There are some houses that if the walls could speak, they would likely scream in horror. When a home becomes part of a serious murder investigation, it’s often not long before the murder memorabilia hunters come forward, ready to grab a piece of true crime history. Then, once bodies have been discovered on the site, the ghost hunters and creepy tours will follow shortly after.

SEE ALSO: 10 Abandoned Amusement Parks With Horrific Histories [Disturbing]

The following homes all made such an impact on those who live in the area and the loved ones of victims that there was no other option left but to tear them down to the ground. Not even demolishing them could completely erase their memories, of course. Locals still know what the sites were.

10 Fred And Rose West’s House

Fred and Rose West will go down in history as one of the worst serial killer duos. They lived at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester City, England, and what took place behind closed doors was so disturbing that the home has since been flattened. The sinister couple murdered at least 10 young women together between 1971 and 1987. (Fred killed more beforehand.) The victims were then dismembered and buried in either the cellar or the garden. The two even threatened their children that they, too, would “end up under the patio.”

Behind bars, Fred became depressed when Rose refused to reply to any of his letters, and he took his own life in prison. Initially, Rose denied any knowledge of the murders, but her web of lies soon fell apart, and she was sentenced to life for her involvement.

Two decades after the crimes, Gloucester City Council purchased the “House of Horrors,” as it had come to be called, knocked it down, and turned the former site into a public walkway. Still, nobody will forget in a hurry what happened at 25 Cromwell Street.^[1]

9 Jeffrey Dahmer’s Apartment

When police officers arrived at the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer at the 900 block of North 25th Street Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they had no idea they were about to uncover one of the grisliest crime scenes of all time. Dahmer gained his nickname “the Milwaukee Cannibal” after he lured 17 men and boys back to his apartment from 1978 to 1991 with the intention to kill them. Police discovered seven skulls, a human head, and two human hearts in the refrigerator, as well as an entire torso in the freezer, among other remains.

After the crazed cannibal was arrested, his neighbors wished to depart the building as quickly as possible. One explained, “It’s been a living hell. It’s like we’re on a museum tour or a zoo tour. People drive by day and night. I haven’t been eating. I haven’t been sleeping. All I know is I want to get the hell out of here.”^[2] The building was demolished in 1992, and the former site of the grisly murders has remained vacant ever since.

8 Ariel Castro’s House

Ariel Castro kidnapped three female victims on separate occasions between 2002 and 2004 when they were aged 14, 16, and 20 years old. He then held them captive at his home in Cleveland, Ohio. The young girls, who grew into women during their decade of hell, were kept in darkness, surrounded by boarded windows and with only a small hole providing any circulation. Castro repeatedly abused them and even fathered a daughter with one of his victims. She gave birth in a small inflatable swimming pool.

In 2013, one of the brave victims was able to escape when Castro failed to secure the “big inside door,” and she screamed a cry of help that alerted the neighbors. Castro was arrested that same evening, but he only lived out one month of his life sentence before he hanged himself with a bedsheet in prison. It took just one hour and 20 minutes for his former home to be demolished as spectators cheered from the street.^[3]

7 The Petit Family Home

The Petit Family home invasion is so disturbing that it became one of the most widely publicized crimes in the state of Connecticut’s history. In 2007, Dr. William Petit, his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their young daughters 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela suffered a brutal, random attack at their family home in Cheshire. Perpetrator Steven Hayes and his accomplice Joshua Komisarjevsky broke into the home, first striking William Petit with a baseball bat and then binding the other family members and forcing Jennifer to go with them to the bank and withdraw cash.^[4]

She was able to alert the bank teller of the situation, but the Petit family were failed by the responding police officers. As the mother and daughters were brutalized and murdered inside, the police still did not enter, instead focusing on setting up a perimeter around the home. William Petit was able to escape as the perpetrators torched the house. The remainder of the family home was torn down, and the lot is now a memorial garden for the family.

6 The Bloody Benders’ House

More than 140 years ago, one family committed such evil that they became known as the Bloody Benders. The Labette County, Kansas, family consisted of four people—John Bender, his wife Elvira, and their children John Jr. and Kate. (Some sources claim that Kate was actually John Jr.’s common-law wife.) From 1869 to 1872, he family would invite travelers into their home with the sole intention of smashing their skulls, cutting their throats, and stealing all their possessions. When members of the community noticed the rise in missing persons traveling through the area, they called a meeting.

A few days after that meeting, the Benders’ family home was abandoned, and locals discovered a terrible odor coming from inside. After a proper investigation, the bodies of their 11 victims were uncovered. However, other missing persons cases could tie the bloodthirsty family to as many as 21 murders. The since-demolished house is nowadays nothing more than a gravel road two hours southeast of Wichita. Ghost hunters will travel there just to soak up any sensation of its sinister history.^[5]

5 John Christie’s House

In London, 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill is not the same house as it once was. In 1978, the place was rebuilt so that the grisly memories of the previous building could be long forgotten. In the 1940s and early 1950s, serial killer John Christie hid the bodies of his victims around the house, including burying them in the garden, hiding them under the floorboards, or stuffing the corpses inside a wall in the kitchen. In 1953, he was arrested, and it was discovered that young women who had turned to him for help with unwanted pregnancies were murdered. It is believed more than eight vulnerable victims lost their lives to the sinister Christie.

