Article created by: Monika Pašukonytė
Sometimes people move into a house not knowing about the things hidden inside it. These may include possessions forgotten by previous owners or things built into walls that could have only been discovered by sheer accident or reconstruction work.
Finally, a recent joke from the previous resident shouldn't be dismissed as an option! Either way, a treasure hunt of the sort may spark one’s curiosity by revealing the history of the house and its past residents.
It's not really weird but I think it's kind of a nice story
One of the kids' rooms has a shelf going all around the top edge, and when my kid was putting stuff up there they found a letter from the previous kid. The letter welcomed them to the room etc and asked them to take special care of a rose bush in the front yard that was their special rose bush. My kid thought it was really cool to have that connection with the previous kid.
Not weird but sort of touching.
The house was about 100 years old. After moving in I went up to the attic which was a bit difficult to access. I wasn't sure what I would find.
All that was there was a shoebox. An old brand; anyone else here remember Red Goose shoes?
In it was "stuff," a couple of old Army patches, a scout knife, some rock n roll buttons and a couple of letters.
From the letter I got a name and looked him up. He lived a town over. I called him and told him if he'd like it to come and get it.
So a 60ish guy showed up. He was really appreciative. The patches and the letter were from his older brother. He said he was about 12 and used to hang out in the attic and hide his stuff.
It was nice to reunite the box with it's owner.
Before I met her, my wife got a call from someone she worked with saying they'd just bought an old house and in the city, and in it was a steamer trunk with her family name (not a common one) carved into the woodwork on one end.
As it turns out, it was the trunk that her great grandfather used when he came over from Germany, and it made the trip to my wife's hometown when he met her great grandmother on a visit, and subsequently moved to her city to marry her. We now have it and it's full of family portraits and albums.
Lived here 3 years, slowly renovating it since it seemly hadn’t been touched since the 80s.
Got a new kitten this year and she was trouble. Always getting places she shouldn’t.
She got in a closet under the stairs, and behind a piece of drywall. Couldn’t coax her out, so I just pulled the drywall down, and found her standing on a few old boxes.
Pulled them out, and it ended up being around $10k of silver and old coins that it seems were put there in the 90s and forgotten about.
My ex wife found ( behind a drawer in a built in cupboard) a lovely lock box contains several nice pocket watches and family heirlooms- the great part was that with a little sleuthing, we found the son of the man who originally built that house and re-United these items to the family - it was a wonderful experience from start to finish
Not really weird but they left a typed out and printed note about the house and how to take care of it. Detailing all the plant life in the backyard and how to prep for the winter. Described how to take care of the hot tub and gave random tid bits about the electrical.
They were good people lol
Not my house, but the school my friend worked at.
A pipe had leaked and ruined a wall in the building, one of the oldest schools in the city. It was a beautiful property. Anyways the pipe leaked so they pulled down the ruined wall and behind the wall found a door.
A fully furnished apartment was there. Had a coal burning stove to heat it. Early 1900s appliances and decor. It was for the caretaker of the school.
The acerage my wife and I moved to 3 years ago had a bucket full of wrapped dinosaur bones. Took them to our local museum where they confirmed they are roughly 68 million years old. Hadrosaur. Pretty cool.
A glass bowl. It was kind of pretty, with horizontal blue stripes.
We kept fruit in it. We thought about dropping it off at the local charity shop, but never got around to it.
Then one day I was at an antique fair and I saw for sale glass bowls that looked almost identical to ours. I went home to get my bowl and brought it to be assessed.
Turns out it was a vintage Orrefors crystal bowl. The assessor valued it at around $800.
We no longer keep fruit in it.
$1200 in cash above the door on the inside the closet. I found it while painting.
we bought the house from the CEO of the company which we franchise from. It was her childhood home where her mother lived til the day she died. In true rich person fashion, they didn’t care to clean out the house before selling it. Just told us we can do whatever we want with the old lady stuff that was there.
We found a hidden box of spicy letters, from the old lady to her affair partner spanning many years. That was fun to give to the CEO.
Didn't buy the house.. rented. Built in 1904. There was a walk in closet food pantry in the kitchen with built in cabinets. The cabinets on one wall, after living there for a year, I noticed had a gap between the wall and the cabinet. Drunk, I put my hand back there and something move. I scooted it out and it was a small box. Turned out to be a from the late 1800s. Designed by Nicolas Tesla. It still works, too. But the last time I plugged it in it electrocuted me slightly. I still have it!
First time I took a hot shower in our new home. The steam covered the mirror, only to reveal the phrase “HELLO, I SEE YOU” in large finger drawn writing.
It freaked me out for a second, but made me laugh soon after that.
It was such an inconspicuous yet obvious thing to leave for the new homeowner (me).
A diary of an American soldier in WW-II, South Pacific Theater. Found it above a door when remodeling 20+ years ago. My wife and I tried everything we could think of to find a descendant, but to no avail.
4 original Disney animation cels from Snow White (1937) the first full length animated movie. The most valuable one being an oversized master cel used as a background for the smaller cels to be photographed over. While the overall price at auction for original Disney cels has for some reason dropped over the past 40 years at one time about 25 years ago the 4 I bought with my house were worth around $60K. I display them in my new house after selling the one I found them in. I love them and will leave them to my kids who should really appreciate them during and after their 2037 centennial when their value should skyrocket.
An entire tribe of raccoons living in the attic.
We bought a house being foreclosed on. We gave him an extra month after closing and 2k to help with his move. Still had to have the sheriff come remove him. Any who, was doing some cleanup and remodeling before we moved in. Whole house was carpeted. When I started ripping it out there was a giant blood stain that started in a downstairs spare bedroom that then trailed up to the master bath where there was another stain. His wife had left him so I had to call the realtor to find out if anyone knew where she was. Turns out he had shot a deer in the yard and gutted it in the house. What a hassle. Had to rip up and install new subfloors. My vegan ex wife was not thrilled.
We bought a house that has scrabble tiles in the most weird places.
In the gutter, redoing the garden, they're buried and scattered there, they're embedded into the skirting boards, under the kitchen units, and even behind the bath panel when I replaced it. I've yet to go in the attic, but I wouldn't be surprised if I found a few there. It has become a little joke between me and my partner when we will next find some scrabble tiles.
Its probably not the most weird, but it did give us a chuckle as to why there were so many scrabble tiles hidden about the place.
Probably buried at this point… but I chopped off the tip of my thumb w an axe, and kept the tip of it in a small plastic jar (think urinalysis jar) that the hospital gave me. I put it in my freezer and kept it there for about 4 years.
When I moved out I got three states away in a U-Haul when I went 😳
We left the finger
I can only imagine the new owners surprise
