When A Treasure Hunter Lifted The Floor In This Attic, His Miraculous Find Solved A Family Mystery
A metal detector starts to ping in the corner of an attic, and it piques the interest of treasure hunter Keith Wille. So, the expert takes a closer look and warns the family whose home he is scouring not to get their hopes up. But then he lifts the lid on a box pulled from below the floorboards. And no one can quite believe what they see inside.
As Willie confesses on his YouTube channel RediscoverLost, “hidden treasure” is usually little more than a box of old family photos. Though this find was far more intriguing. Also, it solved a mystery that had mystified the home’s owners for decades. This was, in fact, the box that they had spent years searching for!
It’s a container that had remained elusive to the unnamed family – despite numerous attempts to locate it. Yet according to the Daily Mail, other members of the clan had found similar containers in their own homes. And they weren’t about to let this house go without one last effort to find it.
In the YouTube video created by metal detectorist and treasure hunter Wille, you can see clear damage in the attic which marks other failed attempts to locate the box. Carpenters and construction contractors had previously been hired to help the family in their search, but it was all to no avail. As a result, they called in Wille to help find any potential items before they let the house and its presumed contents go for good.
Wille is a man who has harbored a fascination for hidden treasure since adolescence. As he describes on his website, “Treasure hunting started for me when I was in my early teens. I frequently listened to family members discuss 19th century silver dollars lost behind the walls of my grandparent’s 80-year-old home.”
Though the silver dollars remained elusive to anyone who tried to find them. Wille recalls, “Multiple family members made attempts to recover the treasure – including hammering and chiseling access holes through the thick concrete walls of the basement. Devices were even constructed to reach over the wall but to no avail.” The then-teenager, however, wouldn’t be beaten.
Wille continues, “All it really took to recover the lost treasure was a 13-year-old kid, some detective work to figure out exactly where the best access point was, a circular saw to cut through the closet floor above the hidden room, and my grandmother’s 10-foot curtain rod with a large spoon taped to the end of it to scoop out the coin roll. I [had] found my first treasure!”
Wille’s family weren’t impressed with the mess he’d made of the floor, but his treasure hunt ignited a passion that lasted into adulthood. With a little sleuthing and the correct equipment, Wille loves reuniting owners with their lost items. And it’s a skill he’s utilized with some success over the years, as testimonials on his website confirm.
Among the treasure hunter’s success stories include a diamond and sapphire ring dating back to the 1910s. Its owner had apparently been taking a dip in the waters off of Eastern Point Beach in Groton, Connecticut, when the piece slipped off in waist-deep water. But with Wille’s expertise, the eight-carat item was located and reunited with its grateful owner.
Wille’s website cites another successful reunion which came one winter in Bethel, Connecticut, when a dad was sledding with his daughter. He only noticed the wedding band come off his finger with the unmistakable sound of metal clinking as it bounced off the frame of the sleigh. But this wasn’t your typical gold ring – it represented a lot more than his marriage.
This particular adornment was actually custom made and couldn’t be easily replaced. It was a Claddagh ring – a centuries-old design that signified the owner’s Irish heritage as well as the love and loyalty represented by clasping hands and a crowned heart. But with his trusty metal detector, Wille was able to locate the precious piece in no time.
Clearly, many of the Connecticut-based treasure hunter’s searches involve lost jewelry. Though occasionally, other valuables may also be involved. According to Wille’s website, one time he was called to an estate in Ridgefield, Connecticut, to help locate some missing bars of silver estimated to be worth $8,000 each. That hunt apparently related to a Cold War fallout shelter dating back more than half a century.
Wille says that he scoured the land for a potential hiding place and examined concrete walls for signs of the valuable silver bars. Every inch of the house, its associated outbuildings and land was explored. Sadly, the metal detectorist was unable to locate the hidden treasure on that occasion, but he did unearth some other interesting artifacts on the property.
The home’s owner recalled a stone wall his father had built containing a time capsule. And with his trusty metal detector, Wille confirmed that something lay inside its construction. Gradually chipping away at the stone, he revealed a hidden compartment concealed by wooden planks. After stripping the planks away, Wille then pulled out several containers wrapped in plastic.