Despite the rebuild, this might be a case where past evils haven’t moved on quite so quickly. The current owner confessed, “I think the place is cursed. I’ve had bad luck since I’ve been here. I’ve been here 40 years. My health’s gone. Everything’s gone.”^[6]

4 Ted Bundy’s House

Ted Bundy confessed to the murders of 30 young women and girls in seven states between 1974 and 1978. However, the real victim count is believed to be much higher, as he buried the corpses in several secluded areas. One location that became a killing spot for him was Emigration Canyon, Utah. The serial killer’s former rooming house has since been destroyed, leaving only a scatter of bricks. However, the sinister cellar is still intact, which encourages ghost hunters and other true crime fans who are chasing a creepy experience.^[7]

Bundy moved to Utah when he was accepted at the University of Utah Law School in August 1974. It’s believed he kidnapped and murdered eight victims aged between 16 and 18 during his time in the state. The surrounding area of Bundy’s cellar would have been the last place some of these women saw before their lives were stolen from them.

3 Anthony Sowell’s House

Two years after Anthony “the Cleveland Strangler” Sowell murdered 11 women between 2007 and 2009, his former home on Imperial Avenue in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Cleveland was demolished. The property was where the bodies of the victims were found in various states of decomposition. The hunt for more bodies left the home in crippling disrepair, and the city decided it was in the interest of public safety to tear it down for good. More than 50 people—including relatives of the victims—gathered outside the property to watch the demise of the death house.

The victims’ family members received the following hand-delivered letter from the city: “In order to prevent actions that would be disrespectful to the memory of your loved one, your family and our community; the demolition will be performed in such a way that no piece of the property will remain.”^[8]

2 Myra Hindley And Ian Brady’s House

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are considered by many as the real faces of evil. In the early to mid-1960s, they killed five children aged between ten and 17. The bodies of three of the victims were discovered in graves on Saddleworth Moor, but the chilling couple never revealed where they placed the bodies of the other victims. Hindley died behind bars in 2002 and Brady in 2017, and they never allowed the relatives of the victims any peace—withholding information about the murders until the very end.

It’s no surprise that the home the Moors murderers shared on Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, Cheshire, England—the same place where investigators found the body of their final victim—stayed empty for so many years after the couple was arrested. Nobody wanted to live in a property where two of the biggest monsters in Britain once slept peacefully at night. The property was pulled down in 1987, and the site has remained empty ever since.^[9]

1 Dr. H.H. Holmes’s Murder Castle

In 1885, Dr. H.H. Holmes moved to the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and built his now-infamous murder castle. The labyrinth-like structure featured many different rooms—all with equally sinister ways to die. The rooms were soundproofed, and the many secret passages would leave his unsuspecting guests feeling disorientated. There were even trapdoors that would drop his victims into the basement where he could finish the job. Holmes murdered for financial gain; often selling the skeletons of his victims to medical research facilities.

The actual victim count has been guessed to be as high as 200, but Holmes only confessed to 27 murders. He was hanged at Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia in 1896. In 1938, the murder castle was finally torn down, and a post office now stands in its place. Chicago tour guides still take groups to the former site of the murders, but the true horror that took place here can only really be imagined.^[10]

Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. She can either be found at house parties telling everyone Charles Manson was only 5’2″ or at home reading true crime magazines.
Twitter: @thecheish

The thought of having a stranger secretly living in your home sounds like the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Some people have found unwelcome guests living in their homes, though. Most of these interlopers live in attics, although they will sometimes occupy the basements or closets or even live under the house.

Some lived in their victim’s homes for more than a year before they were caught. Others escaped before they could be identified. All of the following stories are good reason to double-check that your doors and windows are locked.

10 Tatsuko Horikawa

In 2008, an unnamed 57-year-old Japanese man realized he had been sharing his home with a secret tenant. Prior to the discovery, he had noticed that someone was stealing food from his fridge. He suspected it was a burglar and installed security cameras that sent live footage of his home to his phone.

One fateful day, he received a video of a strange woman opening his fridge. He called the police, who went to his home, hoping to catch the burglar. The police were surprised when they found the doors and windows locked and intact with no sign of break-in. Nevertheless, they entered the home, thinking the burglar was still inside.

Police found no trace of the burglar until they checked the shelf just above the closet. Inside, they found 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa. Investigations revealed Horikawa had secretly lived in several other houses in the area before settling in the man’s home. She had lived there for a year before she was caught.^[1]

9 Unnamed Man

In 2012, Tracy thought she and her five children were the only occupants of her South Carolina home, until she discovered there was one other person: an ex she broke up with 12 years earlier. Tracy heard some strange noises in her attic the day before discovering her ex. She and two of her sons checked the attic but found nothing.

The strange noises continued throughout the night. Plaster and nails from the ceiling also fell on her bed and floor. Tracy called a nephew to check the attic the next day. The nephew found nothing at first until he went deeper into the attic, where he found her ex sleeping. The ex hurriedly left the house smiling. Tracy later learned that he could see her bedroom through an air vent.^[2]

Tracy could not figure out how her ex got into her home or how long he had been there. However, he had helped her put new doors in her home a year earlier and had just completed a 90-day sentence for stealing her vehicle. The ex left his stuff in the attic, including his photos, toys, cassettes, and several cups of feces and urine.

