Most random find in a new house?

[ContraryToPopularBelief]

So we picked up our keys for our new house today. The sellers have been so nice. The house is super clean and they've left thoughtful things like a hedge clipper and lawnmower. All good.

However... on the back of one of the bedroom doors there is a sheep's skull!!!! 😱

Utterly random! So what's the most random thing your found when you moved in to a new house?

Place mark.
Loving this thread.
Mine were boring in comparison.

Cotton buds down the bathroom sink plug holes!!! The sinks quickly became blocked after we moved in so we plunged them and pulled several cotton bud out of them. This happened repeatedly and every time we pulled more cotton buds out of the plug holes. Went on for about the first 6 months of living there. God knows how many we pulled out in total. Who the hell thinks to dispose of cotton buds by sticking them down the plug hole??? Disgusting!

Living in a lovely, cottage rental one of the smoke detectors started bleeping in the middle of the night. Bleary-eyed I went around each one but couldn’t locate the sound. An hour later, having taken them all down and nearly crying with tiredness and frustration (think Phoebe from Friends) I looked up at the tiny loft hatch. The landlord had replaced all the alarms with new ones and shoved all the old ones in the loft with their batteries still in!

I’m amazed that some people on this thread have never been in their lofts. I’d be too curious not to!

I found a bundle of letters written from a daughter in a concentration camp (ww2) to her mother hidden under my floor. Such sad letters.

Great thread.
A massive axe in a bedroom cupboard!

Rented flat - mouse poo in the kitchen units; sink of dirty dishes; mouldy futon; bag of weed under carpet and when I ripped off the wallpaper there were Satan worship symbols and images.

House - garden has random mounds of bricks and cement that had hardened; previous owners had large breed dogs that had dug creators in the lawn; a garage door that supposedly provided off road parking into space in the garden was propped up by wood and bricks!
The dining room carpet looked as though they’d stripped an engine on it and we got flea bites ripping the carpets up.
Pissy mattresses left upstairs.
I’m an absolute wimp and scared of ladders so had never ventured in the loft. When we moved in the xmas tree and decorations were lobbed up there near the hatch and reached in for when needed.
However, my ds decided to store away some of the kids things up there for me. She came down and said I needed to take a look as it was creepy. I couldn’t even make it up the first rung! She tossed down boxes and books for me to look at it. The boxes contained old cards and letters (nothing of the sort of pp!) they were dated from the 70s and just bills, birthday cards etc. The books disintegrated on touch. My DS said that there was a writing bureau, chair and office filing cabinet up there - how they got in that space, I don’t know. There was a threadbare cheap sinister looking stuffed bear, several cheap ornaments that were popular in the 70s but many were missing their heads and cheap framed pictures from the same era (think crying children/ clowns).
I just told her to put the lot back up there and I don’t think anyone went up there again. Still gives me the creeps but it’s not half as bonkers as some of these comments.

When I moved into my current house exdh was sorting the old house I was sorting the new one. He came and asked me weather I wanted to keep all this old carpet. I asked what old carpet. Hed found 4 rolls (easily carpet a large room) of carpet in our old loft that we didn't know was there. (I moved into my old place before I knew exh so he hasn't been up my loft.

Moving into this house we went to put things up the loft and found a very old stereo and a ready assembled Xmas tree.
9 years on and some debt companies STILL don't believe that the old tennent has moved and I keep getting letters about their various debts

mrsshep sad-what did you do with them?

Under the floorboards of a flat we were renovating, a load of empty half-bottles of brandy or whisky - I forget which.

I found a brand new still in the box Radley purse that had fallen behind the kitchen cupboards. I didn't find it until we were having building work done in the kitchen about 5 years after we had moved in.

To say I was delighted was an understatement.

Bluelonerose, I had this over a mass of debts left by the previous owner of a flat, who'd left no forwarding address and had apparently left the country* - around £20k worth of debts.

However I either rang or wrote to all the debt collectors, explaining the situation, and after I sent a copy of my council tax bill to each of them (at least 12 letters in all) the mail did finally stop. They were all very reasonable.

I had been advised by several people simply to return to sender with 'No longer at this address' written on the envelope, but it didn't work - anyone, including the debtor, can easily do that.

*in fact he hadn't - he was living just a few miles away under another name - presumably in order to escape his creditors - as we finally found out when trying to buy the freehold.

A brand new set of ladders still in their shrink wrap. Hidden away at the back of a cavernous under croft. It was a probate sale and the relatives, had been very difficult. So very satisfying and no we did not tell the relatives.

Besides leaving the kitchen full of food from 1997 and the whole place dirty, they left this message for the birds hanging in a tree in the garden. ‘Dear birds, the party’s over! There are now cats in residence. Thank you for visiting our garden but now take care - BEWARE!’ They’d even laminated it.

A wheely bin full of unopened packets of food. It was as if someone had just emptied the cupboards into the bin. Oh an 42 cans of dog food. They did not have dogs. We contacted the previous owners and they said dump it.
So we did a run to the food bank. Since then we found a cast iron fireplace buried in a flower bed.

A wheelbarrow full of dog poo in the garden.

In one of our rental flats we found a small freezer in a walk in wardrobe. We thought it would be useful. Then after we moved in we found some defrosted fish in it. Who knows how long it had been in there because the stink was horrendous! I can't imagine how I cleaned that because I can still remember the stench 🤢 In our house which we have lived for for over 3 years now we found a brand new wardrobe in the attic last week. It's in our bedroom now

Bits of fried egg on the hob and a pogo stick in the bedroom!!

Just remembered this one. We once helped to clear the house of DH great uncle. The loft yielded very cool old trunks and suitcases which we cleaned up and now use for storing linens, much to MIL disgust (she likes shiny new everything). And a bicycle. He had been a keen cyclist in his younger days. The wheels were too big for the loft hatch so it had to stay up there. No idea how it had got up there!

New cottage does have a gun cabinet in DD1 bedroom. I'll remove it, not something your average 4yo needs

When we moved in we thought the bathroom had an odd smell.. had carpet but wasnt a pee smell. Anyone once moved in we ripped up the carpet and bought tiles - took the panel off the side of the bath to lay the towels and found the bath wasnt fitted.. it was just plonked on 2 bails of hay! Then siliconed round the edges to make it look right from the outside!!

Anyway*
Tiles* jeeez

Oh I have a got a good one!!!!

We had just moved in and went into the loft to store my daughters pram we found a large Victorian style bedding box filled with Victorian pot dolls, creepy enough as it took us a hour to get all the gaffer tape off the box.

We now have a loft conversation with this box in one of the crawl spaces, I’m scared if I move it bad things will happen 😭

loving the loft conversation - the dolls are talking away quietly in the crawl space....

@gettinglikemymother I sent a copy of my tennency agreement and I got a letter back saying "we know she still lives there we've checked" no idea what they had checked coz this was about 18 months AFTER the cencus

Lots of kitchenware in a house we rented,
instructions to the appliances in a folder,
with the addition of multiple letters from police and council regarding domestic disturbances ....

Our neighbours moved whilst we were still living there , I think they were evicted, the son used to ram his bicycle into their front door I assumed he'd got locked out , once they had gone the new neighbour has said they left the house in a state and they had crumbled up weetabix into the carpets

We were asked to keep an eye if they came back -