When this woman took her bathroom mirror off the wall, she revealed a dark secret
What a discovery!
Do you ever wonder about all the things that have happened in your apartment before you lived there? An American millennial discovered a big secret about her apartment and decided to investigate. And what she discovers surprises a lot of people.
Special mirror
The longer you live somewhere, the more you get used to something. Such as the sounds you hear, what the tiles look like and the way your mirror hangs on the wall. And if you think about something for a long time, you can suddenly start noticing something’s off. Something similar happened to Samantha Hartsoe, when she found out that the mirror in her bathroom was drafty.
Curious about what was going on behind the mirror? Then continue reading on the next page.
Attached firmly to the wall
The mirror had always felt very cold, which is quite out of the ordinary. Samantha and her roommate thought it was suspicious, and decided to remove the mirror from the wall. This wasn’t an easy job, since the mirror was firmly attached to the wall. You might even think someone had done this on purpose…
Once the mirror was removed from the wall, Samantha noticed that instead of a wall, there was an open space behind the mirror. With her roommate as moral support, she decided – albeit armed with a flashlight and a hammer – to explore the area. After all, a space like that must exist for a reason, right?
TikTok
To document the bizarre incident, Samantha decided to post her discovery on TikTok. Many users of the app, like Samantha and her roommate, were curious about what was going on behind the hole in the wall. When Samantha could no longer contain her curiosity, she decided to crawl through the small hole. As you probably understand, this was all very exciting for her.
Every step of the eerie journey was captured on TikTok, and many users of the app excitedly followed along. After all, it’s not every day that you film an empty space behind your bathroom mirror. Samantha’s followers didn’t have to miss anything, because the American captured everything from the start. They started out as short videos, but quickly they turned into long videos that went viral. Everyone was curious about what was going on in the space behind the mirror. And more specifically, why that space was there.
Curious as well? Then continue reading on the next page.
Exciting quest
Samantha also featured her story in a column called “Curbed” in New York Magazine, where she left no detail unexplained. She also shared what she had done to find out what was causing the draft in the bathroom. An exciting quest, Samanta thought as well. “It was strange, because I don’t have a ventilation grill where cold air comes out,” the young woman said.
Once the source of the draft was found, Samantha decided to remove the mirror from the wall. Not an easy job, but it soon became clear why there was a lot of cold air in the bathroom. Samantha explains: “I realized then that the mirror wasn’t attached to the wall, which is kind of strange. But hey, that’s how they hang mirrors sometimes. Still, the cold air was a bit suspicious.”
Medicine cabinet
With the mirror partly removed, it looked like something else had been attached to the wall in its place before. Due to the shape and the hole in the wall, it looked a lot like a medicine cabinet. Still, Samantha was determined and wanted to find out why there was a hole in her wall and where it led to. When she poked her head through the hole, she saw something terrifying.
It is certainly no fun to find a dark, open space behind your bathroom mirror. The story is very similar to that of Candyman, a creepy movie featuring an ogre that appears if you shout ‘Candyman’ a couple of times.
Could this be the hiding place of an unwanted person? Read more on the next page.
Secret apartment
The room was too dark to see clearly, but it looked a lot like a secret apartment. Or could it be a hiding place for someone who went on the lam? It could also be used to spy on the residents of Samantha’s apartment, which is a creepy thought. What is the space for?
Samantha saw only one solution and that was to explore for herself. She explained to TV station NBC New York why she wanted to do that: “Curiosity killed the cat; curiosity kills me.” There was no other option than to crawl through the room and see what was in the room. Because, as Samantha said, “I needed to know what’s on the other side of my bathroom.”
Roosevelt Island
If we look at Samantha’s apartment, there is nothing out of the ordinary about it. It appeared to be a standard three-bedroom house that Samantha rented with two of her friends.
The house itself is located in a special neighborhood on Roosevelt Island in New York. This is on the East River, between Manhattan and Queens. A bustling neighborhood with many office buildings. For example, the new Cornell Tech office adorns the skyline and the new Amazon headquarters aren’t far away either.
Waste collection system
What makes the neighborhood special is that it is part of the Manhattan borough and still has its own board to manage its facilities. One such facility is the waste collection system, which collects waste through pipes that run underground.
What is striking is that the only comparable facility can be found in Disneyworld, according to the website Brick Underground. However, this does not mean that Roosevelt Island is a happy place to reside. In the past, hospitals were located here, including one for smallpox patients, and a prison.
Investigation
Still, Samantha was curious about the hole in the wall, and she went to investigate. She did this, even though her roommate John was not on board and pleaded to her many times. As can be heard in the videos.
John was curious as well, but didn’t think it was a good idea to go in. Still, this didn’t stop Samantha from crawling through the room. She was well prepared, of course, with a face mask.
Curious to find out what she encountered? Then continue reading on the next page.
Well prepared
She wore a headband with a flashlight on her head, in case the room was still too dark. She also carried a hammer in her basket for protection, because she didn’t know what to expect in the dark room.
Despite the protective equipment, John was not behind the idea. He tried to prepare his friend for what awaited her. In the video clip you can hear him say: “Be sure to use that hammer if necessary.”
Warning
To properly prepare her adventurous followers for similar journeys, Samantha warns that jumping through dark holes into empty spaces can lead to serious injury. John also gives one last piece of advice, and whispers in her ear: “If you smell something dead…”
Meanwhile, Samantha squeezed through the hole, hesitating. The space was a lot lower, so she couldn’t easily climb back into her own apartment. She told Curbed that she had to find a way out or else there would be no turning back.
Curious about what the girl would encounter? Then continue reading on the next page.
Something big
She was also certain that she had to fully explore the space: “I had to go back through that hole, which was next to impossible, or I had to find the exit from this place, which meant – at that moment – I had to investigate everything.” And according to Samantha, something big was awaiting her.
Samantha decided to climb through the hole again, only to discover something surprising. “There’s a room behind this.” Although her only source of light was the flashlight, she could see that it was a large room. It contained an unused sofa, a toilet and a few bags of trash.
Whole apartment
But it wasn’t just one room, it was an entire apartment. And that wasn’t all she found. The apartment was the same size as her own apartment. And the windows in the room were wide open. This explained the mystery of the draft in her bathroom.
Still, a question lingered in her head: was someone living here? She had also found a bottle, which looked like it had contained water. Viewers’ opinions were therefore divided.
Curious what they said? Then continue reading on the next page.
A lot of concerns
For example, some of the viewers thought she should keep looking, but other viewers agreed that she had to be careful. After all, you don’t know what else could be hiding. The followers were also concerned, because it always took a while before she uploaded a new video. Therefore, they were never sure whether there would be a new video.
Samantha understood her followers’ concerns, and admitted in a video that she herself was concerned too. “I had expected someone to be there, especially because of the water bottle that was there.” This kept her on alert in case something would happen to her.
Suspicious case
A follower admits they thought the situation was suspicious, because there were garbage bags lying around. The water bottle was also suspicious, as this was a fairly new brand of water.
John, Samantha’s roommate, can also be heard expressing his concern in the videos. He said things like, “What if someone lives there now?” He compared the situation to the movie Parasite, in which a man hides in a secluded room that no one knew about.
Curious what else she encounters? Then continue reading on the next page.