“As we pulled the contents out one by one, it became obvious that these items were not heavy enough to contain the valuable precious metal hidden many decades ago,” Wille recalls on his website. “Starting to lose hope, we were now reaching into the bottom of the stone chamber, where one final piece of the time capsule remained.”
Wille ended up pulling a cache of survival goods from the stone wall’s hidden compartment. Along with non-perishable food in the form of two canisters each of wheat germ and beans, the time capsule contained hats, mittens, a Bible, pocket knife, two handguns and plenty of ammunition. The treasure hunter was confident, though, that there was no silver on the property.
Wille clearly has a reputation for locating objects that others can’t find. And it’s in this context that an anonymous family in Massachusetts called on his services. They believed that their grandfather had stashed something valuable in the walls of his home. That house had been left to a relative after he and his wife had passed away. But when the recipient’s daughter decided to sell, she wasn’t content to do so without looking for the treasure first.
The Daily Mail notes that multiple attempts had been made to locate the hidden bounty. Contractors had been called, floorboards ripped up and the attic turned inside out to try and find it. But all searches had been unsuccessful – despite success in similar searches in other homes owned by relatives. The family figured that if the treasure existed here, then it was likely to be hidden among insulation.
“The family was running out of time,” Wille explains in the YouTube video documenting his search. “They were wanting to sell the house for a few years, but this rumored treasure was stopping them from doing so.” So, the metal detectorist employed every tactic in his years of experience and set about locating the hidden valuables.
“Most of the hints and clues we had turned out not to be true,” Wille says of his quest to locate what’s hiding in the property. “I am constantly looking beyond the information I have, looking for things that are slightly out of place, investigating, moving on to the next one.” And where the family searched for years, the treasure hunter took around an hour.
In the YouTube video, Wille starts his search where others had gone before. He is seen examining floorboards – looking for any clues previous hunters might have missed or overlooked. The expert says in his clip, “I eventually got started and turned on my metal detector and started where the two windows intersected.” The treasure hunter apparently took this approach based on information given to him by the homeowner.
“There was a rumor that you [could] see light shine through the floorboard and it was reflecting off the box,” Wille says in his video. But that turned out to be a misconception; every part of the attic that set off his metal detector was an area that had previously been checked over. Anyway, his own search continues in other corners of the room.
Wille then devises a more methodical system to locate the goods. He explains, “Basically my plan was to – if I got a good signal – mark it on the floor with a crayon and then come back, drill a hole, drop my endoscope camera down into the floor and check out what the signal was.” And soon enough, something piques his interest.
While examining one corner of the attic, Wille picks up a signal that suggests he is close to finding something. After taking a closer look with a flashlight, the expert drops his endoscope into the hole he’s drilled into the floorboards for a more thorough inspection. At first, though, Wille doesn’t understand what he is looking at.
Wille describes in his YouTube video, “When I dropped it into probably the second or third hole, I saw something weird. It had letters and numbers on it. I realized after I focused on it, ‘Oh man, this is a keyhole.’ So, I zoomed out a little bit and realized, ‘Oh this is a box; this is a lock box.’”
The container is heavier than the treasure hunter expected as he lifts it up from the floor. Whoever put the item there had clearly been determined to keep it a secret. In fact, the box was obscured with wood so it wouldn’t be spotted between the floorboards. Anyway, the metal detectorist gently shakes it and you can hear a dull thud.
Since no one had a key for the box, Wille can be seen in the video punching the hinges open with a hammer rather than damage the lock. As he prizes open the lid, everyone stands in shock. They can’t quite believe what they are seeing! Wille says, “Oh look at that; I see 20s and I see 10s.” Then the treasure hunter exclaims, “They’re $5,000 bricks. It’s marked $5,000.”
In a later blog post on his website, Wille described the box as being “packed to the lid” with cash. He said, “All denominations were in the bundles, and individual bills were dated 1934, 1935 and 1950. The date ‘December 19, 1958,’ along with the teller number, was stamped on each currency strap.” And the bills looked to be in pristine condition. But that’s not all.
