Homeowners are sharing 10 intriguing and strange things they discovered in their new house

Discoveries in a new home

New homeowners stand a good chance of unearthing unexpected treasures. It can sometimes be small treasures to bigger ones, but it always provides an atmosphere of intrigue. Finding such things can also serve as a memorable way to recall setting up one's home many years later. Owning a home is a rollercoaster experience and such experiences only add to the joy. u/Oblivious_Dude14 asked the community, "People who bought a house, what is the weirdest thing you have found left behind by the previous owner?" Here are 10 of the most wholesome and interesting answers that people gave.

1. Message in the bathroom mirror

The 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). u/Individual-Common-89. A friend of mine was moving out of his rented house due to a problem with the landlord. Before he left he rolled back the carpet in the lounge and drew an intricate pentagram in red paint, let it dry, then rolled the carpet back. He said he spent a good 3 hours drawing it. That just reminded me of when I moved rooms in university and the previous occupant had written notes for me everywhere. Inside the drawers he wrote "my drawers", under the rug he wrote "my floor," inside the closet he wrote, well, you get the picture. I didn't find the last one until a week before I moved out. It was under a loose bit of flooring. u/overkill

2. A hidden apartment 

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. Anyway, 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. u/Used-Stress. My ex-wife's family knocked down a wall in a 400-year-old house in Cornwall and found a perfectly intact bedroom from the 1800s, still with all the personal effects where they had been left. Nobody knows why it was boarded up, or why things weren't taken out of it. Oh, and that house always appears in the guides for the most haunted locations in Cornwall, if you believe that kind of stuff. u/ledow

3. Old steamer trunk with family photos 

Before I met her, my wife got a call from someone she worked with saying they'd just bought an old house 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. I don't know exactly but I think it was empty or full of linens or something. Nothing notable - the relative was a carpenter and this wasn't a posh residence by a long shot. u/LateralThinkerer

4. Letter welcoming them 

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. My kid took care of it for several years but tbh it was never very healthy and we finally had to take it out. Sad ending, I know. u/catsaway9

5. Tips for maintaining the house 

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 tidbits about the electrical. They were good people lol. u/pet_zulrah. The same thing happened to us. The former owner left a long, detailed letter about the house. (Most importantly for us, she told us to talk to our neighbor to find out where the septic tank access was. We’d never have found it.) It was clear that this home had been a labor of love; the gardens were amazing. When her husband died she couldn’t bear to live here anymore; everything reminded her of him. u/kamuelak

6. Costly vintage crystal bowl 

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. u/khendron. My mate's dad is like a used furniture/antique/upholsterer kind of jack-of-all-trades type. He was in Turkey, in a thrift store and noticed a vase, knew it was worth something and bought it. He thought it was a few thousand. Got home, got it valued and it's insured for a million quid. Mental. Paid buttons for it. u/herdo1

7. Ancient fire extinguisher 

This was years ago but my family bought a house that had originally been the caretaker's cottage for a big estate back around 1900, down in the original part of the basement (lots of additions since then) we found this weird liquid-filled blown glass globe in a metal holder fixed to the wall. It had a dirty nearly illegible label. My grandfather was into collecting all sorts of glass and he identified it as a very rare sort of early fire extinguisher - you threw the globe onto a fire and it broke releasing the liquid. It was one of the only ones of this particular type known that still had the liquid, label and wall holder. We ended up donating it to a museum. u/tinlizzie67

8. Walk-in-safe

A walk-in safe in a huge old carriage house in NYC. The previous owner died suddenly, the safe was locked, and the brother settling the estate never found the combination. He was going to have it drilled but failed to do so before the closing. Given the circumstances, there was every chance that there would be interesting/valuable stuff in the safe (which turned out to be six ft by four ft with a 10 ft ceiling, so pretty big). We hired a safe cracker, a high-strung guy who seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He tried for several hours with a stethoscope, muttering and cursing and pacing, before giving up. So we had the lock drilled and opened the vault door. Empty. Well, not completely, there was a wall of floor-to-ceiling cedar shelves that smelled amazing (for storing furs, we were told). And another safe. There was a small safe inside the large vault. For a moment we pictured bundles of cash, gold, and jewelry...until we saw that it was not even locked, and was also empty. The door of the vault was beautiful and it made an interesting little room. u/Apprehensive_Ask_805

9. Animation cels

4 original Disney animation cels from Snow White (1937) the first full-length animated movie. The most valuable one is 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 appreciate them during and after their 2037 centennial when their value should skyrocket. u/BoS_Vlad

10. Bomb shelter

A bomb shelter! My 1912 farmhouse in Minnesota had a WWII-era reinforced cement bomb shelter in what I think was a coal/fuel room originally. It was painted and had writing on the walls, but then painted over again so you couldn't see what it said. There was a safe buried in the floor that contained only water because it was not the kind of safe you're supposed to bury in the floor. The house was being used as a convent for the (still existing) church across the street during WWII. What were the nuns worried about? u/ClassyBroadMSP.