Moving or renovating houses is generally an exciting and daunting task for families. But sometimes in the process, we realize how little we knew about our living room or kitchen floor which probably has its bizarre secrets. The house owners featured on our list today made such mind-boggling, bizarre discoveries while renovating their houses, it might prompt you to question your knowledge about your own house where you are living for years. Read on to know these 10 surprising things people have discovered in their homes.

1 Couple discovered a 33 feet deep hole built in the middle ages beneath their living room after spotting a bump in the floor. They also found an Old Sword.

When 61-year-old Colin steer moved to Plymouth in Devon, he was curious to figure out why there was a small depression on his living room floor. After initial digging, his wife made him wait more than two decades until his retirement to finish the digging process.

In 2012, he finally made an astounding discovery – a 33-foot-deep medieval well under his sofa. That’s not all. He even found an old rusty sword lying at a 45-degree angle inside the historic well.

“I was replacing the joists in the floor when I noticed a slight depression. It appeared to be filled in with the foundations of the house,” Steer told the newspaper.

Steer did his own research about the well he uncovered and found that the well is a part of an aqueduct built in the 16th century by Sir Francis Drake to transport water from Dartmoor to Plymouth.

Steer was proud and loved the fact that he had a piece of Plymouth’s history in his front room. On the other hand, his wife had a contrasting opinion about the well and does not like it at all. (source)

2 A California man uncovered a humongous “Strip Monopoly” game board under his floor carpet while renovating the bedroom.  

On one fine day when Nyeland Newel decided to pull up the carpet in his first-floor bedroom for renovation, he was flabbergasted to make a bizarre discovery of a gigantic Monopoly board in his house which was built in the 1930s. Newel moved into the bungalow in Fresno, California in 2003, and the incident happened three years ago.

The bizarre Monopoly board featured silhouettes of naked women instead of the usual Community Chests. He contacted the previous owner with hopes of getting some information to figure out the rules for this adult-only version of Monopoly.

“It was some sort of risque party game,” Newel told The News, “like strip Monopoly.”
He somehow managed to play only one game on the board (using Monopoly’s traditional rules) before his former wife made him paint it over. He’s since moved out of this old home and now lives in Palm Desert, California. (source)

3 Rare 300-year-old “Mayan murals” revealed during home renovations by a Guatemalan family.

A home renovation initiative started by Lucas Asicona Ramirez’s family in 2005, turned into a discovery project when they found a series of remarkable Mayan murals behind layers of paint in their house. The Guatemalan family found the 300-year-old paintings after they started taking off the plaster from the kitchen wall of their colonial-era house in Chajul, Guatemala, a National Geographic team reported. 

According to historians, the murals hidden at Asicona’s home illustrate the so-called “conquest dance,” which dates back to the 1650s, a period when the Spanish invasion forced the local communities to construct a Catholic Church.

The bizarre incident revealed the artwork depicting scenes of tall Europeans beating drums and playing flutes. “We try to keep the kids away from it and keep people from touching it,” said Ascona. 

He contacted the Government in 2007 asking for help in the conservation of the artwork as it was difficult for him to preserve the artwork without any support. (source)

4 In Norway, an unsigned Van Gogh was found in an attic. The Van Gogh painting discovered in the attic, ‘Sunset at Montmajour,” has been authenticated by the Van Gogh Museum and is the first full-size Van Gogh discovered since 1928.

A stunning landscape that was stored in a Norwegian attic for several years has been revealed as a newly discovered masterpiece by Vincent Van Gogh. 

People in academia are astonished to discover that the painting was made by him during his greatest period when he lived in Arles, in southern France, and created works such as “The Yellow House” and “The Sunflowers”.

The sensational picture was put on the canvas in 1888 and depicted  Arles’s wild and beautiful countryside near a ruined abbey on the hill of Montmajour.

Research on the painting’s history suggests that a Norwegian industrialist, Christian Nicolai Mustad, bought it in 1908 on the advice of art historian and conservator Jens Thiis, who that year became director of the National Museum in Oslo.

Everything went well with the painting until the French ambassador to Sweden visited Mustad and pointed out that it was either a fake or wrongly attributed.

The industrialist expressed his utter disappointment and rage by banishing the art piece to the attic. Mr. Mustad died in 1970, and the painting was rejected twice since then as a Van Gogh – including once in 1991 by the Van Gogh Museum.

All the evidence now suggests the art experts were wrong and the museum has even found a reference to the painting by the artist. (source)

5 In 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona, a couple renovating their kitchen discovered a safe in the floor containing $50,000 in cold, hard cash, a rare bottle of bourbon, a book titled A Guide for the Perplexed, and a Bingo card.

A couple from Phoenix in Arizona were renovating their kitchen in 2015 when they stumbled across a locked safe underneath the floorboards.

User Sarmik posted a picture on the website Imgur, and wrote she and her partner Eddie were amazed to make this bizarre discovery of old $100 bills amounting to $51,080, a bottle of bourbon dating from 1960, a Bingo card, and a book entitled A Guide to the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher.

“When we first moved in, we found a safe code in the back of a medicine cabinet but never found the safe. Still, I saved the little code just in case,” Sarm wrote. Sarm wrote that the book also contained what could possibly be clues to a treasure hunt. (source)