As well as brimming with money, the box contains two bundles of silver certificates dated 1935. While they’re no longer recognized as legal tender, financial website Motley Fool reckons they’d be worth “a small premium over face value” to the right collector. In this case, that would be around $1,000 for both stacks.
In all, the box contained $46,000 secured with the bank straps in which they were first bound in the 1950s, according to the TV station WFSB. That’s the equivalent of just over $420,000 today! Wille told the channel, “I think we were all in shock.” The family was apparently undecided about what to do with their new fortune as well. But one thing is for sure: it is always worth checking under the floorboards! Because this is not the only tale of a cache hidden beneath a house...
It's understandable if you don’t want to go crawling around under your house, though. There's a reason why so many horror movies take place in and around the home! And that could certainly explain why one particular Imgur user was so wary of opening this trap door that remained untouched in his cabin for years. But he wouldn’t regret it when he finally did crack it open.
When guests entered the dining room of his cabin, they couldn't help but question the odd placement of his table. It appeared as though he was covering a secret door. Was he hiding something?
Other people questioned whether the Imgur user lacked the guts to open the door himself. Could he possibly be afraid of what lurked beneath? Was he lying awake at night wondering what could be down there?
When he propped open the door, he realized that, perhaps, he was right in never having gone down there. The wood was rotten and there were venomous funnel-weaver spiders everywhere. Still, they decided to continue their exploration...
Not wanting to unnecessarily kill all of the spiders, the Imgur user and his handyman removed them one by one. It was a lengthy process, though, it made them feel better about the scenario and they were ready to continue their journey below...
When they looked deeper, they couldn't help but ponder all of the unknown things that lay ahead. They were frightened, to say the least, but not enough to turn back...
They shone a flashlight down into the abyss under the floorboards. As they first laid their eyes on the blank walls, they were greeted with a whiff of a foul odor. It smelled like rotting iron pipes. That's when they located a ladder and decided to descend.
“Yeah, creepy…” he wrote in his post about first seeing the dark room below. “There seems to be a faucet. And ventilation. A bomb shelter maybe? Or a cistern?” Moments later, he saw something that shocked him...
The poster referred to his discovery as “unidentified gnarliness.” It looked as though there was a slime lurking in a trough in the corner of the room. What could possibly be inside of it that was causing such a disgusting sight?
Not wanting to touch it with his bare hands, the Imgur user decided to poke the trough with a long stick. “Broke up the unidentified gooey mass,” he wrote in his post, still uncertain of what the substance was and what was causing it.
He could only imagine how long that slime had been sitting inside of the trough. He'd lived in the cabin for years, was it below him all this time? Whatever it was, roots began to grow on the scummy sides of it and all without any light...
He realized that the trough appeared to be large enough to fit a human. Was there something in it that he would regret finding? Maybe he never should've gone down there snooping around...
Was there, perhaps, a hiker who'd gone missing years before he moved in? Could that person be in the trough? He was clueless, but decided to descend the ladder and see what he would encounter.
After approaching the slime, he wrote on Imgur, “Turns out it was just a tangle of roots soaking in the rusty water. But we also seem to have some of the Super Mario movie fungus. Looked pretty sinister, dotted with gooey drops of who-knows-what sort of nope-erry.”
It didn't end there, as he was about to learn, there was still much more to be discovered. He later guessed on Imgur what the room could possibly have been used for, “Built as a cellar for cleaning game maybe? Cold storage? A bunker?”
That's when he noticed a hole in the back wall of the room. Was there, perhaps, another secret room? Should he stop there and turn around? He couldn't. He had to continue his journey.
When he shined his flashlight into the room, he saw something completely unexpected. There was a pile of ash, which he found strange, since there was no furnace in the room. What could have possibly been burning down there?
That's when he decided to board the room up for good, “...so no one falls through into the underworld.” He wrote in his post. “Looks like we’re just going to leave that closed for now and brainstorm possible uses for when the time is right…”
He didn't find any evidence of something he should fear living in his basement. That "secret room" turned out to be just that — space under his floor!
