40+ Peculiar Items People Discovered In Their New Home After Moving In
It is quite stressful to move into a new house. Ideally, the expectation is that the previous owners will leave the house in pristine condition, but often, that is not always the case. There are several instances where the new occupant comes across strange objects forgotten by the previous owners.
These items vary and can range from the regular things that aren’t useful to the downright strange. There are times when you begin to wonder who the previous owners really were considering the kind of items they left behind.
That being said, we’ve compiled a list of these ridiculous findings for your viewing pleasure. Some are scary, and some are funny. What we can assure you is that this journey is definitely a mind-boggling one.
Covert Operator
From what we see in the movies, living as a secret agent can be a fascinating experience. Well, as long as your enemies don’t invade your house. However, this Redditor discovered something along those lines when he was exploring his new home.
He found several fascinating things like cryptography business cards, CIA badges, and other confidential materials. He was curious to know what other mysteries the house held, and he wasn’t disappointed. Upon searching further, he found an explosive from WW II hidden beneath his floorboard.
Paint by Number
Determining the precise age of a tree is quite easy for archaeologists. All they have to do is count the rings on a tree trunk. For some homeowners, they can date the age of their house by chipping their walls.
This particular house used the chipped wall method to show several layers of paint the room had seen over the years. Although this particular piece of info may have no meaning to the owner, it still makes a pretty sight.
Old Time Memorabilia
There’s nothing as cool as finding historical artifacts in your house. Most times, it’s always left behind by those who occupied the house previously. This was the case with Clyde and Sheri Renner from Camp Point, Illinois. Their home could be compared to a museum.
In the course of renovating their house which was quite old by the way – 1891 to be precise. The couple discovered several love letters from a lady named Flossy. They also found a child’s tombstone dated 1870 and a tiny Union soldier model in their ceiling.
The Perfect Solution
It’s funny how house owners were able to come up with strange ways to repair broken objects. This previous house owner had the brilliant idea to cover the ducts with anti-freeze cans. We are just wondering how they had so many anti-freeze cans lying around.
They fit them together perfectly inside the duct to stop air from entering. This solution must have worked well, as the new people who moved in never suspected a thing. Well, there’s no reason to fix something that ain’t broke, so they left it that way.
A Find That Will Make Your Jaws Drop
Before you go on, here is a spoiler alert – this slide has a teary ending. The moment the new tenant moved in, the first thing he came across was a set of dentures lying on the shelf of his new apartment.
Obviously, they had belonged to somebody. Luckily, the previous owners got in touch with him requesting the dentures be returned. Apparently, her late mother had lived there previously, and it meant a lot to her daughter to get them back.
Unearthed Secrets
There are several bizarre things on this list. Well, in this case, there was some buried treasure beneath the ground for new owners to discover that was kind of creepy, to say the least. The son of the new occupants was playing around in the yard when he found a decapitated doll.
This was one scary find, and the little boy discovered several other doll parts buried in different places around the yard. Since there is no way to tell what happened to this doll, we can only guess that the previous owner was probably Toy Story’s Sid Phillips
Passed On
Almost in every case there’s there is every chance that you’ll find something left by the previous owners. This case was totally different for this man when he discovered something he least expected to find, which was the former owner herself.
He purchased a beautiful house in Cape Coral, Florida. The house was put up for sale when the previous owner couldn’t pay her taxes anymore. When he took possession of the house, he found the body of the previous owner lying right there.
Trapdoor
Please be honest with yourself, what would you do if you discover there’s a trapdoor underneath your office floor? By watching several horror movies, no one needs to tell you how situations like this usually end. However, this case seems to be a little different.
Even though this person found a creepy trapdoor in his house, he wasn’t scared to find out what was beneath him. Luckily, he discovered several cool things like 1937 newspapers, old blueprints, and more stuff left behind from a builder or an architect.
The Milkman is Coming
There was a time when you couldn’t just go and buy milk from a store near you. For you to get your regular dose in those days, you’d have to wait for the milkman. For this reason, many houses in that era (pre-1940s) had milk doors.
This door is often small and can be found close to the main entrance. This is where the milkman left milk crates to be picked up when convenient. This man was lucky enough to move into a house that still has it’s milk door intact.
A Tunnel to Avoid
Just like we mentioned earlier, it’s quite scary to have a trapdoor beneath your house. Now, imagine you discover a large tunnel that leads to an unknown destination under your home. According to this person, this tunnel is quite broad and stretches for more than a mile.
