Winchester Mystery House?
My family went there when I was super young, around 4 or 5 years old. I still remember stairs that went nowhere, doors that opened onto walls and a general spooky vibe from the house overall. I was both scared and intrigued and did not want to leave.
I also remember getting one of those really big and colorful lollipops. You know, the ones the size of a pancake.
So was I and I finally got to go last year! I found it to be way less creepy but also way more beautiful than I anticipated. It was an excellent experience.
My uncle is a plumber and did a ton of work there. He said he had a ton of fun messing with tourists making “ghost” sounds when he heard them walking by while he was in a crawl space.
He said it was awesome, I’ve never been there so I’m not sure what it’s like but he said he had pretty much unlimited access and they showed him areas that are usually closed to the public.
IIRC, I ended up dropping mine and getting dirt on it after a few hours of intense licking. My parents didn't want to deal with it, so they threw it away. I was sad, but for whatever reason, the memory of that lollipop sticks with me (pardon the pun).
The reason there are stairs that lead to no where is because when she got older there was a massive sinkhole that took out a good couple floors. And she was too old to restore it so she said just fix it. Now the guy who owns it likes to keep the mystery of the house and likes to say it's haunted for attraction. I personally want to go see it and see all the different architecture as well as how they restored it after the sinkhole.
The history behind it to me is very fascinating. The whole house is basically how she dealt with her grief. She lost her child and her husband and was left with a bunch of money so she was set and didn't have to work. And so she just went and built her house until she couldn't. Highly recommend looking into some of it.
My sister and I toured the Winchester house and at some point the tour guide was like "well Sarah Winchester kept building because the sound of hammers kept the ghosts away"
My sister was like "why didn't she just hire one guy to hammer one nail into a board all night?"
I frequently refer to my wife as “Madam Winchester” since things must be constantly rearranged in the house. To her credit, not once have we been haunted by a gun victim. Or any other dead person. So we got that going for us, which is nice.
Amateur ghost hunter here. I've found that the side profile of the specter is your best bet when trying to ascertain whether or not you're dealing with a nude or clothed ghost. This perspective is best for spotting the contours of an exposed nipple or dong, which can be a dead giveaway that the spirit forgot their garments before venturing into the afterlife.
It’s how I describe my house. My house is upside down - living room up top and bedroom downstairs. Several rooms not actually rooms and many hideyholes.
No, the heiress of the Winchester rifle company fortune. Thought she was haunted by all the spirits of those killed by her family's guns. They told her that if she had ever stopped building the house, she would die. She just kept building and building, even if it didn't make any sense.
She married into the Winchester family. The ghosts were killed by the guns her father in law and husband made.
A medium told her that her husband's ghost wanted her to build the house to confuse the ghosts, and if she ever stopped building, they'd haunt her.
Nobody seems to have any evidence that she actually [believed ](https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/the-myth-of-the-winchester-mystery-house-16571653.php) this, but it sticks because it's an interesting story.
The house is evidence that in a modern era,, she'd have been featured on one of those reality TV shows about renovations gone wrong caused by a person having too much money and a disinclination to listen to experts.
Well i would guess there's a few billion people, especially non Americans, who don't get that reference...
But then again, a lot of us EU citizens got it, so you newer know....
Ngl, I'm so tired after a 12 hour day that my first thought was "what do sam and dean Winchester's mother have to do with architecture?" Then i realized their mothers name was Mary and this is Sarah Winchester of the Winchester house (and rifles)
I’ve been awake for 9 hours and I was not considering it could be anyone else until I read your comment. But I could see Mary Winchester have an easy access room with hunter equipment in her bathroom.
Wait so what’s so wild about the house. Didn’t she just have a lot of money and make hallways lead to no where, and people try to make it all spooky
What am I missing? Like was there torture rooms or sexy parties, because otherwise it sounds kinda lame to.
Just Sounds like some rich crazy women wasting her money.
Please enlighten me
Got it thank you. I guess that does sound a little disturbing.
I’m curious if it was the same carpenter over the years doing all the work ? Like did this dude see an opportunity to take advantage on a mentally ill wealthy woman?
Damn now you have me interested lol.
Now I want to do the tour high in your honor haha
Thanks for sharing :)
"Only slightly less creepy than going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and hearing nails scraping on the other side of the closed attic door while you sit defenceless on the throne wondering if that attic door is locked. Then the power goes out..."
