Most people love to explore, to uncover things previously unknown. For many of us, the fewer people who knew about what we discovered, the more thrilling its discovery is. When exploring a grand old building, there are a lot of possible discoveries to make from antique items to beautiful old paintings and, perhaps, the classic secret passage.
Not just ancient mansions harbor secret rooms or passages, however. They can blend in just as well in new constructions and provide the same thrill to those discovering them for the first time.
Some people have had the good luck to come across such secrets in their lives and have shared their stories with the rest of us.
45. Real-Life Hogwarts
I used to attend a school attached to an 1100-year-old cathedral in the UK. Many of the buildings were over 500 years old. The place was a real-life Hogwarts of small doors that you never noticed, that actually led you places you didn't expect. When I was a senior, one of my friends got hold of the caretaker's keys - a massive iron ring with about 30 keys of all sizes on it. He showed me a small door in a quiet corridor that led under the cathedral, and from there were found the staircase inside a wall which led up to the roof. It was pretty amazing! Miss that place.
44. Tunnel Parties
I've been down in the tunnels at a famous university. Rumor has it that there have been 'Beach' parties down there when there was snow on the ground above. We even discovered a nondescript door on the outside of a building covered with ivy that opened onto a staircase that led right down to the tunnels. It was pretty cool, but about 85 degrees down there.
43. Secrets Win Races
My school had an entire unfinished crawl space. It was huge. Over ten feet tall and besides some bits of mechanicals had a tin of crackers from the Second World War. Access from a dozen different places throughout the school. Once used it to race across the school and pop up to surprise friends trying to beat me to class.
42. Secret Classes
My old junior high school had a whole unfinished hallway behind an innocent un-noticeable door. Everybody usually ignored it, but a couple of friends either stole/copied a key to it or it was left unlocked one day. The hall was full of classrooms that were being used as storage for broken/damaged desks and the like. The more I think about it, the more I realize that there were probably 9th graders sneaking off to that hall to have a good time, and that's probably how my friends found out about it.
41. Hidden Shelters
The house I grew up in until I was 12 had a secret room in the basement that used to be an explosive shelter. It had old cots in it. The neighbor kids and I used to play in there. It was super creepy with low ceilings and a gravel floor. My grandmother had a dugout room in her basement I discovered after she passed. The door had always been blocked by a pile of stuff, so I never knew it existed. The room was full of OLD stuff my grandfather had collected back in the 40s. Pretty cool.
40. Servant's Staircase
My house had a "secret staircase" that could go from upstairs where the bedrooms are to the kitchen without having to go down the main stairs and through the living room.
It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized it must've been the servants' staircase, I thought it was just a dope way to get a snack without having to interact with anyone at one of my parents' parties. I lived in a really old house
39. The Classic Book Switch
In college, I worked for the alumni association and their offices were in a big mansion that had been donated to the school or something. It had a classic bookcase door leading to a hidden passageway between rooms. There wasn't anything super surprising about it inside, but it was opened by pulling a book, so that was fun.
38. Weak Panel
I went to school in a castle. We had a secret passage that no longer went to the church (a drain blocked it) but did go to the headmaster's cupboard from the geography room.
Every now and then it would be sealed up and we would have to reopen it.
Many years later I discovered that the staff did not know it was there, they just thought there was a weak panel.
We also had a secret exit from one of the dormitories, out of the back of the boot cupboard and a route through two old fireplaces which took us from the snooker room through to the drink cellar, which we were very pleased about.
37. Red Room
We found a secret "room" in my aunt's house, behind the kitchen cabinets when they were being swapped out. It was this walled-off area between the unexpectedly wide chimney and the outside wall. Big enough for maybe 3 adults to stand in somewhat uncomfortably.
The weirdest part is that it was all painted red. Floor, ceiling, walls. Everything.
36. Chalet Hide-And-Seek
During middle school, my class went on a trip to Hocking Hills OH. The boys stayed in one chalet and the girls stayed in another.