8 Anthony Jones

In 2017, a woman got the shock of her life when she found a man living in the attic of her rented apartment in Arlington, Virginia. The woman was home alone that night when she heard some footsteps in the attic. She checked with the landlord, who denied walking in the attic that night. The landlord called the police, who visited the home.

Police were searching the attic when they ordered anyone inside to come out. A man, identified as 60-year-old Anthony Jones, came out and surrendered himself to the police. Inside the attic, they found his clothes and bedding. While police could not determine how long Jones had been in the house, they suspected he had entered through an unlocked door.^[3]

7 Unidentified Person

Amber Dawn heard footsteps in her attic the night she moved into her new apartment in Enumclaw, Washington, in 1997. She checked the trap door that led to the attic. While it looked suspicious—as if it had been pulled in by someone inside—she never thought someone could actually be in there. She told the landlady about the footsteps, but the landlady dismissed it as a squirrel.

Dawn would notice strange events in her home over the next few months. Things mysteriously went missing, and her items were being moved. At one point, her nine-week-old puppy ended up inside her bathroom sink during a flood, even though it couldn’t climb in by itself. Dawn thought her brother, who also had a key to her apartment, was responsible. She only found out the truth six months after moving in.

One night, she was soaking in the bathtub when she looked up at the trap door that led to her attic. It was open. She hurriedly grabbed a hammer and her dog before leaving the house. Outside, she called her her sister-in-law, who came and picked her up. Police later searched Dawn’s apartment and found no one. However, they found food, a book, and a sleeping bag inside the attic.^[4]

6 Unidentified Woman

In 2016, Davis Wahlman heard some strange noises in the attic of his Seattle home. He went upstairs to check and found that the light in one of the rooms was on, which was weird because he had switched it off. He tried entering the room, but the door was locked from inside. He knocked, and a woman answered from inside, asking if it was Jimmy.

Wahlman told her he was not Jimmy and asked why she was in his house before calling the police. The woman later opened the door. She never answered Wahlman’s questions and continued ranting about how she had been living in the house for three days and how someone called Jimmy had told her she could stay. However, she left before police arrived.

Wahlman checked his attic and saw she still had her stuff there. The night before finding the woman in his home, he had noticed some unusual events. Someone had turned on some lights he had turned off, removed the flyscreen from his bathroom, and deployed a fire escape ladder. He changed the locks on all the doors in his home after the incident.^[5]

5 Jeremy

In 2013, some Ohio State University students discovered they were not alone in their off-campus accommodation after they found someone living in their basement. Before the discovery, the students had often found their cupboards and microwaves open and had even heard noises from the basement.

They never thought much of the events, although they often joked that the strange happenings were the handiwork of a ghost. They only found out the ghost was a secret roommate when maintenance workers forcefully opened the basement. The stranger was another student, who was only identified as Jeremy. They allowed him pick up his things before evicting him from the home.

No one knew how Jeremy got into the house or how long he had been living there. They guessed it was before they moved in, since the landlord never changed the locks of the house. Interestingly, one of the roommates had met Jeremy earlier but thought he was a visitor.^[6]

4 Jose Rafael Leyva-Caraveo And Veronica Fernandez-Beleta

For months in 2012, Troy and Dayna Donovan and their two children could not return to their Littleton, Colorado, home because it was occupied by two squatters, Jose Rafael Leyva-Caraveo and Veronica Fernandez-Beleta. The Donovans lived in the house until they left for Indiana, where Troy had found a temporary job. They locked their home, but Jose and Veronica managed to get in.

Jose and Veronica claimed they got the house through an affidavit of adverse possession and had paid $5,000. This was even though Colorado law demanded that a minimum of 18 years (or seven years in some circumstances) must have elapsed before a house could be possessed under the adverse possession law. The Donovans had only been away from their home for few months.

The Donovans were in a jam. The police refused to interfere because it was considered a civil and not a criminal case; the squatters were not caught breaking in. Jose and Veronica also got a restraining order against the Donovans, preventing them from coming near the house. The Donovans later won a court judgment that ordered Jose and Veronica to vacate the home within 48 hours.

However, it was not that easy, as Veronica had already filed for bankruptcy. Under Colorado law, a squatter cannot be immediately evicted if they declare bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the Donovans continued to live in the basement of the home of a relative in another town while hoping they would finally get the squatters out of their own house.^[7] Jose and Veronica ended up being charged with multiple felonies, so the Donovans presumably got to go home.

3 Unidentified Person

In 2013, 73-year-old grandmother Velma Kellen noticed the front part of her Yelm, Washington, home was colder than other parts of her home. She suspected the heating was not working properly and bought another furnace. But the problem persisted, so she called a repairman to check it out.

The repairman discovered the problem was not the furnace but that someone was living under her house. The person had cut her ducts to redirect the heat there. Kellen was shocked. While she never saw the person, she had noticed some unusual events in her home. She once found her gate open and often smelled something that was “worse than cigarettes.” The repairman did not find any drugs but did discover a beer can under the house.^[8]

2 Tyggra Shepherd

In what seems to be a case of fraud, a woman found some strangers living in her home in South Carolina in 2018. Katherine Lang had just returned from vacation and decided to inspect the pipes of her new home. She found a dog and cat outside, which she thought was weird. She entered the house and found two women.

