I found a hidden door in the wall of my house

Robb

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Thu Jan-17-08 06:00 PM
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I found a hidden door in the wall of my house

Really odd.

I was sort of in the middle of house cleaning, and moved the corner of the sectional couch. I hadn't moved that piece of it, in (of course) the corner, since I moved in. I'd always re-arranged things with the other pieces, and left that corner one in.

So anyhow, I moved the corner piece to clean behind it, and it was positively disgusting back there. TONS of dog hair, a french fry, a lot of dust and dirt on the carpet, just what you'd expect.

Except I found a little hole where the sheetrock had been worn away.

It sort of looked like it had been damaged by a rocking chair, but the sectional couch of course doesn't rock. The sheetrock was actually worn all the way through in the middle of the damaged spot, and the hole was about the size of a hamburger.

I would've left it, pushed the couch back and called it a day, except while I was down on my hands and knees I saw something reflective through the hole, maybe six inches behind the surface of the wall. I grabbed my little headlamp and shined it in.

It was a hinge. A brass hinge.

I got out the vacuum cleaner and turned it on, letting it catch bits of sheetrock while I pulled more of it off the wall, enlarging the hole. By the time I stopped I had put a hole in my wall about three feet high, and exposed a cheap-looking wooden door on three brass (OK, probably not actual brass, but brass-colored) hinges.

The door matched the original kitchen cabinets, which were all gone since the remodel, except for the same kind were used in the bathroom, and I left those. It was latched with a little cheapo slider dealie, and I opened the door and found I could see a whole passageway behind the door, some 2x4's bolted to the wall behind it like a ladder, leading down.

I had my headlamp. I climbed in and headed down, thinking about spiders the whole time.

It was dark and dusty, I had pretty much discovered a basement I didn't know I had. The room underneath was about as big as the bottom floor of the house, and no floor -- just dirt. A couple of posts were holding the rest of the house up from under there, and it looked like no one had ever set foot in this room. I was leaving footprints in the dirt everywhere I went.

Over in the corner, there was a file cabinet. I about fell over.

Old-school, metal file cabinet. Covered in dust. Two drawers. I opened the top one, it slid open like old, really high-quality file cabinets do; it was empty. I opened the bottom one, and inside found a single, legal-sized envelope.

I opened it.

Inside, on a yellowed legal pad, was scrawled, "Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed." "OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!" His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"