According to some people on the internet, they stated that the tunnel might have been built to divert floodwaters. The question now is, why are there mysterious humanoid figures lined drawn along the tunnel walls? That’s enough reason to avoid exploring at all costs.
Monopoly Floor
Playing board games at night with your family is always fun. As you must have seen, the fun only lasts until someone is on the losing side, and they overturn the board. To stop this, the previous owners of this house took steps to stop it in its entirety.
What they did was to convert the floor of an entire room into a huge monopoly board. The new homeowner discovered this when they removed the grime filled carpet that was there before. Now they have something to look forward to every weekend.
Prohibition Blues
Living in an old house comes with several cool advantages. Not all old houses are spooky as some are filled with lots of history. All you need to do is to look within the walls, and you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find.
This Redditor lived in one of those old homes, which used to be a general store before it was converted into a residential apartment. This store could be found in the basement, and it had a hooch room. You can’t find the hooch room except you know how to work the pulley system attached to it.
The Perfect Handle
You reach another level of frustration when you inadvertently wreck the handle of your door. After calming down, you know this is one repair that needs immediate attention, or you’ll find yourself in the annoying situation of being in the room with no way of getting in or out.
Even though it wasn’t the best solution, the previous owners of this house had a better idea. They chose to use a spoon on the door handle instead of getting a new one. The funny part was that they painted it white to match the door’s color.
Creepy Doll
There’s one thing we still haven’t been able to decipher for a while now – the correlation between attics and scary dolls. The moment this Redditor entered his new house, he was confronted by a putrid smell. After a few minutes of searching, he discovered it was from his attic.
He wasted no time in entering the attic only for him to find a voodoo doll that was about six feet tall. The doll was quite dirty and occupied a lot of space. From the look of things, it’s been left there for ages.
Hidden Mural
If you have kids, there’s every chance your walls will be covered with random doodles and scribbles. Although it’s cute, you will still have to cover it up with wallpaper or paint. This homeowner was quite lucky as he found something more way more valuable on his wall.
He discovered a large mural of an oil painting when he removed the wallpaper in his room. The best part is that the work of art is beautiful and vibrant, and it’s reminiscent of renaissance art. We wonder why they covered it in the first place.
Safe and Secure
We’ve seen this many times before-houses that were used for other purposes before they were renovated and converted into residential spaces. This owner must’ve thought he landed the jackpot when he found out his house used to be a bank.
Since he didn’t have as much money as a bank, he chose a rather conventional and sensible path. He turned his super-secret vault to a panic room basement. This may not be ideal for claustrophobic people, but it gives staying safe a new meaning.
Erase the Data
Not every discovery on this list is 100 years old. Some are quite recent or happened in the past decade. For instance, this homeowner stumbled across a surprising find in this little stove that wasn’t supposed to be there – an SD card.
Even though we’re technologically advanced, at least, we don’t have stoves that use SD cards at the moment. Maybe it was dropped carelessly, or the owner wanted to destroy it so people can’t access the information stored on it. We’ll never know.
Unexpected Windfall
If you’ve ever suffered from itchy palms, you’ll also be familiar with the old superstition that says you’re about to come into some money. Well, this homeowner must have had itchy palms all day as he found something he would never have expected
For no reason, he decided to open his walls, and he found £500 from 1981. This may have been misplaced money, or the previous owner stashed it away for a rainy day and forgot it was there. However, this person will surely be smiling all the way to the bank.
Creepy Cartoon
If there’s a broken piece in the wall of your house, you either patch it up or look for a creative way to cover it up. This homeowner, on the other hand, took things to another level as his method is both hilarious and innovative.
To the shock of the new homeowner, a hole in one of the bathroom walls was covered with a cartoonish picture looking downwards. There’s nothing as funny and creepy as a cartoon character looking down at you while you get down to business
Another Way to Use Chickens
You can never know precisely what you’ll find inside a house when you first move in. However, not everything you come across is left behind or misplaced. The Bretzius family moved to Pennsylvania and were shocked to discover a horrific sight within their walls.
They found several dead chickens within their walls as the previous owners had used them for insulation. From the look of things, they did it intentionally. It’s Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic known as Pow wow, which they believe can ward off sickness.
Space Junkie
Outer space will always fascinate humans even though we still only know a minute fraction of what it has to offer. These kids must have wished to be astronauts when they grew up. The space-themed toys and books found within their room is a testament to that fact.
This kid took his passion a step further by covering his bedroom walls in a beautiful space-themed wallpaper. The wallpaper was adorned with alien spaceships, rockets, and several planets. Each was strategically arranged on a star-filled background.