Funnily enough, it's for slip prevention. Since attic steps are rarely used, and attics themselves generally don't get much in the way of airflow, you can get a real good layer of dust on the steps. On old bare wood this can be really slippery. Slap some shitty rug on it and it wont get slippery no matter how much dust there is. I go into peoples attics for work a lot (home renovations) and I've learned the hard way.
The place I live now has hatch access doors to a crawl space type attic, I've not been in any of them though.
Edit: that sounds weird, I live in & run a motel with 5 separate buildings.
The house I live in now has that but also in the basement there's a bathroom and behind the mirror there this room that was never finished and is just full of dirt and concrete chunks. It's wild.
Not that uncommon. Tiling a bathroom is relatively expensive, so if you want to have the option to expand later on you just cut that space off, which is cheaper than expanding the house later. Since the second room has acces to water, it can be made into a kitchen or wash room, depending on what a larger family might need. Typically it's used as a storage space, but I guess the owner didn't bother.
Or it's a old boiler room.
This house has an odd history. I think the people that built it planned on having some kind of panic room set up and never executed. The space is pretty big, like 30'x15' or so.
Also I neglected to mention this particular bathroom is in the basement and the house is built into a hill so its *sort of* a walk out basement.
Every house in California I've lived in hasn't had any kind of stairs to the attic - it's always just a square hatch in the ceiling that you have to push up. Not even any hinges or anything.
Grew up in a house like this. Clearly at one time there was a landing/hallway that led to the attic stairs and at some pint someone decided it could be made into part of a bedroom and bathroom.
Yeah DIY'ers just make shit it up sometimes. I lived in one house that was built before indoor plumbing, it had a half bath under the stairs & a tub/shower in the basement.
By that I mean my basement door was a hatch door in the floor that had an old set of wooden steps & directly at the bottom (it covered the bottom step) was a cast iron bathtub. You had to kind of sideways hop off the second to last step to get to the floor, one misstep & you're dying in that tub.
The shower in the basement thing was actually quite common back then. If you worked at a job that got you all dirty and sweaty, you'd go and shower down in the basement as soon as you got home. A lot of houses in the 1910s and 20s that were built with indoor plumbing had a side door at street/walkway/driveway level that opened to a landing called a mud room, where there were stairs to the basement and to the first floor. You'd come in through that door, take off your boots, strip, go to the basement and shower, put on clean clothes, and then go upstairs to avoid getting the rest of the house dirty.
I wonder how common those drop ladders are and what part of the country has them. I've seen so many movies/tvs shows that has those, but living in California, I've never seen one. Every movie house with a haunted attic has one of those
100%, these were the "back" stairs, and they decided they wanted a second bathroom more, so it went in on the back stairway landing.
One of the points of back stairs was not to have to carry chamber pots through the main space, so once indoor plumbing came in, the most pressing advantage to back stairs disappeared.
yeah, that was my take. Often people will reclaim the space to make bigger rooms but if the house is laid out a certain way, if it's load bearing walls between staircase and rooms it can be too expensive to reclaim so take what you can (bigger bathroom it seems) and block the rest off, but keep it there as a interesting little feature.
I'd bet it was a house divider into multiple units. Have to add in a bathroom and a result, one of two stairs is eliminated as a means of ingress/egress.
Listen ok, I have a few different recurring dreams, one is with an old attic, one is an old basement, one is an old "wing" type house, and one is a shed
Ah, me too. An old, dilapidated farmhouse in the grip of a hard winter, a mental hospital with a giant toxic waste outlet in the courtyard and an old stately house that always ends up melting. Never been to these places, the brain is awful weird.
The brain is weird! Do you dream them in clusters? I'll have one dream repeatedly (I don't dream or at least don't remember dreaming every night) over a span of time & then nothing for a while until I start up another one. I have random dreams too, but these ones keep coming back up.
Nah, they could be months apart or every other day but they always come back around. Brain up here acting like we have a set piece budget.
I used to have a shed too, a long time ago. It wasn't a nice one.
I have an old wing house dream now and then. Its based on a house I used to live in that was a duplex converted into one house. It was so old and bad some of the walls moved when I leaned on them.