One of the women, Tyggra Shepherd, had moved into the home after finding an advertisement on Facebook. She’d paid $1,150 to the fraudsters who had posed as the owners. They told her to enter the house through the back door after claiming the person who was supposed to bring the keys was detained by the police. Lang herself had never lived in the home. She had still been living in her old house, which she was trying to sell before moving into the new one.^[9]

1 Zeng

In China, a man only identified as “Wang” found an stranger called “Zeng” living inside the attic of his home in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, in 2014. Wang would never have found out about Zeng if the latter hadn’t locked the door from inside. Wang called the police, who found a hole in his kitchen ceiling that led to his attic. They found Zeng inside the attic.

Before the discovery, Wang had noticed that money and food were disappearing in his home. Police determined Zeng had stolen about 2,000 yuan in Wang’s home. He also cooked meals for himself while Wang was away. Zeng had gotten into the attic from outside the house. He confessed to alternating between Wang’s home and that of a neighbor.^[10]

Gingerbread houses tend to abound during the holiday season. Not all of the ginger-flavored molasses cake buildings are simple residences, though. Some are gigantic constructions built by teams using hundreds of kilograms of confectionery of all types. These chefs spend long hours baking and assembling their gingerbread creations, but in the end, they all agree that the joy their creations bring to them and others makes their labors of love worthwhile. These ten elaborate gingerbread houses indicate why they felt this way.

10 US Capitol Building

In 2013, the US Capitol building occupied the entrance to the Pentagon’s Army Executive Dining Facility. Made of licorice garland and candy adornments and decorated with icicles of sugar and melting drifts of “snow,” the replica building was 1.4 meters (4.5 ft) long and 0.9 meters (3 ft) wide and weighed over 23 kilograms (50 lb). Finishing touches included a lawn of green-dyed, crushed cornflakes mixed with melted marshmallows and inverted ice cream cone trees, tiny candles in the windows, and miniature wreaths made of green icing and festooned with red icing bows. Candy canes doubled as columns, and a Statue of Freedom carved by Sergent Kyoungmin Park topped the gingerbread building’s dome.

The Capitol was designed by Specialist Samantha Poe, whose family includes several engineers. Before joining the Army, Poe was a chef at five-star restaurants, and she enjoyed the mathematics that went into designing the gingerbread building to correct scale and proportions. Sergent Rose Picard, a pastry chef, assisted in assembling the gingerbread building. The project took the soldiers six days to complete, constructing it in addition to their regular duties. The Capitol impressed generals, who came to shake the soldiers’ hands.

9 Waddesdon Manor

In 2016, a team of Biscuiteers (a London cookie boutique) employees spent an astonishing 500 hours constructing a huge cutaway gingerbread replica of Waddesdon Manor, a French Renaissance–style chateau in Buckinghamshire. The gingerbread edifice showed off several splendid rooms, each constructed in astonishing detail.

The pink guest bedroom was furnished with a chest, a vanity, and a canopy bed. The paneled walls were decorated with carved wall molding and baseboards. There were also paintings, parrot statues, lamps, a mirror, curtains, and an elaborate rug.

The billiard room contained a billiards table, a red love seat complete with pillows, triangular windows with green panes, embossed walls, and a red carpet. The dining room featured a table set for ten, an elegant rug, a plank floor, and sideboards and was decorated with paintings, flower baskets, a clock, and other exquisite touches.

8 Town Hall Village

To create the gingerbread village that occupied the lobby of Melbourne’s town hall in December 2014, pastry chefs Deniz Karaca and Anna Polyviou enlisted the help of Karaca’s 12-member team and a number of volunteers, who spent 2,000 hours building the tiny town. The backdrop for the village required 800 miniature Christmas trees, according to Karaca.

The village’s buildings included such local landmarks as the Melbourne Town hall, the Melbourne Cricket Hall, Luna Park, and Flemington Racecourse. Polyviou and her team also constructed a gingerbread-brick house decorated with lollipops, M&Ms, chocolate freckles, and licorice. Visitors were asked to donate a gold coin; proceeds went to Make-A-Wish Australia.

7 Life-Size House

Each year, the gingerbread constructions of Scott Tennant, the executive pastry chef of Nemacolin Woodlands Resort’s Chateau LaFayette, are different. In 2016, he, his staff of ten, and the resort’s carpentry shop joined forces to create a house large enough for adults to enter. The house was edible, and some visitors tried to break off samples. Tenant found “a fingerprint in the piping, or candies missing.”

After the carpenters finished the base for the house, Tennant and his staff took over. After their regular hours, he and his team worked 600 night hours to create the house. Tennant gave away a few of his trade secrets: With a hand saw, he cut notches into cookies before slicing them to size. The resulting discs adorned the edge of a wall.

6 Two-Story House

In 2016, a 7-meter (22 ft), two-story gingerbread house was built over a wooden frame in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Chefs added 7,750 pieces of gingerbread as well as hundreds of kilograms of icing and candy. The hotel’s executive pastry chef, Kimberly Tighe, and her staff rebuild the house each holiday season. The construction materials are reused each year, and the uneaten edible parts are composted.

