This week in horrifying home mysteries: Woman discovers secret room behind her mirror

By Reid McCarter | March 4, 2021 | 4:05pm

Aux Features Samantha Hartsoe

This week in horrifying home mysteries: Woman discovers secret room behind her mirror

Last week, a woman documented her discovery of a terrifying secret basement (“terrifying” might be redundant when it comes to secret basements) whose entrance was hidden beneath the carpet in her house. We foolishly expected that to be the most unsettling home mystery that would be posted to the internet for at least another few weeks. As a series of TikTok videos about a different woman finding a secret room hidden behind her apartment’s bathroom mirror make clear, we were very wrong.

Samantha Hartsoe posted the first entry to her real-life horror movie yesterday. In part one, Hartsoe explains that she’s been trying to locate a spot in her New York City apartment’s bathroom where cold air has been getting in. She feels it in the door jamb, behind a light switch, and from the back of a mirror, which she learns can be moved—way more than a wall-mounted mirror should. Ominous music plays in the background as, in part two, Hartsoe recruits two friends to show off what she’s found behind the mirror: a small crawl space that opens up into an empty room.

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“What if someone’s living in there right now?” one of her friends unhelpfully asks. “Have you watched the movie Parasite?” he adds a few seconds later, cementing himself as the worst possible person to have on hand when making this kind of discovery.

In part three, Hartsoe throws on a mask, grabs a hammer, wedges a flashlight under her headband, says a prayer, and then crawls through the mirror and into the secret room. The series ends with her looking around what turns out to be an entire other apartment, empty and freezing and undergoing renovations. “My landlord’s getting a fun phone call tomorrow!” she says in the last few seconds.

Sure, this hidden apartment is probably completely innocent and Hartsoe’s problem can be solved by fixing the mirror in place so nobody can move from one side of it to the other. But, given the sudden rise in TikToks about discovering secret rooms in otherwise normal spaces, we’re just going to go ahead and suggest an alternative explanation: There’s been a breakdown in the fabric of reality that’s creating portals to other dimensions where the murderous ghosts of dead killers lie in wait behind every surface of our homes, always ready to emerge and drag us, body and soul, into a hellish abyss.

[via @CheyMillz]

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