In a scene not unlike that of Barbarian (2022), one Maine woman finds a secret room hidden inside a house–except instead of an Airbnb, its her own home she purchased a year ago. TikToker Zara (@zara_braley) takes followers through her journey of discovering a door to the attic that she never knew existed.
‘Thats actually pretty scary’
Zara films two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in a room inside her home. She explains how the shelves came with the house, and she never thought to move them because they go all the way to the ceiling.
However, after moving the shelves she found a hidden door that was “taped up.”
“Question is, do I crack it open?” she asks her viewers. “What if there’s like, squirrels or something?”
Thankfully, TikTokers don’t have to wait for a 30-part TikTok series to find out: Zara’s video immediately cuts to a man opening the door and being greeted with another door. This wooden one dons a dated doorknob that’s locked from the inside.
In another clip, Zara, the man and his trusty headlamp discover a staircase behind the door that winds up toward the attic. The wooden stairs creak as Zara and the man tentatively make their way up the dark stairs. The man lifts up a latch door at the end of the staircase and says, “Oh [expletive] there’s a lot of space up here, dude.”
Zara decides to see for herself and they both walk up into the attic room.
“Dang!” Zara says. She pans the camera across the room, revealing a spacious, albeit decrepit, room. The vaulted ceiling is held up by dated wooden rafters, with a closed door at the far end of the room. The opposite wall, where the stairs are, has a window with sunlight streaming in. The video then comes to a close.
Viewers think she’s too nonchalant
One user thought Zara had her priorities all wrong. “‘What if there’s squirrels?’ Babe what if there’s a body?” they asked.
“The way squirrels would be my very LAST concern,” a user echoed.
Some couldn’t believe how long it took for her to find the room.
“The complete lack of curiosity people have continually amazes me,” another commented. “I would have discovered this within 30 minutes of living in that house.”
Many pointed out the fact that the room had a window looking outside.
“There’s a window. You never looked up at your house and wondered what the extra window was for ?!” one said, with another writing, “How does it take you over a year to find a room that has a window?”
In a follow-up clip, Zara explains why she never noticed the window. She walks to the side of her house, and shows viewers the attic window. The problem, Zara says, is she doesn’t have access to that side of the house because it’s the neighbor’s property. Zara shows an odd layout of the two fenced areas, where she is blocked from entering the area that shows the side of her house. Many urged her to get a survey done because it seemed like “property stealing.”
In another clip, Zara says the inspection, which lasted five hours, covered “livable space.” Viewers were even more concerned out when Zara revealed the house was built in 1846. (“There are a few spirits here.”)
Still, the existence of the attic itself creeped-out several folks, window or no. What was its purpose? Why was it so well hidden?
Well, one comment that earned over 50,000 likes and caused the video to have its own search term alluded to an answer: “Definitely a disappointment room.”
What’s a disappointment room?
Disappointment room, or disappointments room, is a term referred to rooms where physically or mentally disabled people were kept in. The point was to keep them from public view. The 2016 movie Disappointments Rooms catapulted the term from obscurity. However, there is still a debate whether these rooms ever existed.
@zara_braley Shoutout to my brother who came over with a head lamp and sense of adventure to find out what was behind the door in my bedroom…perks of having an old house you never know what you’ll find on a random Tuesday night ? #oldhouse #maine #hiddenroominmyhouse ♬ original sound – Zara
A detailed article dissecting the 2016 movie claimed that Great Britain and United States did use disappointment rooms for disabled children. However, in a Reddit post on r/AskHistorians, posters said there was little evidence to suggest that part of history were true, excepting some rare one or two cases. To this day, here has been no evidence except rumors and speculation.
The Mary Sue reached out to Zara via TikTok direct message and comment.
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