We found a secret room in our house, picture included

[Ohwhatswrong]

I've seen these threads before and thought how on earth did you not know! How big must your house be to have a secret room.
Our house is not massive, 4 bed, normal size not really old or anything.
But there's a super creepy room. Hidden at the back of the loft, It's got carpet, wall paper and even spot lights! And a director's chair... just sitting in the middle of it! It's weird.

I was quite a creative kid and would have loved my own little space like that. As a young teenager I could easily have applied wallpaper in a messy fashion like that, and the green paintwork is the kind of thing I would have done too. Maybe at some point a teenager was just allowed to have a go at decorating their own space? The directors chair is the kind of thing a teen might have had in the 90s or early 00s too?

The weird features of this room:

• Between the room and the hatch there is some normal uninhabitable attic, then there's a section wallpapered with spotlights. Why not do the bit next to the hatch if you wanted a loft room?
• There's a half wall blocking off access to the room.
• The light switch for the spotlights is outside that green hatch in the eaves, not next to the half wall (if I've understood that right?)
• Half of the attic is shuttered off and inaccessible. Why would someone do this? Surely you'd want it for storage or at least for access to your roof in case you need to do maintenance.
• The spotlights and decor are weird and creepy.

You called…

I mean.. as someone who works for the police.. it’s not a bad shout at all. They aren’t asking them to investigate the attic, they are passing the image on in case it is linked to any potential crimes - stranger things have happened 🤷‍♀️. Either way, this finding is bizarre.

Reminds me of one if those weird rooms, where someone that's been kidnapped is held, creepy

I get dreams like this too. They always fills me with such excitement and takes me aback that I’ve walked past so many times without realising.

I am sure there is some obvious dream interpretation like you want to explore new things in life.

• Between the room and the hatch there is some normal uninhabitable attic, then there's a section wallpapered with spotlights. Why not do the bit next to the hatch if you wanted a loft room?

Because you're using the back wall - less drafty. It's a nook, not a room.

• There's a half wall blocking off access to the room.

Strut - normal in attic. Mine has one between sections. Quite handy - defines the space, frames plasterboard for plug points,holds the roof up.

• The light switch for the spotlights is outside that green hatch in the eaves, not next to the half wall (if I've understood that right?

Maybe - it's often easier to put a light switch in a different space.

• Half of the attic is shuttered off and inaccessible. Why would someone do this? Surely you'd want it for storage or at least for access to your roof in case you need to do maintenance.

To reduce drafts and rodent access in a large attic, if you've no use for the space. If it's just plasterboard you could have it off for access in minutes, if it's fully closed.

• The spotlights and decor are weird and creepy.

That's just a matter of taste and could be a reaction to seeing it in a semi-confined space which OP described as a secret room.

All of the features here look like standard choices for DIY organisation of attic space - it's not a bedroom, but it's not only a lumber room, and people divide and adapt the space around the messy architecture of attic space.

At first I got really sinister vibes and was really concerned. But now I've thought about it. My boyfriend has just moved out of a bungalow with a loft conversion and he had two small doors into the eaves in his bedroom for storage. About half the size of a normal door, so crawling height, and quite a lot of room behind the wall. They were in the same place in his room as that small door in the side of this secret room.
Also, if you were converting a loft, it wouldn't make much sense to start in the middle, it would probably make more sense to start at the end/s and work across or inwards. So maybe you start the project and then maybe you realise something like you can't just go around making illegal loft conversions with no windows, or it's a bad idea to reinforce the roof so you can put doors where you were planning to, or you've suddenly got no money left, or you don't have to even finish the project because 10 year old johnny can just climb over half a wall into his self-decorated room and get the personal space he needs etc. etc. At first I saw a weird filming/watching/kidnapping room but now it's all starting to make a bit more sense. Along with the fact that if you'd committed crimes in such a distinctive room, you'd 100% take down the wallpaper and paint over the green woodwork. I'm desperate to see what's in the other boarded up side though

If you were using it as a room to hang out in you'd have the chair looking into the room, not facing out onto a dark attic.
It looks... like it's been used to film in 😬not to mention what appear to be some questionable stains on the carpet. Very unsettling, I'd definitely send a photo to 101. Better safe than sorry.