Warding Off Evil
If you are a good student of history, you must know about the witch trials. This was quite commonplace in Europe and other parts of the world several centuries ago. Most people believed that by storing witch bottles in their house, it’d help counter act witch magic.
You’ll find several things like fingernail clippings urine and more in the bottle. They believed it also averts negative energy and diverts it into the container. This homeowner from London found this witch bottle in his new home in 2004 and couldn’t help but share it with the internet.
The Card
What is the first thought that would cross your mind when you enter into your new house, and you find a card taped to your window? You may appreciate the person’s attempt at the surprising welcome, but this person’s reason was quite different.
From what we were able to decipher, the previous owner had won the lottery before he moved from the house. To keep the luck running, he decided to pay it forward by taping the card to the window so the new owner would have good fortune as well.
Macabre Bag
We’ve seen several funny and a few scary things on this list, so finding a body bag shouldn’t surprise you. Don’t be too relaxed as here is the catch -the body bag was not new and had been used before.
The bag was found by a woman from Detroit in 2015 when she was cleaning the garage of her new home. As luck would have it, the body bag did not have anything in it, but there was an unknown male tag on it.
Left to the Elements
No matter from which angle you look at this find, there’s every chance it will make you sad. This homeowner found a figurine covered in moss. Upon further inspection, he saw that it was a stuffed animal that fell from their garden shed.
It must have been a child’s favorite toy at some point, but it somehow landed up on top of the shed. Over time, nature did its job and covered it in moss. There’s every chance the child lost the toy and must have been looking for it for years.
Scribbling Away
One thing we loved about being a child is that we could do anything we liked without fear or anxiety of any sort. This is why you are filled with several emotions when you come across random doodles by the children of the previous owners on the walls of your new house.
From what we can decipher from the scribbles and doodles, we could make out a cartoon face, strange symbols, and “Love.” We can also see “EEK! EEK!! EEK!!” – we believe only the kids understand this. This must have been a very happy room.
Memories
Jeff and Steff Condon knew they were buying a piece of history when they purchased a 1918 Tudor home. However, the house was missing many essential items, such as sinks and fixtures, but they didn’t mind. One thing that caught their attention was the beautiful design and the unique floor plan.
They went about their business of renovating the house, and they found a hidden paper box in the ceiling above the garage. The found several black and white pictures and two bottles of moonshine. They also saw The Case of the Curious Bride in their closet wall.
A Rocky Living Space
Decorating a house is no easy feat. However, what’s harder is designing your house, so it stands out from the regular homes out there. Some people will invest in antiques, or they’ll decorate their walls with some beautiful artistic paintings.
Well, the previous homeowner beat them hands down with his ingenious concept. The new homeowner was quite shocked when he found out that the entire house was designed around this massive sandstone. The stone protrudes grandiosely into the living room and adds a rocky charm to the home.
Forgotten
There are times when you are doing something random, and you suddenly remember a lost item, and you start looking for it immediately. After turning the entire house upside down, you discover it’s gone forever. This must’ve been the case with this toy dinosaur.
The owner of the toy must have searched and searched. Probably even cried and accepted his fate that his favorite toy was gone forever. What he never expected was that the toy had gotten stuck in the air vent, which is one place he didn’t think to look.
Shocking Reveal
Could you live in a home that used to be a funeral parlor previously? This Redditor didn’t mind. Well, after trying to fix a broken pipe, they are not so sure anymore. They found an extra room they never knew existed.
The came across several items in the room like business books, stained glass windows, perfumed salts, odd equipment, chemicals, and old bottles. They saw the opportunity this new find presented, and they took advantage of it by selling it to an antique shop.
Creepy Table
Opinions about this table are divided, to say the least. Do we freak out or do we marvel at the creativity? On the other hand, what would be your reaction if you are a first-time visitor in this house, and you come across this table?
We won’t blame anybody that gets scared when they come across this table. If you’re in a dark room and you’re staring across the table, there’s every chance you’ll be covered in goosebumps. However, this was just the previous homeowner trying to play a practical joke on the new occupants.
Proud Moment
Building your house from scratch is always oddly satisfying. The pride you feel after seeing the outcome of your hard work cannot be compared. This is undoubtedly one of the happiest moments of your life, and it’s a cause for celebration.
The entire Baker family gathered together to celebrate on the 27th of March 1988. They all engraved their names on the cement before the first cork tile was laid in their new house. The little ones were not left out either as Nicole, 8, and Wade, 7 also joined in the signing.