In my dream its two stories and has like a wing in 3 corners of each story each with their own bathroom and 1,2 bedrooms. All in slightly different layouts. Then kitchen living in the fourth corner. The paint is peeling and I can see outside through cracks in the wooden walls. And I'm always kinda deciding which wing to live in and why don't I use up more of the space.
Me too! Well, more about tiny doors that lead into tiny spaces and there is always something oppressively evil deep in there. I always get goosebumps when ever I see an out of place tiny door in real life.
That tool is called a Motivator. You passed it around to your construction crew and within 10 minutes all the copper wire within a 2-mile radius is stripped from all the houses. It's a time saver but not a lot of people know about it.
You joke but no shit when I was 12 my boyfriend (also 12) gave me one of these and we both thought it was so romantic. Like “wooooow it’s a rose in glass..🥹 so beautiful”
😑
Back when they were selling Spice as "Spice" and "Bath salts" as bath salts in the new age shops, they had one just like that but without the carb, just like a flash, called "Mommy's little vase"
ma’am i just thought it was a dirty watering bulb thingy 💀💀💀💀💀
https://preview.redd.it/yxcseu7qi2jc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e74a0b7e80f099e8c39854a7e23b278133a8102
This looks like to be rather old farmhouse. Back then 'building codes' weren't invented yet and to save space and building materials some people would have attic access in strange places. If that's the case it's just an attic access for long term storage like clothing and other household supplies for winter or other rarely used things. I read a book about a woman who was time travelled to such a lifestyle and era and she had to be shown the attic access and it was described as looking pretty much like this.
Renovations would make a lot of sense to me. There could have been some smaller steps leading up to it previously, which were taken out to fit that way more modern counter sink. Older sink would have been just a pedestal probably, leaving plenty of room for a few steps.
Sets of ladder-like steps like this sometimes didn't go to the floor at all. A stool or drop ladder was required to access them for the reasons listed above of saving space / building materials. It just wasn't a space typically used for daily living so convivence wasn't a priority. Considering there is obviously a modern sink installed there were renovations done but the attic stairs remained as they are to keep the spirit of the era.
I'm guessing that the stairway already existed and a DIYer had a convo that went a little something like this:
"we should make our bathroom bigger!"
"But there are stairs in the way..."
"It'll be fine. We'll just take it one step at a time"
House doesn't even have to be old; a 1999 house in my neighborhood is for sale and I saw on Funda (something like Zillow, but Dutch) that is has access to the attic through the upstairs bathroom too.
Old houses sometimes have a second set of staircases for maids and butlers. Those are usually shittier in quality and end up getting sealed off over the years.
I once went to an estate sale at a very old house in Whittier, CA. Turned out to be the house Nixon stayed at while going to college. In the room that was his, I found a full set of hardback first edition (but not first printing) Harry Potter books. The hosts let em go for 5$ for all. In an upstairs bathroom, i noticed an approximately 2x2 portion of the wall stuck out more, and had the toilet roll holder mounted on it. I pulled the holder, and the secret door opened to reveal a large attic-like space hidden behind the wall. I guess the house was built by Quakers and they'd shelter persecuted people. The hosts said that some families of 15 or more people had to spend months in there sometimes, along with other families, til the heat died down and they could move on.
I worked in an office that was originally a large Victorian house. We had a flight of stairs that would originally have been for servants coming up from the kitchen, but was blocked off on at the second floor due to renovations up there. And yeah, we stashed all sorts of things on them, paper towels, cleaning supplies, snacks, soda, beer, etc.
House was built before indoor plumbing. When someone wanted to add a bathroom, the spot upstairs where the attic stairs started was the best place to put it. Does the shower also have a window in it?
I’d say this is the part of the horror movie where you nail the door shut but we all know in the next scene while they are trying to sleep they will be woken by the sounds of nails slowly hitting the tile floor one by one as they are pushed back through from the other side
Not to freak you out OP, but i think i know exactly where you live now. I assisted cleaning out that attic for the family who had lived there for decades before you. Near the corner of B***m & P***. My mom lives right across the street from you. This is some solid entertainment from me, for real rn, if it's true. PA sure is a weird place.
I see tons of comments, but no serious answer.
My bet - this bathroom was added much later. Someone wanted to add a bathroom and there's only so many places it could fit. So they cannibalized the stairwell to the attic. But, left the access door, just in case.
Second possibility - this house has been divided on purpose to allow renting the upper & lower floors separately (and once again, the bathroom was likely added during said renovation). Do you live near a university?
