This Woman Found A Secret Room Beneath Her Feet, You Won't Believe It's History

20. Hidden Room

What would you do if you discovered a hidden room in your house? Would it scare you enough not to check it out? Or would you get a running start at figuring out exactly what’s in it and why it was hidden? One woman had to ponder the answer to these questions as she discovered a secret basement floor in her Pennsylvania home.

19. Childhood Dreams

Alexandra Poulos lives in the town of Lansdowne, and she always knew there was something special about her house. She has lived in the home all her life, growing up there as a young child and always having suspicions that there was something unique about it. She told ABC that she used to be quite the dreamer,“When I was a child I would have random dreams about there being other rooms in the house. I’d look it up on dream meaning sites and people always thought I just had a crazy imagination”…

18. The White Colonial Home

The home itself is beautiful, having a colonial style with a clean white finish, but what lies beneath it stemmed from a not-so-beautiful past. The 43-year-old told ABC that she has a deep love for the home, as her family bought it in 1974 and, after the passing of her mother and brother, she couldn’t let the house go. After working out the logistics, she became the owner. She decided not to live in the house herself, though, renting it out instead.

17. Tenants

She explained the living situation in an interview,“I just love it so much. I started renting it out, and now we have awesome tenants”. Although having a rental property is a nice source of income, it can get hectic at times when things start to break. The house started falling apart a bit, and one thing after another started breaking in the basement.

16. The House Is Falling Apart

The house started to really fall apart, and Alexandra kept getting one call after another,“First it was (the) oil tank that went, and then after that, it was an old cast-iron sewer pipe that just started cracking, so I had to get that replaced” she explained in the interview. And then things started to go really wrong when she got a call from Jerry, her tenant, “Alex, you have to come to the house because there are cracks in the walls”…

15. The Best Landlord

Being the great landlord that she is, Alex explained she always responds ASAP to her tenant’s needs, “I always respond right away because I try to keep the house as I would want it because I still love it”. The basement of her childhood home now consumed her thoughts as it seemed to require her attention nearly every day, and she suddenly remembered a rumor her neighbor told her father years ago…

14. The Rumor

She remembered the neighbor out back, “…an old doctor and his wife. She told my dad, ‘You know there’s a basement under your basement’ My dad just thought she was crazy or whatever. Long story short, I always had that in the back of my mind”. It would have been wise of her father to listen to the woman, as it took years for the truth to come to the surface…

13. Detective Work

Alex decided to do a little investigating for herself, trying to determine if what her neighbor said all those years ago was true or not. She looked to the internet for clues,”For the past couple weeks, I’ve been looking stuff up on the history of homes in the area. It was, like, 2 a.m. one night, and I came across an article that said there was this house that’s, like, a five-minute drive from my house and the owners found out it was linked to the Underground Railroad”. This definitely peaked her interest…

12. The Decision

Her intuition was telling her that there was truth in this rumor and, when she read a little more, she made up her mind, “They said they knew it was down there and they knew it was covered up by cement. And then I knew. That was it”…

11. Fixing And Digging

Alex had called a local company named Baldwin Masonry to help her fix the cracks in the basement walls. When they were digging to fix the foundation, she asked them to keep going, “I asked him if, when he’s digging in the basement, (to) dig a little deeper, and I knew he thought I was a total nut”.

10. He Was In

When she further explained why she wanted to continue digging, he was in, “But I explained the possible historical connection, and he wrote me back and said, ‘Yeah, I’ve never encountered anything like that, but that would be really neat’”. So just like that, the excavation began…

9. The Very Next Day

It didn’t take long for the workers to find what Alex was hoping was hidden. As soon as they got to digging, they found it,“I get a call saying, ‘You’re not going to believe this. They found it. A large hole in the basement floor leads to a previously unknown room 14 feet below'”. They were all in shock; Alex had dreamt about this as a child and couldn’t believe they had actually found it.

8. Shock And Awe

She explained to ABC how much of a shock it was, even though she had always had a sneaking suspicion,“I said, ‘You’re joking’. I swear to God, they found it. It’s a whole other area of the house”. Jerry explained to Alex that the whole thing had everyone confused because of how old the room appeared to be,“It’s just suspicious because I think what we found might have predated the house being built. It’s about 14 feet deep and maybe about 6 to 8 feet wide by about 15 feet long. It’s a nice-size room”…

7. Further Room For discovery

The room also features a stone wall on one side that has one stone that is extremely loose, suspiciously so. However, fear of permanently damaging the foundation of the house keeps Alex from any further excavation. If something did damage the foundation, it can cost anywhere from $5,000-$20,000 depending on the severity.

6. The Historian

A local historian that looked into the home’s unique situation said there are multiple reasons why the basement was hidden, but that he can’t discount that it has connections to the underground railroad. There may be multiple reasons, but due to the neighboring homes with such historical connections, it’s a high probability Alex’s house is historic too…

5. Rachel Moloshok

Although there isn’t any direct evidence, local historians and publishers have gained interest in the discovery, including Rachel Moloshok, the managing editor of publications for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Moloshok was interviewed about whether she believed the house has a historical connection to the underground railroad or not, “The region in general historically has been known as an abolitionist sympathizer area that probably did have a good number of people who have been involved in or were sympathetic to anti-slavery activism, including potential participation in the Underground Railroad”.

4. How To Confirm The History

Moloshok further explained to ABC that there was only one way to confirm the connection,“The only way to really follow up on that would be to research who the owners were in the past and follow up on property records and see if there were people who were known to be vocal abolitionists, based on the actual documentation of that”. Although no one is jumping to suggest the hidden room was used for the Underground Railroad, it starts to make sense…

3. Other Explanations

The editor also gave other explanations for the hidden room, although they don’t live up to the altruistic essence of helping people escape slavery, “[maybe] somebody was paranoid and hiding gold”. She also stated that perhaps someone had a family secret they were hiding or more simply, maybe it was made for storage.

2. The Mystery

Poulos is thrilled about the new discovery, regardless of its origin. Her tenant is just as interested as she is,“I need to figure out next steps,” she said. “Jerry is so enthralled by it. They’re just as obsessed with this stuff as I am”. Jerry even gave comment about his personal feelings on the house, “I’ve always known this house is special, from the second I walked in. It’s like a spirit saying, ‘Don’t leave me’”.