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A man was inspecting a property for a buyer when he made a discovery that changed the house completely.
Ryan Edmiston is a property inspector based in Portland, Oregon, and prides himself on his thorough work—which has now been proven as he discovered an entire room nobody knew existed.
“That’s not the first time I’ve found hidden areas in a house, but that was the best preserved time capsule that I’ve found in my 10 years of inspecting,” he told Newsweek.
He explained the house was old, and had had a couple of extensions over the years, and in total had multiple attics—”only three of which I could access.”
“I knew there was an attic over the garage, but the only access I could find was a little access panel in the garage ceiling,” he said. “When I poked my head up in there, I saw the staircase and then knew where to look for the hidden door.”
He said the “smell was atrocious,” describing it as “very stale air mixed with rodent activity,” but added that it was a “super cool space that hadn’t been touched in years.”
“The current owner had only lived there about five years and didn’t know it was there!” he said.
He shared his discovery in a video to his Instagram page, @portlandpropertyinspectors, revealing a furnished office complete with a chair, overhead lights and multiple desks—and, vitally, a ladder to the side, meaning there had to be an access point.
He discovered the access point hidden behind a drawer that swung open when pulled, and stepped inside.
He said he only told the buyers of the property at the very end of his inspection, calling it “very entertaining” to see their reactions.
“We were standing in the bedroom, and I gave the wife my flashlight and said pull on that bookcase. She looked terrified, but when she opened the door her and her husband thought it was the neatest thing,” he revealed.
Property inspectors are an important part of the home-buying process, as it gives the purchasers a chance to find any hidden defects and evaluate major systems and structures before closing on the sale. This, according to Progressive, helps to avoid any costly surprises after buying the property.
Edmiston said that he has a lot of local followers on his page, interested to see the hidden rooms of their native Portland—and incredibly, he wasn’t the only one to know about the secret room.
One user wrote in the comments of his video: “I knew what house you were in the second you walked up to that bookcase! A friend lived there in the ’80s-’90s and that was a playroom we spent hours in. Such a cool hidden room! Looks exactly like it did in the ’80s! Thanks for the dose of nostalgia.”
Edmiston told Newsweek that social media has been “very beneficial” to his business, and that hidden room stories really pique people’s interest.
“People like to make their own conclusions and enjoy a cliff hanger from what I gathered,” he said.
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures you want to share? Send them to [email protected] with some extra details, and they could appear on our website.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood and Emma Lee-Sang
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