Man Moves Into New Jersey Home, Finds ‘Creepy Room’ Hidden in the Basement

A homeowner in Burlington County, New Jersey, has ignited curiosity after sharing pictures of an unusual home feature—a hidden room.

In a post on Reddit, the owner, who wished to remain anonymous, posted under the handle @openlybl4ck, shared pictures of the chilling room and asked the internet for their theories: “What is this creepy room in my basement?”

The owner has lived there since 2022, and explained that the previous homeowner provided no definitive answers regarding the room. “We have gone with the assumption that it was going to be a wine cellar that was never finished. But that thought lingers in our minds… ‘What’s under those rocks?!’ We also don’t really want to know, if I’m being honest,” the owner told Newsweek.

The most striking feature? A refrigerator-style door marked with a manufacturer’s label, adding to the intrigue. “The general look and feel of a dungeon or something sinister seems to naturally and very quickly take over anyone’s mind who I’ve shown it to,” openlybl4ck said.

The post on Reddit‘s r/home subreddit quickly gained attention and people shared their thoughts and theories.

“If your house is built in the 40s/50s it may be an ice room,” said Redditor Stephonsky. While Zsrh said: “Looks like a cold room to me.”

A cold room in a house is a specially designed space—often located in the basement or under a front porch—that maintains a lower temperature than the rest of the home.

The concept of cold storage in homes dates back thousands of years. Early forms included underground pits and ice houses, which utilized the stable, cool temperatures below the earth’s surface to preserve food and ice before electric refrigerators.

Other commenters saw the opportunity to share some well-placed jokes, like Outofmana1 who said: “Oh that’s where they kept the monsters. You know the ones that hid under your bed or in the closet when you were kids?? Yeah those things actually existed.”

The homeowner was delighted by the attention to the Reddit post, which amassed more than 3,000 upvotes since being shared earlier this week.

“I’ve lived here for a few years and we’ve come up with so many theories. But what could the purpose of this room have been, and what could it be going forward?” it was captioned.

Following the response to the post, the owner told Newsweek: “I’m happy to distract such a wide group of people, even for just a few minutes, from the negativity that plagues our information sources these days.”

This isn’t the first time a hidden room has captured the internet’s attention. Earlier this year a woman found a hidden room in her home 13 years after first moving into the property.

Laura Kohler and her husband first moved into their home in Munich, Germany, she had no idea there was a small space hiding underneath the stairs at the front of the home.

While another woman shared how she uncovered a “creepy locked door” while renovating her home in Cambridgeshire, England.