Children often sample the exterior of the house, but repair materials, in the form of peppermint canes, gingerbread men, jelly slices, Christmas tree marshmallows, and gumdrops, are on hand for the twice-daily, four-hour sessions the chefs spend replacing eaten items. The house features a balcony, an electric train that runs in and out of the house, cookie trim, a clock, gingerbread bricks, and icing mortar.

5 San Francisco Ferry Building

Angela Salvatore, the pastry chef of San Francisco’s Waterbar restaurant, has experience creating confectionery replicas of famous places, including Candlestick Park and the Palace of Fine Arts. But, in 2016, she outdid herself with her latest construction, a 1.8-meter-long (6 ft), 0.8-meter-tall (2.5 ft) tall replica of the San Francisco Ferry Building. Salvatore and her team toiled for 130 hours to create the massive replica.

Cookie reindeer pull Santa’s sled across the gumpaste flag–bedecked rooftop, Rudolph halting inches from the structure’s central tower. Down below, a farmer’s market is in full swing, as vendors sell fruit (aka Runts) and soap (aka Pez) as well as flowers, eggs, and ice cream made of candy. A snowman and a Christmas tree piled high with gifts add touches of good cheer. The gingerbread Ferry House helped to bring more visitors to the Waterbar.

4 Hotel Corque House

Again, in 2016, the lobby of the Hotel Corque in Solvang, California, was home to a giant gingerbread house created by baker Bent Olsen and his assistant, Louis Rojas. The children’s playhouse–size edifice wasn’t the first that the seasoned baker has created. “He’s been doing this since 1984,” the hotel’s hospitality manager, John Martino, said. For Olsen, variety adds spice to his art. Each year, he changes colors and designs.

The edible ingredients of 2016’s construction weighed 113 kilograms (250 lb). Olsen and Rojas assembled the house, which was then transported to the hotel lobby, where they put on the finishing touches. The house was on display throughout the holidays, and Olsen returned weekly to replace icing icicles that children broke off as samples.

3 Wrigley Field

A gingerbread replica of Chicago’s Wrigley Field created in 2016 measured 1.2 meters by 1.2 meters (4 ft x 4 ft) and weighed over 180 kilograms (400 lb). The construction taxed Gerald Madero’s math and carpentry skills and took him and his team 70 hours to complete. One of the trickiest tasks was shaping the walls by adding “curves,” Madero said, and making the gingerbread building work with the structural confines of the baseball stadium’s diamond shape.

Before he became the head chef at the Forest Hills Country Club in Rockford, Illinois, Madero was a carpenter, which helped him to figure out the angles of the stadium’s construction. Complete with a playing field, a gigantic scoreboard, and seating and festooned with peppermints and candy canes, the Home of the Cubs also featured Santa waving from his sleigh.

2 World’s Biggest Village

In 2014, his home’s kitchen and dining room were a mess, chef Jon Lovitch admits. They looked as if they’d been visited by Betty Crocker while high on mushrooms. Competing for a world record, Lovitch set out to build the planet’s largest gingerbread village, basing his community on the Clement Clark Moore poem, “A Visit from St. Nick.” His 45-square-meter (480 ft²) town weighed 2.5 tons and occupied a circular platform in the New York Hall of Science. A skylight above the platform brought sunlight to the village, called GingerBread Lane. Independent inspectors examined the complete village and reported their findings to Guinness.

Lovitch’s hard work paid off. His village, containing 1,102 buildings, won him the coveted honor, the third he has collected. Against a background of pine trees, his village wound around the wall of the Hall of Science’s elevated walkway behind a protective transparent plexiglas screen to guard it from children who may have wanted to see it a little too up close and personal.

1 School

Katie Wood, a Kansas art teacher, gave her place of employment a special Christmas gift in 2016: a gingerbread replica of Topeka High, where she teaches. The school, she said, is “a kind of magical place at times,” where she feels at home among her second family, the school’s students and her colleagues.

The gingerbread high school is 102 centimeters (40 in) long, 76 centimeters (30 in) tall, and 51 centimeters (20 in) wide. It is made of graham crackers, Tootsie Rolls, M&Ms, icing, and other ingredients. Inverted ice cream cones and upright miniature Hershey’s chocolate bars form part of the clock tower’s rooftop.

Gary Pullman lives south of Area 51, which, according to his family and friends, explains “a lot.” His 2016 urban fantasy novel, A Whole World Full of Hurt, was published by The Wild Rose Press. An instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he writes several blogs, including Chillers and Thrillers: A Blog on the Theory and Practice of Writing Horror Fiction and Nightmare Novels and Other tales of Terror.

For years it’s been pretty standard to use wood or bricks, maybe some siding and shingles, if you want to build a house. That’s far from all you can use, though. Turns out there can be quite a lot more diversity in making houses than you’d at first believe.

10.  Coffee

Every day Americans take in about 400 million cups of coffee. That’s a heck of a buzz. But rarely do any of us think about what making coffee entails. Yes, we’re more aware of free trade coffee and responsibly getting rid of Keurig pods and so on, but what about the actual process of refining coffee from a plant in the ground to a hot cup in your hand? 

