Walls

Imagine the following:

You move in to your brand new home.  You’ve settled everything, ready for your new life. And then, the walls start oozing with some brown sticky goo. If you guessed a horror movie, you think right, but you’re actually wrong.

Debbie Hill – a new home owner from Colorado, experienced the exact same scenario.

Rather than doing the sane thing and calling an exorcist to exterminate the demons hiding behind the masonry, Debbie opted for a handyman. He inspected her home and found out that it was not unnatural phenomenon, but rather honey that was bleeding from her home.

So the entire story unfolds like so:

The poor woman was stuck with a bee infestation amassing up to 60 thousand bees in her wall. They produced an enormous amount of honey, which started dripping when the summer came about and temperatures rose.

The case is not as terrifying as it seemed at first, however, the repair bill that she faced, must be enough to take here soul into the underworld.

7. 400 -year-old Head

And old, retired tax-collector wound up with an interesting discovery in his attic. 84-year-old Jaques Bellanger possessed the skull of old King Henri IV in his long unattended attic for more than half a century.

During the 18 century French Revolution the grave of the celebrated king was ransacked and his mummified head, departed from the rest of the body, disappeared along with it’s new masters. Later, in the early years of the 20th century, it was displayed in an auction and purchased by a lovely French couple with an extravagant taste. Fifty years later Bellanger bought it off for what’s now worth a hundred dollars and stashed it next to the box of magazines, grandma’s sewing machine and the dragon heart he obtained the previous years.

Joke aside, it took a nine month research, conducted by forensic analytics to identify the head as a belonging to the late King Henri IV. DNA was not present to set in stone the discovery, but over 30 other factors, including historical injuries, convinced the scientists about the artifacts origins.

Bellanger later donated the head to Henri IV’s descendant – Prince Louis de Bourbon, who expressed his gratitude in front of the media.

The tax-collector himself did not make a media appearance, nor stated his contact or address, in order to keep clean from unwanted attention, as he is in an advanced age.

8. Cats

Following the notion of a 400-year-old mummies, the remains of a cat were found in the masonry of a 17th century cottage, which was going through a renovation process. The animal was very carefully treated, for all of its claws and teeth still remain intact. It’s very recognisable shape and larger than the normal domestic cat we’re used to seeing today.

Historical records state that the process of burying a cat’s body in the walls of a house was a popular practice to ward off evil spirits back in the day… Just like the piss bottle.

The property’s owner plans to put it right where it belongs – in the construction, when the renovation is completed. He’s stated he wants to preserve the village’s history, part of it is the strange ritual that led to the discovery.

He is also certain that the cat does it’s job, as no witches have been seen anywhere near the village, except…the wives maybe…

9. Babies

This will probably the most frightening chapter, so if you’re weak hearted, I suggest to skip it. For the same reason, I won’t include any graphical content.

In 1850, a couple from Paris was accused of a horrid murder. When the body of a baby tumbled out of the walls of their apartment, the French couple were arrested and put before trial. They were later cleared of all charges, due to a revolutionary technique, tested by the medical examiners. The physician who was in charge of analyzing the body used insects to determine the time of death, which wasn’t anywhere near incriminating the couple. This marked the first time entomology was used in a criminal investigation.

The latest such case was in 2007 when, in Toronto, the remains of a baby were found under the attic floor of a home going through renovation. Robert Kinghorn was carrying out a renovation procedure for the new neighbours, which bought their property less than a month before the discovery.

While in the attic, he lifted the wooden beams to discover something wrapped in a floral blanket and newspapers from 1925. When he took a closer look, he realised the horrifying truth behind the packaging – a mummified baby was standing in his arms.

The family of five, including three children, the youngest of which was about the size of the mummy was shocked and at the same time blessed none of the children made the discovery themselves.

As for the cause of death and situation around it, the investigation wound up in a ditch, since no details could be extracted from the body or the historical land records.

I grow fearsome of owning an apartment now, seeing how many of these actually occurred in the UK. London is more scary than you think. Living on rent instantly seems like a far more comfortable alternative that buying a keys to a infant cemetery.

10. Grandma

Forgotten storage units with unpaid rent often wind up sold at auctions. There are even people who find it their jobs to search for such auctions, bid on the contents of the containers and make a profit of the discovered items. If you’ve watched Discovery’s “Auction Hunter, you know what I’m talking about.

So, after one of their containers was left unpaid for years, the employees of U-Store Self Storage in Florida, contacted the renter and told them their belongings will be sold at a similar auction.

The woman, renting the storage unit, then came out with a huge surprise:

“My mother told me on her death bed that Grandma is in the storage unit. You can’t sell our stuff…”

When the employee checked the container, they found a blue coffin. Police later determined the corpse inside had been dead since 1995 and was fully prepared and processed for a proper funeral.

Instead of soil, however, poor old granny, was buried in old, needless junk. We’ve all watched hoarders, but this is absolutely the most gruesome case of all.

As for now, better check your own houses for some creepies and if you have to – move out of the house as quickly as possible.

Tags: cleaning, home improvement, property, renovation, shocking