The Hidden Staircase

Confirmed 63,658

Overview

The Hidden Staircase refers to a secret cubbyhole discovered by Imgur user TwoBiteBrown behind a bookcase in his parents' bedroom in November 2013. Upon its introduction to Imgur, the story was met with both surprise and skepticism on Reddit, in a similar vein to the reception of Redditor dont_stop_me_smee’s alleged discovery of a mystery vault.

Background

On November 13th, 2013, Imgur^[1] user TwoBiteBrownie posted an image gallery containing several photographs of a secret staircase discovered behind a bookshelf (shown below). The photos were accompanied by a detailed description of the nook and objects found within, along with the author's own suspicion that someone had come into his room and stolen some of his Halloween candy. In the first five days, the gallery gained 1.15 million views and 2,700 comments.

"You would find this. Someone was living in our walls. IN OUR WALLS. That is my Halloween candy. That someone came into my room, took from my bag, and then brought back in here. Banana peel for scale. About 30 seconds after taking this picture, we realized what it meant and got the fuck out of there."

Notable Developments

On the same day, Redditor Bagrant1 submitted the gallery to the /r/WTF^[1] subreddit, where it received more than 48,000 up votes and 4,700 comments in the next five days. In the comments section Redditor owitbyrnes posted a Most Interesting Man in the World image macro, which joked about the use of a banana peel for scale perspective in the photo gallery (shown below). On the following day, Redditor Sanderat submitted the gallery to the /r/creepy^[3] subreddit, where it garnered upwards of 2,800 up votes and 210 comments in the following four days.

Update

On November 14th, TwoBitesBrownie submitted a follow-up post to Imgur^[4] in which he revealed that his family promptly moved out of the house shortly after the initial discovery and would not be returning to the house, although the police speculated that the person had only been living there temporarily based on the available evidence.

"So a lot of people wanted me to do a follow up on what happened. Here it is, but I don't really have anything to put pictures of. I just put this one in for proof. Anyways, here's what happened. I left to go to a friends house, while the police investigated my house. They found nobody there."

Expand Update

They have told us that the person was only living there temporarily, which doesn't make that much sense to me. But apparently, he would come in for periods of time, then leave for a while. They determined this because of the lack of supplies, and forensicy thingies, i'm not a cop. The police also said that they are going to keep a city wide search for whoever was living here, although they don't think they will find him. They sent in DNA to the lab, but the test will likely come back with no matches in a few weeks.There were no other entrances to the secret passage, therefore the person would have been using my parents' bedroom to access it. The walls are incredibly soundproof, which is probably how we didn't even notice. We were cleared to move back in today, but obviously we're not staying, just as a precaution in case he or she comes back. My parents said that I was never allowed back in there again, and believe me, I tried. They actually went inside and boarded the whole place up. The police took all his stuff away, so I can't include any pictures of that.

Below, I'm going to include some answers to questions people asked, because obviously, there is a lot of skepticism towards this. I would be skeptical too.

Q: Where are his other belongings?
A: He or she was only living there periodically, apparently. Their clothes were placed in the corner, which I failed to see in the dark. The police found them later.

Q: Why does that banana look fresh?
A: I was eating it when I went down. lol. It was dark, and the only way I could see was through a dim light from my phone. We couldn't find a flashlight. We saw the blankets, but it was too dark to see what they were. I tossed the banana at them, and then when nothing happened, I took a picture with the flash to see what it was. When editing, I remembered it could be for scale.

Q: How did you not notice it, or see it in the blueprints?
A: Yeah, I can't really explain that one. I asked my mom, and she said, "I guess we fucked up." I honestly can't really explain it.. Um, and as for how we didn't notice it, I guess it was really cleverly hidden under the stairs.

Q: You write like you are 25, but have halloween candy?
A: I'm 15. And apparently a good writer.

Q: Are you okay?
A: Yes, I am perfectly fine, just a little creeped out. :)

Q: Where did the poo go?
A: I don't want to think about it

You know how reddit does those Ask Me Anythings? I'll do one in the comments for any further questions

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites reported about the Imgur photo gallery, including the Belfast Telegraph,^[5] Metro,^[6] Gizmodo,^[7] Yahoo,^[8] The Blaze^[9] and The Daily Dot.^[10]