In today's installment of "weird and inexplicable shit we have found when doing up our house", I give you...

[ShowOfHands]

A mummified frog.

Add this to gaping holes literally papered over, bricked up empty spaces (making the room 15% smaller for no discernible reason), a live cable simply cut in half, secret notes, walls held up with cement and gravel and a room we didn't know we had.

Anybody else found anything weird while renovating?

When my friend moved into her new house she found an envelope under the bedroom carpet stuffed with photos of the previous owner, naked and 'posing' with various vegetables! Imagine the horror she must have felt when she remembered she had left them there!!!

Thanks @slavetothenhs !
Poor man.

Our house was built in 1874. Above the kitchen, in a small loft space we found a mouse graveyard. My DP counted 97 bodies and about 9 inches of poo.

There was also a diary from the '80s where a couple had split up. It starts off quite amicable but quickly descends into bitterness.

We also found really lovely flagstones under a manly carpet.

Manky!

I just remembered another one. Not too exciting but odd. In the garage of our last house, tucked away to the dark side of the boiler was a piece of wood, like a shelf but very rough. On it were 2 very dusty things. Lapel pins of the Saltire and the Stars and Stripes. Dh is American, I'm Scottish. It felt rather odd, especially since the previous owners were definitely Russians, so could not quite see the connection or reason why they were there. Obviously had been since way before our purchase.

@Cattermole

An old RAF uniform and a stash of M/M porn in the shed of my old house.

Wow Cattermole we also found an old RAF uniform in it's original kit bag in our loft. We tried to find the original owner but got nowhere. The last owners of the house claimed they knew nothing about it. We've since received the deeds so when I find time I will try and do some research. Our house was built in 1939 so that could fit. No porn though, thankfully.

Although I am still baffled as to how a family of 4 coped, from the late 1960s to 1987, with a kitchen the size of a postage stamp with one - yes one - single plug socket.

When I was a little girl, we lived in a very old country cottage. The lady who had lived there before us walked into the kitchen and her foot went through the rotten wooden floor. Apparently the floor had been laid over a well.

Bought a bungalow from the estate of an old lady. I found a pair of forceps in the garage.

Friends found a tiny antique handmade child's shoe in the space above a ceiling in their (centuries old) house. Strange things happened until it was put back.

Dreaming about extra rooms.... Me too

@WizardOfAus

We found a gun. Wrapped in newspaper from the 70s and hidden under floorboards.

Did you hand it in to the police? 🤔

I live in a terracedhouse built in 1910 and have done up a couple of rooms, I’ve been desperate to find something old and interesting but sadly nothing! Though, I do have a small loft hatch that has bolts on the outside (so scared to look up there and find out there’s no walls between mine and the neighbours!) but always desperate to know if there’s something up there.

Found some things left by more recent owners, a pair of men’s black shoes stuffed next to the gas meter, and two golf clubs tucked away in the under stairs cupboard. Also realised the top of a window seat comes off and inside was a load of paint pots, brushes, wall paper scraper and a new washing line.

Whenever I dream of finding extra rooms, it's always that there is an evil presence behind them and it's terrifying. I know not to go in the room, as I always dream of the same house and know my way around now. The evil presence even holds the door to prevent me entering, or rattles item I've tried to work out what this dream means, but can't find any reference on the internet... I wish I knew how to stop these dreams; they're horrible!

@Werkwerkwerkwerkwerk

Whenever I dream of finding extra rooms, it's always that there is an evil presence behind them and it's terrifying. I know not to go in the room, as I always dream of the same house and know my way around now. The evil presence even holds the door to prevent me entering, or rattles item I've tried to work out what this dream means, but can't find any reference on the internet... I wish I knew how to stop these dreams; they're horrible!

Learn lucid dreaming. It's a skill you can acquire, and it allows you to take control of the dream and do basically whatever you want.

A bib behind the radiator in my new house, and in my old house that I lived in for 12 years, a bus tickets on the floor of a cupboard from 1969. There was new carpet in there and everything, no idea where it came from. I found it the evening before we moved.

We found a video of the previous occupants getting jiggly with it ion the sofa they’d kindly left behind for us. it was left on top of the kitchen cupboards. We saw them once after that.

(In the supermarket)

When we moved in the garden was a bit of a project tons of over grown trees etc house had been on the market for a while and was empty. Next to the shed was a blue tarp with rocks holding it down and when we had a quick check it looked like it just had a metal lawnmower underneath it. 6 months down the line and we had the garden looking more manageable and had gotten to the blue tarp. As we moved it and looked round the shed we found a complete insert for a victorian fireplace with all the bits. We sold it as there was no fireplace in the house to put it back into.

We also found in the same house vintage fly fishing equipment in the loft that had been left.

We lived in a split level 1970s house for 5 years before we sold it. It was a bit of a wreck when we moved in so we had a lot of work to do. We always knew that there was a void under one of the rooms because the neighbours had told us they had one, but we never got around to opening it up. Told the new owners about it when we showed them around. A few months after we sold it we received a slightly embarrassing phonecall from one of our old neighbours who said the new owners had discovered an old cannabis factory in the void. Fortunately they believed us when we said it wasn't us - or at least I hope they did! Can't believe we lived there 5 years and never knew.

We bought an old cottage with absolutely no internal features just small boxy rooms.

Once we started renovating we realised that behind the stud walls were anything from 10” to 18” of void spaces that had been lost when they squared up the rooms. So rooms could be as much as 3 feet longer and wider.
We also found an inglenook fire place and a bread oven filled with old plastic shoes.

@Werkwerkwerkwerkwerk

Whenever I dream of finding extra rooms, it's always that there is an evil presence behind them and it's terrifying. I know not to go in the room, as I always dream of the same house and know my way around now. The evil presence even holds the door to prevent me entering, or rattles item I've tried to work out what this dream means, but can't find any reference on the internet... I wish I knew how to stop these dreams; they're horrible!

My dream secret rooms are always terrifying too, I have them so often and I hate them! The room is always horrible and haunted with stuff flying around. Sometimes it's a whole floor with multiple terrifying rooms. Brrrr

Victorian fireplaces blocked off by hardboard...and stair spindles ditto

Our current house we found a book on witchcraft behind a radiator

Oooh re: dreams of creepy houses...
Rotting staircases and endless stairways...Dark rooms..
looking out of the windows the light is always strange in these dreams..and then one starts flying...
They are creepy as heck.

I used to explore abandoned houses as a teenager, and some did have crumbling staircases and sagging floors, and I think one remembers them, and they get put into dreams..?