One step people don’t appreciate is the removal of the coffee husk. Every coffee bean is in a paper-like husk that needs to be discarded. It’s small and insignificant on its own, but when you need enough beans to make 400 million cups per day, that’s a lot of paper husks. Where does all that stuff go? Now it can go into a house.

Combining the husks with plastic, a company in Colombia is using the coffee waste to make panels for prefab housing. You can get one for as little as $4,500.

The point of the husk houses is to make a durable but lightweight material for homes and schools. The panels can be set up in rural and hard to reach areas, places where transporting large quantities of brick or lumber would be difficult and cost-prohibitive. 

The husks are stronger and drier than many other materials, and you can literally transport it on the back of a donkey if you need to.

9. Embalming Fluid Bottles

Anyone who owns a funeral home has to look at life a little differently than everyone else. Making a living out of death maybe makes you appreciate things in a different way. That seemed to be the case with David Brown. 

When Brown retired from the funeral business back in 1952, he was left with a massive quantity of empty embalming fluid bottles. Enough to do something remarkable. And, with the help of some friends in the business who donated their old bottles, he ended up with over half a million of them.

Brown set about making a house out of the bottles, using the square glasses vessels exactly the same way you’d use bricks. They are stacked and layered, held together with mortar, and the end result is a full sized and beautiful home reminiscent of a small castle.

The house is a tourist attraction in Canada and can be visited during business hours, if you’re so inclined. Word is that when you go inside, there is a distinct odor, however.

8. Mushrooms

Is there anything mushrooms can’t do? They can feed you, kill you, and even turn some lower life forms into fungal zombies. And now they’re primed to be places you live. Looks like the Smurfs knew what was up after all.

In order to make a mushroom brick you don’t chop up mushrooms like you might do to make something out of wood fiber. Instead, corn husks are mixed with mycelium, the filament-like vegetative part of the mushroom. The mix is put into a brick shaped mold and in five days it has grown into a solid, lightweight brick. No carbon footprint and no waste material.

The bricks don’t have to be grown from corn husks, they can grow from the waste husk of any crop really, like rice. That means the method can adapt easily to any place in the world. 

The bricks are resistant to fire, mold, and water. They are also stronger than concrete, pound for pound, but much lighter. Material costs are much lower as well, meaning making a mushroom house in the future could make things considerably cheaper.

7. 3D Printed Mud

When 3D printing first arrived, it promised to usher in a new way of designing and creating almost anything imaginable. And while the process has been slow to roll out in a way that is practical to most people in the real world, that promise was not exaggerated. 3D printing really is changing the way we produce everything, even houses. Take, for instance, houses printed with mud.

The idea of 3D printing a house out of traditional materials has its own merits – we’ll look at that later – but for people who live in countries where resources are scarce and the infrastructure to build homes from concrete is not readily available, a new method has been developed.

An Italian company has created a 3D print capable of producing a house using mud and natural fiber as the construction material. In many parts of the world, this mixture is common for building homes, but it is also a labor-intensive job that is usually done by hand.

The 3D printing method makes building from mud more efficient. Greater surface area allows the mud to dry faster, and also the printer is able to lay out the material in a way to increase the strength and durability.

6. Seaweed

If you live on an island or near a beach, sometimes the natural resources available for home building can be limited. Traditionally the homes of island people were often made from things like palm. But thanks to the efforts of a Mexican inventor named Omar Vázquez Sánchez, there may be a superior alternative for people near the sea, or anywhere, really. Sanchez has developed a way to make bricks from seaweed.

Similar in concept to making bricks out of other plant-based materials, the bricks are about 60% seaweed, and the rest is natural clay or adobe. The end product is very similar to a traditional adobe brick, and just as good at regulating heat, but half the price. And it also provides a secondary benefit by helping clean up beaches, which in many areas are becoming overrun with sargassum seaweed.

Sanchez made the bricks by hand, and by foot, stomping the seaweed into pulp with bare feet before mixing up the bricks concoction. When finished, the bricks are strong, waterproof, and devoid of any seaweed stink, which is something most of us wouldn’t think about.

5. Newspaper

They say you can only fold a piece of paper in half 7 or 8 times, depending on the size of it. While it may be weak and easy to damage when it’s thin, when it folds enough it becomes damn near impenetrable. And maybe that’s part of the inspiration for the Rockport Paper House. That there’s more to paper than meets the eye.

The house was built in 1922 and is still standing today. The frame, walls, and roof are made of wood, but the walls are another matter. About 100,000 newspapers were layered together with homemade glue and then varnished to make the walls, doors, and even furniture in the house. You can even read the papers if you want.

The house, which is a museum these days, even features a functional clock made of paper and a fireplace. The fireplace is also technically functional, though it seems unlikely anyone has ever used it.

4. Cardboard

As a kid, nothing was cooler than your parents buying something like a new fridge and then giving you the giant cardboard box to play with afterwards. It may not have been a full sized house, but it made a cool fort. These days cardboard construction has evolved. Cardboard houses are real and pretty amazing.

The Dutch design company Fiction Factory came up with a creative and industrious way of using cardboard to produce houses that are functional and attractive, despite the cheap material. Basing the construction around a prefab frame, massive rolls of corrugated cardboard are glued together and wrapped around the frame like wrapping paper. Twenty-four layers come together to produce a strong and well-insulated structure.