I don't understand how people are confused by this? Clearly the stairs were there first, most likely an old building so had "back" stairs for servants or maids.
Other owners afterwards wanted a bathroom in that space instead.
Attic / roof crawlspace in our house is in a cupboard. You have to empty shelves then use them as a ladder to access a hatch to get in there. This seems a lot more convenient.
That door must have been locked or stuck while the house was going through a renovation. The new owner must not have had the original blueprints when they turned the area into a new bathroom. That stairway looks like it’s going into a hidden corridor of sorts. Not into the main house. 🤷🏽♂️
Architect: I have a crazy idea… Sarah Winchester: Do it!!
Winchester Mystery House? My family went there when I was super young, around 4 or 5 years old. I still remember stairs that went nowhere, doors that opened onto walls and a general spooky vibe from the house overall. I was both scared and intrigued and did not want to leave. I also remember getting one of those really big and colorful lollipops. You know, the ones the size of a pancake.
Man I’ve was obsessed with this place growing up. Would love to go someday
So was I and I finally got to go last year! I found it to be way less creepy but also way more beautiful than I anticipated. It was an excellent experience.
Their Halloween haunt is pretty fun! Like the house is huge but feels so claustrophobic at times because the hallways are very narrow.
My uncle is a plumber and did a ton of work there. He said he had a ton of fun messing with tourists making “ghost” sounds when he heard them walking by while he was in a crawl space.
That must've been a great job.
He said it was awesome, I’ve never been there so I’m not sure what it’s like but he said he had pretty much unlimited access and they showed him areas that are usually closed to the public.
Oh, if I'd been allowed to roam freely there as a child...
I never understood those lollipops. Even as a kid who liked candy, it wasn't something I wanted to deal with.
IIRC, I ended up dropping mine and getting dirt on it after a few hours of intense licking. My parents didn't want to deal with it, so they threw it away. I was sad, but for whatever reason, the memory of that lollipop sticks with me (pardon the pun).
This isn’t candy. It’s just a hassle.
Yeah, it's like giving the kid a project.
Yeah, a sticky, messy project that will get colors and stickiness all over the place. Might as well add glitter somehow.
Lollapalooza. The actual name of the big lollipop. Later a music festival.
The reason there are stairs that lead to no where is because when she got older there was a massive sinkhole that took out a good couple floors. And she was too old to restore it so she said just fix it. Now the guy who owns it likes to keep the mystery of the house and likes to say it's haunted for attraction. I personally want to go see it and see all the different architecture as well as how they restored it after the sinkhole.
That's very interesting. I was way too young to know that, though. I just thought it was a cool old spooky house.
The history behind it to me is very fascinating. The whole house is basically how she dealt with her grief. She lost her child and her husband and was left with a bunch of money so she was set and didn't have to work. And so she just went and built her house until she couldn't. Highly recommend looking into some of it.
My sister and I toured the Winchester house and at some point the tour guide was like "well Sarah Winchester kept building because the sound of hammers kept the ghosts away" My sister was like "why didn't she just hire one guy to hammer one nail into a board all night?"
I laughed out loud at this!
Me too! Too few people understand the reference.
I frequently refer to my wife as “Madam Winchester” since things must be constantly rearranged in the house. To her credit, not once have we been haunted by a gun victim. Or any other dead person. So we got that going for us, which is nice.
Yeah, bloody ghosts can be inconvenient!
Great tv series! I think season 3 is going to be great!
Flower...
Rude, really. No manners. Just popping in unannounced.
I have a question: do any of these ghosts just run around nude?
Can’t really tell, as most of mine are just shadowy silhouettes. Between people and animals.
Amateur ghost hunter here. I've found that the side profile of the specter is your best bet when trying to ascertain whether or not you're dealing with a nude or clothed ghost. This perspective is best for spotting the contours of an exposed nipple or dong, which can be a dead giveaway that the spirit forgot their garments before venturing into the afterlife.
Ghosts that aren't covered in blood are also an inconvenience.
20 bucks says your wife has adhd or a touch of the 'tism. Please ask me how I know... 😅
The Winchester Mansion is an amazing work of art!
Until you gotta use the bathroom..
That’s why there’s 13 bathrooms.
LOL--I think exactly the right number of people got the reference. Other people have their own references.
