Finding a secret door can be a great adventure if you’re playing Dungeons & Dragons or booking an escape room with friends—but finding one in your vacation rental is a little too close to a horror movie vibe.
That’s what one unsuspecting Airbnb guest found when she arrived at her booking several days ago. Looking around the short-term rental, she noticed something under a rug. Picking it up, she made an unnerving discovery: door hinges.
Sevah (@theonlysevahc) shared her eerie discoveries on her TikTok account in a video posted on Monday. The clip has since picked up 206,600 views.
“Y’all. I really don’t know what to do ’cause like, I’m now, I’m sitting on the floor and like, if you look, that’s gravel and sh*t, and I can feel a draft,” she tells her viewers.
Sevah points out the hinge, stating she would never have noticed it without stepping on it. She points out the door’s pull handle and the hinges she found under the rug. “It’s really thrown me for a loop,” she says.
She then points out a mysterious box with a label that reads, “The key to this box is hidden somewhere in this apartment. Find to win a prize.”
She also shows her viewers a “little secret cage,” pointing out what appears to be a door key lock box suspended from another door in the apartment.
Sevah’s video drew immediate responses from multiple commenters telling her to get out of there.
“Girl did u rent an escape room?” one concerned viewer wrote.
“Who you get that BnB from Jigsaw?” a second said.
“Yall ain’t seen Barbarian and it shows,” a further remarked, seemingly referring to the 2022 horror movie involving a secret room in an Airbnb.
“GET OUT OF THERE!” another viewer exclaimed.
@theonlysevahc AIRBNB SECRET DOOR
♬ original sound – Itgirl
Sevah eventually let her curiosity get the better of her and documented her investigations in a series of videos, with one showing her exploring the room beneath and others documenting the aftermath.
Thankfully, some viewers were on hand to solve the mystery.
“The actual door / closet is probably their storage for all their supplies (I host too) … but the under the bed thing definitely scary!” one viewer wrote. But another had an explanation that appeared to answer all the mysteries.
“The door under the bed gives access to the basement. And has insulation strips. The lockbox on the door is for supplies. Most rentals have locked supply closets on site,” HelloBonjour HolaCiao (@hellobonjourholaciao) wrote.
Sevah did end up exploring the mystery space underneath the rental, which turned out to be a mostly empty basement containing the rental’s water heater.
In Sevah’s defense, she may not have immediately recognized the door as a basement entrance if she’s from the South, as most houses in the American South don’t have cellars due to soil, bedrock, and freezing issues. According to Taste of Home, Southern states often “have a shallow layer of soil atop a limestone bedrock. While it is a softer solid rock, limestone is still difficult to dig into. The extra work and extra expense don’t seem worth it to most Southern homeowners.”
We’re glad Sevah’s Airbnb wasn’t housing anything unsavory. The Daily Dot has reached out to her via TikTok for further comment.