It's not a great space to film at all - poorly positioned lightning, walls far from neutral, no room to manoeuvre equipment with that strut in the way. Since it is not actually a room and was never closed off, there would have been no reason for a criminal to skulk in that corner. A director's chair isn't something you sit in to operate equipment - it's just light enough to move around and watch things from different angles. But that won't be much good in such a confined space, so presumably the folding chair is there to because it was nice and easy to get into the attic (and perhaps assemble there).

I'd find it claustrophobic facing into that space so wouldn't point the chair to the back wall - but of course it's probably been moved at some point anyway. And the image isn't high res enough to tell anything from the carpet.

If OP does decide to send this image to the police for some reason, she really should avoid this "secret room" exaggeration. It's a nook, open to the main loft space, which she and her husband didn't notice when they moved in.

But I have no idea why you would report a wallpapered corner of your attic to the police.

I think you've misunderstood what I was suggesting.

Have you contacted the previous owners, or the estate agents?

Well that’s good to know! PP has me questioning myself.

I send things in on online report probably once a twice a year. Mainly if I had the misfortune of stumbling onto an online video on Reddit of serious violent crimes and they are freshly posted, people are commenting they heard about that and it happened yesterday etc. I hope that is useful. Wouldn’t want to not send it and the police miss out on an obvious win for the case.

It’s just obvious to me that the other side of the boarded wall there lies a coffin with the corpse of Nosferatu in it.

@Ohwhatswrong whereabouts is the light switch for turning on the spotlights? Is it on the same circuit as the lights for the rest of the loft or does it have its own? Is the light switch next to the green entrance the (only?) one that operates the lights?

What is the space directly beneath where the green door opens out onto?

My money is on what a PP suggested that there either was previously a second loft hatch that gave access to the wallpapered space through the green door, or they intended to do that but then didn’t get round to it. Intended to use a hobby area, or nook for kids/teens.

A couple of friends had slightly odd semi-converted attic spaces in their houses when I was a child and we used love to hang out in them for no other reason than it felt like a cool secret den. We also had relative with a train layout in the loft and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.

You should hold a seance up there... what could possibly go wrong? 😏

I am willing to bet that a previous occupant had a collection of dickumenataries that his wife would have disapprove of. Think “Battlestar Galacticock” and “The Empire Sucks Black”, but the decor suggests more “Emmanuelle” to me.

😂

I would be far more worried about what is behind the boarded up section of the loft. I can’t think of a single reason why you would bother to do that.
Imagine the difficulty putting the wallpaper up in that room. Someone put a LOT of effort into this for some reason.

Holy shit. I recently put up wallpaper for the first time. I can’t stop thinking about how much of a nightmare it must have been to hang wallpaper in that space?! 😂🙈

I just read that book too!

The room belongs to The Visitor. A tall, dark being, no one has ever seen his face, not even sure if he has one. He doesn’t have a shadow, he looms in dark corners, hidden, silent. He carries a pocket watch and a mirror. Never tell him the time if he asks, and never look in his mirror or he will trap your soul in a time of his choosing. He appears only at night, and sits alone, in the dark, watching past episodes of Changing Rooms trying to remember where he got his beloved yellow 90s wallpaper from. If you find a mysterious board game up there, DO NOT OPEN the box.

But then they didn’t finish the wallpaper? CB enthusiast? Too noisy and irritating for the rest of the family to tolerate at night so “go and chat to your weird CB chums in the loft”?

Totally
…and I haven’t heard jings for yonks 😜

Probably a place where the previous mum would hide from the family, the perimenopause suite.