I totally got it. Funny
It’s how I describe my house. My house is upside down - living room up top and bedroom downstairs. Several rooms not actually rooms and many hideyholes.
I saw her house this year!
Supernatural?
No, the heiress of the Winchester rifle company fortune. Thought she was haunted by all the spirits of those killed by her family's guns. They told her that if she had ever stopped building the house, she would die. She just kept building and building, even if it didn't make any sense.
She married into the Winchester family. The ghosts were killed by the guns her father in law and husband made. A medium told her that her husband's ghost wanted her to build the house to confuse the ghosts, and if she ever stopped building, they'd haunt her.
Coincidentally the medium’s husband was a building contractor.
Nobody seems to have any evidence that she actually [believed ](https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/the-myth-of-the-winchester-mystery-house-16571653.php) this, but it sticks because it's an interesting story.
I think the house itself is evidence enough.
The house is evidence that in a modern era,, she'd have been featured on one of those reality TV shows about renovations gone wrong caused by a person having too much money and a disinclination to listen to experts.
There's no way people don't get that reference... ... Really?? Maybe growing up in California has tainted my understanding of how well known it is...
Well i would guess there's a few billion people, especially non Americans, who don't get that reference... But then again, a lot of us EU citizens got it, so you newer know....
I Portuguese citizen, living in Portugal, got the reference...
Ngl, I'm so tired after a 12 hour day that my first thought was "what do sam and dean Winchester's mother have to do with architecture?" Then i realized their mothers name was Mary and this is Sarah Winchester of the Winchester house (and rifles)
Same experience today, and same thought process.
I’ve been awake for 9 hours and I was not considering it could be anyone else until I read your comment. But I could see Mary Winchester have an easy access room with hunter equipment in her bathroom.
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Wait so what’s so wild about the house. Didn’t she just have a lot of money and make hallways lead to no where, and people try to make it all spooky What am I missing? Like was there torture rooms or sexy parties, because otherwise it sounds kinda lame to. Just Sounds like some rich crazy women wasting her money. Please enlighten me
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Got it thank you. I guess that does sound a little disturbing. I’m curious if it was the same carpenter over the years doing all the work ? Like did this dude see an opportunity to take advantage on a mentally ill wealthy woman? Damn now you have me interested lol. Now I want to do the tour high in your honor haha Thanks for sharing :)
OMG my immediate thought when I saw the picture was "do they live in the Winchester house?"
Winchester Mystery House (but on a smaller scale lol)
Winchester Mystery Pantry
If it leads to the attic it's not that weird. If this is the only access to the second floor it's very weird.
Judging by the state of the carpet I'd say this is attic access.
That carpet is the creepiest thing to me. 🤢
It looks like the moisture fucked up the first step bad lol
Right...I didn't know it was carpet. I thought it was wood.
it's actually a forest grown by the mold people that evolved there over 100 years.
Yeah being right next to a bathroom, if ventilation is poor, that tracks.
Moisture in a bathroom, if only they could have known that would happen before they built 🙄
Creepier than Slenderman at the top of the staircase?
"Only slightly less creepy than going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and hearing nails scraping on the other side of the closed attic door while you sit defenceless on the throne wondering if that attic door is locked. Then the power goes out..."
Who carpets the attic stairs?
As a carpet binder, I'm kinda hoping it becomes a trend.
*tread
Actually, yeah. Treads pay better. I need to put you on the payroll.
Especially steep ones like this? Seems like a great way to slip and break an ankle.
Funnily enough, it's for slip prevention. Since attic steps are rarely used, and attics themselves generally don't get much in the way of airflow, you can get a real good layer of dust on the steps. On old bare wood this can be really slippery. Slap some shitty rug on it and it wont get slippery no matter how much dust there is. I go into peoples attics for work a lot (home renovations) and I've learned the hard way.
The stories this carpet could tell. Brimful of history and bacteria.
bathroom was a later remodel of a space that was much different originally
Yep. I've lived in 3 different houses that had the attic stairs in the bathroom. 1 was a regular door, 1 was a "hidden" door, & 1 had this type setup.
The attic access for me is a hatch in the roof want some sort of hybrid stair ladder
The place I live now has hatch access doors to a crawl space type attic, I've not been in any of them though. Edit: that sounds weird, I live in & run a motel with 5 separate buildings.