Something Fishy
Don’t ever let anything dull your artistic side. Here’s an invaluable tip that will always come in handy – anything and everything can be your canvas. The walls are no exception, especially if you’re about to cover it with new wallpaper.
You can imagine the pleasant surprise of the new homeowners when they tore down the old wallpaper and found several fish and seahorses drawn on the wall. These pencil sketches were quite beautiful and livened up the room considerably. We hope the artist never stopped drawing
Ancient Art
The first thing that you’ll come across if you live in this house are the paintings. After all, there aren’t many people that can beat their chest to say they have prehistoric cave paintings in their house. However, don’t get too excited.
If you look closely, you’ll realize you’ve fallen for an elaborate prank from the previous homeowners. They thought it was funny to beautify the walls of their basement with cave-like paintings. We will give them bonus points for creativity.
Jail Time
There are many outdated community buildings like restaurants and funeral parlors that were transformed into residential homes. The owners went to great lengths to ensure the houses were renovated correctly, but there are exemptions, like this house.
It used to be a police station, and it still has its cell doors intact. Even though they whitewashed them to make them look more sophisticated, you can still see the bars on the windows. For fun, you can invite your friends over to spend some time together in jail.
The Abyss
Even though you must have read about it or seen it in movies, there’s every chance you’ve never been confronted with an abyss before. But this house was built over an old well, and all we can say is that if you look down there long enough- eventually, it will stare back at you.
This is a once in a lifetime find, and the new owners decided to incorporate it into the new design by making it a feature of their new home by covering the opening with glass. Talk about a conversation starter.
Dungeons No Dragons
Lovers of the fantasy genre will love this next find. Even though the owners of this property discovered that the portal to the fictional land Narnia does not exist, they can still satisfy their adventure cravings with this secret dungeon.
They found a large dungeon filled with empty rooms and corridors beneath their apartment. Each room was spray-painted with graffiti of different colors. This was one of the selling points the landlord used to entice buyers, and they came in droves.
Take a Shower
We can only think that an eccentric OCD person lived in this apartment previously, and insisted that visitors took a quick shower before dinner. How else could this tiny shower be explained? If this was indeed the case, we can’t imagine a lot of guests wanting to visit.
That is the only plausible reason we could come up with to explain this barren room and tiny shower. There is no toilet or sink, so this was never a fully functioning bathroom. Honestly has us entirely at a loss for words.
Under the Carpet
Moving into a new house is always something most people look forward too. What they don’t look forward to is the work that goes along with that.
As exhausting as this process is, this person was rewarded when they started cleaning. They discovered a whole new world when they lifted up their carpet. They found an old cellar door that led to a vast collection of old preserves and bottles.
Oh Well
Some people have swimming pools in their homes; others will opt for something cozier by going for a Jacuzzi or spa. However, this person took it to a whole new level by having a well right in the middle of his house.
Although, the well has been there for years as it was dug by previous owners. The new owner felt it’ll be better to have a bar right above it and turn it into a feature. This odd architecture would definitely give people something to talk about while they are enjoying their meal.
A “Strange” Coffin
In 2015, in a family from Leflore county, Oklahoma discovered the strangest thing in their barn. On that fateful day, they decided to clean up the barn thoroughly, and they found a coffin with a skeleton inside.
They were so intrigued that they investigated further. They found out that the skeleton was from a group called the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The skeleton was part of their initiation ceremony. Without a doubt, their name befits them.
Razor Blades
If you’re observant enough, you’ll notice a medicine cabinet with a thin slit in most old fashioned houses. This is used for disposing of old razor blades. If you are wondering where the blades go, it is often behind the wall.
A Redditor with the username Bellapace tried to fix a busted pipe in his house and ended up finding several razor blades behind his drywall. After a few minutes searching, he discovered the razor blade slot behind his medicine cabinet.
Kitchen Well
This Redditor couldn’t help but share his grandparent’s unique kitchen. We’ve all but seen strange finds left by the previous owners, but this stands out for several reasons. First, this well is directly beneath a kitchen, which adds some allure to this house.
The well is about 25 feet deep, and surprisingly, it connects to a small river. The first thing that comes to mind is the horror movie Jaws and a huge shark peering through the well while you’re cooking dinner for the family.
Perfect Ending
This has been an adventurous list from the beginning, and the best way to end it is with a bottle of wine. However, this wine is not from us but from the new homeowner who found this corked bottle when he was cleaning his new house.
Although the wine is most likely vintage at this time, there’s every chance it was left by the previous owners as a gift. We know dessert wines are not for everybody, however, nobody will blame us for downing the entire bottle after going through these bizarre finds.