The final product has to be treated to make it waterproof, and then a layer of wood panelling is secured for added protection and also just to make the whole thing look like a house. 

The whole house can be produced in a day, and it can be designed to custom specifications. Since they’re modular, you can add bits and pieces to meet your needs. 

3. Industrial Waste

As much as houses are always being built, it’s worth remembering that they are often being torn down as well, along with many other structures that end up in industrial landfills. So what happens to all that old concrete and brick that was once a useful building but is now just trash? It gets a second chance.

Dutch architects have started recycling industrial waste making new bricks out of the rubble of old buildings, which is something so obvious it seems curious no one had really thought of it before.

Old materials including things like ceramic and glass were all forged together to make new bricks so that the end product wouldn’t look like a mosaic of long dead buildings. For their first project, 15-tonnes of waste was turned into the facade of a new house in Rotterdam that matched the style and aesthetic of local architecture. 

2. 3D Printed Concrete

While 3D printed mud homes have been making a difference in less industrialized parts of the world, in America and other Western countries 3D printed concrete homes are becoming a threat to traditional housing construction with its fast and cheap alternative to the old school method of house building.

Printed houses can cost as little as $10,000 and the end product is all but indistinguishable from a traditional house. That said, the first 3D printed house offered for sale in the United States was listed on Zillow. The home featured 1,400 square feet of living space including 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a 2-car garage. Just because it’s a cheap construction method doesn’t always mean the savings will pass on to buyers, though, as this particular house was listed at $299,999. But for an identical house produced traditionally, it would have cost much more.

Using an elaborate 3D printing rig, a machine called the Autonomous Robotic Construction System, or ARC, is able to lay a foundation, interior and exterior walls, and even include space for pipes and vents according to a schematic. The entire process to lay a house from start to finish takes 6 to 8 hours.

The printer puts down layer after precise layer of concrete. The final product is incredibly strong and durable, but also as much as 50% cheaper than a traditional construction job. Unfortunately, local building codes are not very lenient when it comes to how homes can be built, and the 3D printing method is not permitted or permitted with tight conditions in many places. 

1. Lego

There has probably never been a single kid in the world who had access to Lego that didn’t build at least a basic replica of a house. Even if it was just a box with a door, it’s nearly impossible to resist trying it out. For some people, this compulsion got a little too intense. That led to a life-size, fully livable Lego house.

James May, from the show Top Gear, assembled a team in 2009 to construct a life-size house out of Lego. WIth over 3 million bricks, the home had all the expected amenities, including a working toilet and a shower. 

One thousand volunteers helped assemble the 20-foot tall structure at a vineyard in Surrey. Unfortunately, after it was done, the vineyard wanted the land back to use it for anything other than housing a Lego house. So the work of finding a homeowner began.

Weirdly enough, the house caused a bit of controversy because it was intended to go to Legoland, but May says the Legoland people backed out of the deal because moving it would be too expensive. Legoland, for their part, said they were shut out of the construction. And the vineyard gave a deadline for someone, anyone, to take it lest it be hacked apart with a chainsaw.

Legoland is the only company allowed to display Lego in Britain. That meant no charity or other attraction could display the house publicly. Likewise, they couldn’t even disassemble it and give the bricks away to kids because the bricks were donated and legally they can only be given to a charitable cause. Rather than have it chainsawed, the pieces were taken apart and given to charity, so at least some good came from it.

You can’t deny it. There is something quite chilling about moving into a place that many others have passed through before. Who knows what you might find? If you’re lucky, maybe it’ll be some expensive artwork, secret passages, or strange remnants of past lives. But if luck isn’t on your side… well, stick around to find out.

This list covers ten “what the hell” cases of people who have made very bizarre and sometimes disturbing discoveries within their own four walls.

10 From Russia to New York

After George Davis passed away, his family sorted through his belongings only to find a mysterious box in the attic. It held a small Fabergé figurine which experts later identified as a gift from none other but the Russian Czar Nicolas II to his wife, Empress Alexandra. The hardstone portrait figure was of Nikolai Nikolaievich Pustynnikov, a loyal personal Cossack bodyguard to the empress. The valuable item had little sapphires in the eyes, a little gold trim and gold braid, and elaborately inlaid and enameled double-headed imperial eagles.

They valued the 100-year-old figure at $800,000 but clearly underestimated the public’s interest. At the auction, a jeweler from London bought it for a whopping $5.2 million!

Surely, George Davis’s family didn’t see such an inheritance coming.^[1]

9 The Roman Bath

Many Americans dream of a trip to Europe, but when Mark and Jenny Ronsman moved into their new house, they didn’t know that Italy would be only one floorboard away.

Once they removed the reliable Wisconsin wood in their office, they were amazed to discover a fully intact Roman-style bath. The striking blue mosaic really was the last thing they had expected, but they were more than excited. They spent hours removing the leveling material, whitening the grout, and sanitizing the tub.

Mark Ronsman said online: “I was truly shocked and overjoyed that something so beautiful was in our house!” And we agree. Even Caesar would have been jealous of that discovery. ^[2]

8 Soldier in Love

Oh, how romantic it would be to find decades-old love letters!