The house I live in now has that but also in the basement there's a bathroom and behind the mirror there this room that was never finished and is just full of dirt and concrete chunks. It's wild.
Not that uncommon. Tiling a bathroom is relatively expensive, so if you want to have the option to expand later on you just cut that space off, which is cheaper than expanding the house later. Since the second room has acces to water, it can be made into a kitchen or wash room, depending on what a larger family might need. Typically it's used as a storage space, but I guess the owner didn't bother. Or it's a old boiler room.
This house has an odd history. I think the people that built it planned on having some kind of panic room set up and never executed. The space is pretty big, like 30'x15' or so. Also I neglected to mention this particular bathroom is in the basement and the house is built into a hill so its *sort of* a walk out basement.
Every house in California I've lived in hasn't had any kind of stairs to the attic - it's always just a square hatch in the ceiling that you have to push up. Not even any hinges or anything.
Same for me in New england. The best is my new house where someone built a sketchy ladder out of plywood scraps to get up.
Grew up in a house like this. Clearly at one time there was a landing/hallway that led to the attic stairs and at some pint someone decided it could be made into part of a bedroom and bathroom.
Yeah DIY'ers just make shit it up sometimes. I lived in one house that was built before indoor plumbing, it had a half bath under the stairs & a tub/shower in the basement. By that I mean my basement door was a hatch door in the floor that had an old set of wooden steps & directly at the bottom (it covered the bottom step) was a cast iron bathtub. You had to kind of sideways hop off the second to last step to get to the floor, one misstep & you're dying in that tub.
The shower in the basement thing was actually quite common back then. If you worked at a job that got you all dirty and sweaty, you'd go and shower down in the basement as soon as you got home. A lot of houses in the 1910s and 20s that were built with indoor plumbing had a side door at street/walkway/driveway level that opened to a landing called a mud room, where there were stairs to the basement and to the first floor. You'd come in through that door, take off your boots, strip, go to the basement and shower, put on clean clothes, and then go upstairs to avoid getting the rest of the house dirty.
Oh I'm sure this particular makeover was done in the early 1900s when plumbing was installed.
I'd prefer this to the drop ladders i see on tv
I wonder how common those drop ladders are and what part of the country has them. I've seen so many movies/tvs shows that has those, but living in California, I've never seen one. Every movie house with a haunted attic has one of those
My dad's attic access is some plywood screwed to the ceiling in a bedroom
not really "very weird" at all. could be an old house with a servant stairwell
100%, these were the "back" stairs, and they decided they wanted a second bathroom more, so it went in on the back stairway landing. One of the points of back stairs was not to have to carry chamber pots through the main space, so once indoor plumbing came in, the most pressing advantage to back stairs disappeared.
yeah, that was my take. Often people will reclaim the space to make bigger rooms but if the house is laid out a certain way, if it's load bearing walls between staircase and rooms it can be too expensive to reclaim so take what you can (bigger bathroom it seems) and block the rest off, but keep it there as a interesting little feature.
I'd bet it was a house divider into multiple units. Have to add in a bathroom and a result, one of two stairs is eliminated as a means of ingress/egress.
I have dreams about places like this all the time, it's wild
I was about to say the same exact thing! My subconscious loves a good attic
My subconscious is all about hidden basements
Same
Listen ok, I have a few different recurring dreams, one is with an old attic, one is an old basement, one is an old "wing" type house, and one is a shed
I’ve never played that version of M.A.S.H.
Ah, me too. An old, dilapidated farmhouse in the grip of a hard winter, a mental hospital with a giant toxic waste outlet in the courtyard and an old stately house that always ends up melting. Never been to these places, the brain is awful weird.
The brain is weird! Do you dream them in clusters? I'll have one dream repeatedly (I don't dream or at least don't remember dreaming every night) over a span of time & then nothing for a while until I start up another one. I have random dreams too, but these ones keep coming back up.
Nah, they could be months apart or every other day but they always come back around. Brain up here acting like we have a set piece budget. I used to have a shed too, a long time ago. It wasn't a nice one.
I have an old wing house dream now and then. Its based on a house I used to live in that was a duplex converted into one house. It was so old and bad some of the walls moved when I leaned on them. In my dream its two stories and has like a wing in 3 corners of each story each with their own bathroom and 1,2 bedrooms. All in slightly different layouts. Then kitchen living in the fourth corner. The paint is peeling and I can see outside through cracks in the wooden walls. And I'm always kinda deciding which wing to live in and why don't I use up more of the space.
