- Your attic might house priceless treasures, head-scratching oddities, or horrors beyond compare.
Do you know what’s in your attic? If you live in an older house that has had several previous owners, you might be in for a surprise.
People can store precious, weird, or horrifying things in their attics and simply forget they’re there. Or perhaps they choose to forget, as they’d get in trouble if anyone discovered their secrets.
Here are seven cases of people finding mind-boggling things in their attics.
1. Rare Faberge Figurine
After George Davis, the owner of Hammer Galleries in NYC, died, his descendants were sorting through the things in his home. The art magnate had plenty of precious treasures, but one discovery was above all others.
In a box tucked away in Davis’ attic was a small figurine of a Russian soldier. It was created in 1912 as a gift for Tsar Alexander II by the jewelry company Faberge, most famous for its Easter eggs.
Only 50 such figurines were ever made, so this was one rare find. In the end, the Davis estate sold the porcelain soldier for $5.2 million at a 2013 auction.
2. Bootleg Liquor Operation
Inside a cabinet in an Illinois grandmother’s home was a small hatch and a ladder leading to the house’s attic. The old woman always strictly prohibited her family from ever looking up there.
After the woman passed in 2019, there was no one to stop her family from finally peeking up in the attic. There, they found a Prohibition-era bootleg liquor operation.
Hidden inside the rafters above the cabinet hatch were hundreds of liquor bottles, fake labels, and other accoutrements for trafficking illicit booze. It turns out Grandma led quite a fascinating life in the Roaring Twenties.
3. 2,000-year-old Cat
Normally, if you find a mummified cat in your attic, it’s time to start mourning a long-lost pet. Bed-and-breakfast operator Robert Gray, however, discovered something quite different.
In the attic of his Cornwall B&B house, he found what he thought was an old stuffed cat toy. He thought it was a quirky antique, but an antique dealer’s and a veterinarian’s examinations showed that it was actually a mummified cat from ancient Egypt.
The Egyptians venerated cats as divine creatures and often mummified them in the same manner as their pharaohs. Gray could’ve probably sold the 2,000-year-old holy kitty for a pretty penny, but he decided to donate it to a museum.
4. Henry IV of France’s Head
During the French Revolution, an enraged mob decapitated the corpse of Henry IV, France’s 17th-century king. The monarch’s head disappeared in the revolutionary tumult and wasn’t seen since.
In 2010, however, a mummified human skull was found in the attic of Jacques Bellanger, an everyday Frenchman. Forensic examination indicated that this was the lost head of France’s Henry IV.
Maybe. Later DNA tests have cast doubt on whether the severed noggin is royal, but it does bear physical injuries that match those Henry IV was known to have.
5. Hitler’s Record Collection
In 1991, Alexandra Besymenskaja was rummaging through the attic of her family’s summer home near Moscow, looking for a badminton racquet. Instead, she happened upon a strange box of old records. On the top of the box was written the phrase Führerhauptquartier, or “Führer’s headquarters.”
The collection of records had belonged to none other than Adolf Hitler himself. Besymenskaja’s father, Lew Besymenski, had been a soldier in the Red Army and had taken the records from the Nazi leader’s headquarters following the fall of the Third Reich.
Curiously, Hitler’s collection contained records from Russian and Jewish composers, which were deemed unacceptable “degenerate” and “subhuman” music by the Nazi regime. It seems Hitler didn’t have to play by his own rules.
6. Grandson’s Corpse
In November 2014, 21-year-old Pennsylvania man Dyquain Rogers disappeared without a trace. Despite an extensive search campaign, the young man was never seen again.
Some two years later, in December 2016, Rogers’ grandmother, Zanobia Richmond, heard a weird bang from her attic. When she went to investigate, she found – much to her horror – her grandson’s mummified body.
According to social media posts from the time of his disappearance, Rogers appeared to have fallen on hard times. A coroner’s investigation ultimately determined that he likely hanged himself in his grandmother’s unused attic. The sound Mrs. Richmond heard was probably that of his body finally falling to the floor.
7. A House
In 2020, online user CatchingWindows shared one outlandish attic discovery. It turned out that in the attic of his house was… Another house.
The building had originally been a store with the storekeeper’s living space on the second floor. A local church had later bought the store and expanded it, with the old living area getting swallowed by the newer structures.
Eventually, after buying the house, this netizen delved into the attic and found the age-old original house. Curiously enough, that house had its own attic, so there was an attic inside the attic.
Want to read about more unusual discoveries in strange places, including other attics? Check out our list of 8 Hidden Treasures Found in Odd Places.