When Phil Mathies decided to give his bathroom an upgrade in 2014, he involuntarily became the side character of a real-life rom-com. The contractor he hired ended up finding dozens of love letters that dated back all the way to 1918. The bizarre part? They were hidden inside the attic wall!

The letters told the story of a WWI soldier named Clement and his beloved Mary. When Phil Mathies tracked down Clement’s relatives, they were thrilled to receive the letters. As Phil learned, Clement and Mary did end up together and had their own family. It was true love.

But how the letters ended up in the walls of this Indiana home will forever remain a mystery.^[3]

7 Pure Cash

What would you do if you found seven grand inside an abandoned house? Be sneaky and keep it? Not on Dave’s watch!

Dave, an urban photographer, really only wanted to take some pictures of antiques for his blog. But what he found behind an old mattress probably made his heart jump. Stuffed inside a yellow Home Hardware bag was almost $7,000 in cash, tightly rolled up in bundles. The notes were held together by elastic bands, which marked dates from the mid-1960s to the 1970s.

Dave decided to track down the granddaughter of the previous owners to hand back the money. Naturally, she was thrilled and told the photographer that her grandparents likely earned the money with the fruit stand they owned. They must have collected it over decades.^[4]

6 Two for One

This case gave us major horror movie vibes.

Affordable living space is rare in New York City, so just imagine how Samantha Hartsoe must have felt when she found out that she had access to more rooms than expected.

It all started with cold air coming from behind her mirror. Once she investigated the draft, she found the entrance to an entire vacant unit! On her TikTok, Samantha Hartsoe documented her trip beyond the wall, and several million people joined her, waiting for what was behind the next corner. Why does this apartment not have its own door? And why is it connected to Smanatha’s flat through only a small hole?

Let’s just hope there aren’t any unexpected neighbors.^[5]

5 A Gamer’s Paradise

We all enjoy board games, but some people take their love for Chess, Backgammon, and others to a whole other level.

In 2021, a Reddit user shared his in-laws’ discovery when they decided to remove the carpet in their new home. What did they find underneath? Another Roman bath? Hah, no. Somebody had drawn an entire Monopoly board onto the floor!

It had all the streets, a jail, and even a community chest! Weird, right? Actually, no. According to other Reddit users, XXL board games weren’t that unusual back in the day. They were a popular way to decorate playrooms and could be found in many basements.

Well, the next game night at this user’s in-laws’ place will be one to remember.^[6]

4 A Mysterious Painting

Okay, bare with us because this case is way more interesting than watching paint dry.

In 1970, a private collector purchased a Van Gogh painting but was left beyond disappointed when the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam told him that it was a fake due to the lack of a signature. But years later, with the help of modern technology, that statement was refuted. The collector was holding a real Van Gogh in his hands. It was the first full-size painting to be discovered in 85 years!

In letters to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh wrote about the painting and how he was unsatisfied with the result. According to the artist, Sunset at Montmajour was not what he had hoped to create; therefore, he didn’t sign it.

And this poor artwork had been hidden in a Norwegian attic for over a century because, more than once, people thought it to be a counterfeit. Sorry, Vincent.^[7]

3 Oh, Honey

So far, the people on this list have gotten quite lucky, but not all surprises are pleasant.

When Justin and Andrea Isabell found something dark dripping down the walls, they first thought of water damage as their area had just witnessed a tropical storm. But it wasn’t water. Instead, real honey was running down the walls in their Pennsylvania home.

Yes, you read that right. Honey.

Justin and Andrea Isabell then went on to check their attic, only to find a massive bee colony that housed 20,000 to 30,000 bees! Imagine all that aggressive buzzing. It’s a surprise they never heard anything downstairs. Despite their sons’ wishes, they decided to not keep the bees. First, the swarm fled to a neighbor’s tree before a beekeeper rehomed their colony.

No more free honey for the Isabells.^[8]

2 A House within a House

The typical horror movie. You move into an old, abandoned property and climb the stairs up to the attic, only to discover a creepy dollhouse that has been left behind for some reason.

Just that this time, it was not made for dolls. Instead, the owner found a full-sized house. In the attic. Yes, we know how crazy that sounds.

The Redditor shared pictures of his findings that showed intact windows, light fixtures, and a bathroom. There even were some abandoned belongings lying around. Creepy! The Redditor theorizes that the abode used to be part of a two-story building until the owners—for whatever reason—decided to build an attic around the top floor.

Was that really necessary? Attics are already scary enough as is!^[9]

1 The Tragic Story of a Child

We decided to end this list with a very disturbing and heart-breaking case that ended up inspiring its own horror movie.

Laurie and Jeff Dumas’s new house had more left-behind demons than they had gambled for. In the attic, they stumbled upon a room that was separated from the rest of the building. The deadbolts on the door really tried their best to keep the couple out, and once Laurie and Jeff Dumas made it inside, they found that the floor was entirely made of metal.

As Laurie Dumas started looking for an explanation at the local library, she was told that she owned a disappointments room. This was a room in which parents used to lock their disabled children to keep them out of sight.

The former owner had been a judge who imprisoned his daughter, Ruth so that her disability couldn’t tarnish his reputation.

Laurie and Jeff Dumas shared this horrifying and disturbing discovery on an HGTV episode of If Walls Could Talk. In 2016, Director D. J. Caruso retold the story with his movie The Disappointments Room.^[10]