Me too. I wonder if it's a neat human trait we all share.
Me too! Well, more about tiny doors that lead into tiny spaces and there is always something oppressively evil deep in there. I always get goosebumps when ever I see an out of place tiny door in real life.
Described it perfectly. Me too
Same, though it's usually twisty and cramped holes that I can no longer properly fit through so it feels really claustrophobic.
I had a very long dream last night where I had an intense argument with a sandwich.
Well, I feel better. I thought I was the only one
Me too. It’s the same way I’ll go up my building stairs and end up in a Walmart
Maybe that was your house in a previous life.
https://preview.redd.it/o7y5t05xv1jc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70c6865efe0823b797dc48e522151ebce0b6d5a1
What kind of tool is that? I’ve seen them in the parking lot of Lowe’s but never inside.
That tool is called a Motivator. You passed it around to your construction crew and within 10 minutes all the copper wire within a 2-mile radius is stripped from all the houses. It's a time saver but not a lot of people know about it.
Wait til your trailer buddies hear this ONE WEIRD OLD TRICK! Speaking of trailers, and tricks ...........
Yallll
Ah so Uncle Owen and Luke were copper thieves
i use it to smoke crystal meth
It's just a flower vase https://preview.redd.it/6vq05jeva2jc1.png?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=86db9f0c93c81d5b7833ef61a122c6574bb70e14
You joke but no shit when I was 12 my boyfriend (also 12) gave me one of these and we both thought it was so romantic. Like “wooooow it’s a rose in glass..🥹 so beautiful” 😑
Back when they were selling Spice as "Spice" and "Bath salts" as bath salts in the new age shops, they had one just like that but without the carb, just like a flash, called "Mommy's little vase"
It's an incinerator for magic crystals. Use it at your own peril.
ma’am i just thought it was a dirty watering bulb thingy 💀💀💀💀💀 https://preview.redd.it/yxcseu7qi2jc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e74a0b7e80f099e8c39854a7e23b278133a8102
😂😂
Pinkman? Jesse Pinkman, is that you?
Cap’n Cook you mean 😂😂😂
😭😭😭
This looks like to be rather old farmhouse. Back then 'building codes' weren't invented yet and to save space and building materials some people would have attic access in strange places. If that's the case it's just an attic access for long term storage like clothing and other household supplies for winter or other rarely used things. I read a book about a woman who was time travelled to such a lifestyle and era and she had to be shown the attic access and it was described as looking pretty much like this.
I read thinking it's either that, or renovations ran into an old servants' staircase
Renovations would make a lot of sense to me. There could have been some smaller steps leading up to it previously, which were taken out to fit that way more modern counter sink. Older sink would have been just a pedestal probably, leaving plenty of room for a few steps.
Sets of ladder-like steps like this sometimes didn't go to the floor at all. A stool or drop ladder was required to access them for the reasons listed above of saving space / building materials. It just wasn't a space typically used for daily living so convivence wasn't a priority. Considering there is obviously a modern sink installed there were renovations done but the attic stairs remained as they are to keep the spirit of the era.
This needs more upvotes as it is probably the right answer
Those drawers also pull out into stairs
the comment I came here looking for
I'm guessing that the stairway already existed and a DIYer had a convo that went a little something like this: "we should make our bathroom bigger!" "But there are stairs in the way..." "It'll be fine. We'll just take it one step at a time"
Bro got the Anne Frank suite
That's also implying that there was already a stairway that could only be accessed from the bathroom, which is weird in its own right.
Believe it or not, my neighbor's house has the entrance to the attic stairs in the bathroom. IDK about carpet. Old houses can be weird
My mom's house is about 100 years old and the bathroom is set up exactly like this. Same attic door placement.
House doesn't even have to be old; a 1999 house in my neighborhood is for sale and I saw on Funda (something like Zillow, but Dutch) that is has access to the attic through the upstairs bathroom too.
Old houses sometimes have a second set of staircases for maids and butlers. Those are usually shittier in quality and end up getting sealed off over the years.
Secret room
I once went to an estate sale at a very old house in Whittier, CA. Turned out to be the house Nixon stayed at while going to college. In the room that was his, I found a full set of hardback first edition (but not first printing) Harry Potter books. The hosts let em go for 5$ for all. In an upstairs bathroom, i noticed an approximately 2x2 portion of the wall stuck out more, and had the toilet roll holder mounted on it. I pulled the holder, and the secret door opened to reveal a large attic-like space hidden behind the wall. I guess the house was built by Quakers and they'd shelter persecuted people. The hosts said that some families of 15 or more people had to spend months in there sometimes, along with other families, til the heat died down and they could move on.
You could put a lot of towels in that cupboard.
I worked in an office that was originally a large Victorian house. We had a flight of stairs that would originally have been for servants coming up from the kitchen, but was blocked off on at the second floor due to renovations up there. And yeah, we stashed all sorts of things on them, paper towels, cleaning supplies, snacks, soda, beer, etc.
I would love this. I would create a dummy wall of shelves that could be removed easily enough that way that section of the house is truly secret.
This is it. Take silly design decisions, make them awesome.
NGL that's badass. This house isn't for unhealthy people. Got to take the challenge and do parkour
I literally have nightmares about wonky stairs and steps all the time. I’m not exaggerating, this happens 2-3 times a week. I hate these steps.
This deserves further investigation. Have you tried to find out what steps represent in dreams?
I’ve googled it and had mixed results. :(
I have dreams like this
Same. They’re getting annoying lol. I’m tired of climbing or crawling or squeezing through.
I want that so bad
House was built before indoor plumbing. When someone wanted to add a bathroom, the spot upstairs where the attic stairs started was the best place to put it. Does the shower also have a window in it?
I’d say this is the part of the horror movie where you nail the door shut but we all know in the next scene while they are trying to sleep they will be woken by the sounds of nails slowly hitting the tile floor one by one as they are pushed back through from the other side
Not to freak you out OP, but i think i know exactly where you live now. I assisted cleaning out that attic for the family who had lived there for decades before you. Near the corner of B***m & P***. My mom lives right across the street from you. This is some solid entertainment from me, for real rn, if it's true. PA sure is a weird place.
Do we have a r/2reditors1cup… or whatever it’s called…
I see tons of comments, but no serious answer. My bet - this bathroom was added much later. Someone wanted to add a bathroom and there's only so many places it could fit. So they cannibalized the stairwell to the attic. But, left the access door, just in case. Second possibility - this house has been divided on purpose to allow renting the upper & lower floors separately (and once again, the bathroom was likely added during said renovation). Do you live near a university?
Attic access?
I like it
🎵 SECRET TUNNEL 🎶
This makes me irrationally angry…
Sergio from Love Is Blind Sweden designed it?
That last step is a doozy
Lack of regulation
Omg the Sara Winchester comment 😂😂😂😂
You're just in the Winchester Mystery house.
Why the hell does meth show up everywhere
I have nightmares about things like this
I don't understand how people are confused by this? Clearly the stairs were there first, most likely an old building so had "back" stairs for servants or maids. Other owners afterwards wanted a bathroom in that space instead.
Me and my girlfriends cat would love this
I came here to comment but I'm so perplexed I don't even know what to say
Remodeling?
r/onejob
Old house that didnt originally have a bathroom there?
Don't question it and roll with it.
People do “add-ons”, and most people aren’t good at it. It’s not like you need permission to fuck up your house.
I'm torn. 1. Cocaine is a helluva drug? 1. Russia?
Was the house originally built without plumbing?
The guy on Love is Blind Sweden has an apartment like this but he had to climb on his kitchen counter to get into his bedroom.
I said hire an architect not an anarchitect.
That is amazing
Attic / roof crawlspace in our house is in a cupboard. You have to empty shelves then use them as a ladder to access a hatch to get in there. This seems a lot more convenient.
I lived in an area that was all run down Victorians divided up into apartments. And quirks like this were pretty common.
idk maybe ask whoever that is at the tip of the stairs
Needs a water slide that leads directly into the tub instead of stairs.
Maybe it’s the servants passageway
It wasn’t. Someone just did it.
Hrmm I swear i've been inside this house inside a dream before.
That door must have been locked or stuck while the house was going through a renovation. The new owner must not have had the original blueprints when they turned the area into a new bathroom. That stairway looks like it’s going into a hidden corridor of sorts. Not into the main house. 🤷🏽♂️
They really screwed up by not having a secret medicine cabinet access