All the teachers for our class were female, so the chaperones for the boys were two parents. My friend and I went into the master bedroom when we arrived the first time, and to my surprise the chaperones let us keep it and didn't want it for themselves.
Inside the closet, we found a small door that led to a space made of unpolished wood with some insulation on the walls and the AC/heating unit. It was almost comparable to an attic except not upstairs.
A few minutes before lights out, everyone gathered into the room (It was a small class with roughly 15 boys) and hid in the crawlspace except for myself, my roommate, and one person who hid under the bed. The chaperones spent a good 5 minutes looking around the building before they found the room.
The sight of 12 boys crawling out of the closet was hilarious, especially when there was one straggler that they had to tell to come out.
About 45 minutes later (my friend and I were still talking even though we should have been asleep) we heard a light tapping on the door. Naturally, we checked the crawlspace in the closet, to no avail. We thought it must have just been something outside, until 10 or so minutes later we heard it again, with nothing in there.
Finally, a little later this dude that I was also good friends with crawled out! Apparently, he hid behind the insulation of the wall!
35. Secret Harry Potter Room
Growing up, I babysat a bunch of kids who showed me a secret passageway through the walls of their house. It was pretty neat being able to walk to random rooms through the halls of the house without being seen. The house was built in the late '80s. The house I currently own has a secret door to a room under our stairs through a closet. Very HP style.
34. Disappearing Students
My school system was built in three stages, one large school in 1936, which later became the middle school as the population grew, what became the high school in I think the 60s, and the elementary school in ‘95, which sat between the two others. Being built during the Cold War, an underground shelter was included in the high school, and a tunnel was dug down to the middle school. There were rumors about it, but no one had really seen it.
Well, I’m sitting in a small computer lab, the teacher had just stepped out, and I hear this shuffling coming from the floor. A hatch under a desk opens up (rarely used room, hatch in the corner, probably why nobody noticed it before), and these three kids crawl out, close the hatch, and sit down at other stations. The teacher comes back for something she forgot, greets the kids (I assume thinking they arrived while she was away from the door) and heads back out. The three kids then went back to the hatch, crawled back down, and closed it behind them. When the teacher came back, she asked what happened to the other students. I just said that they left.
33. The Nuns Know
I went to a Catholic school that was around 100 years old. It included a nunnery, a church, and a school building, all built in a row and in that order. There were rumors they were all interconnected but no one could explain where.
When my cousin got married in that church it was pouring out. We were getting ready in the school cafeteria. The nun that was there came by and told her she didn't have to worry, and then proceeded to lead us the coat closet for the kindergarten room next to the cafeteria, and pop open a hidden door in the wall I'd never noticed in the eight years I went to school there, as it was covered with the same wainscoting and wallpaper as the wall.
Led to stairs and a small hallway, and we marched through and lead out to the door under the stairs to the choir loft in the church. The door in the nunnery is apparently in the basement, where their dining room is.
32. Smash And Pop
I used to live in a century home. It was massive. There was a built-in case (not a bookcase as this only went to about your waist) in the hallways. One day I ran down the stairs, slid and smashed into it and it unlocked and popped itself open. It was only about the size of a crawl space, but it was clearly intentional as hiding, not noticeable storage.
31. Walled-In Bathroom
I worked in a residential treatment center that was in an old mansion from the early 1900s. Apparently was originally built by a rich logger. It had a beautiful ballroom and everything. Previous to being a treatment center, it was a hospice for children. So we joked about it being haunted often. A big, old, creaky building that lots of people had probably passed away in. Lots of weird sounds and occurrences during night shifts. Paint started chipping on one wall and there was a colorful mural made up of kids handprints beneath it. So creepy.
Anyways, there was a massive old oak entertainment unit in the main living room/ tv room that all the staff and residents usually hung out in. One day the management decided to turn that room into extra offices for staff. So the entertainment unit was removed. Behind it, there was a tiny, creepy bathroom that had been fully walled in. And the sink and floor were COVERED in rust covered goo. The lighting was all flickery and creepy too. It looked like a crime scene. The building manager took a look and told us all that the red goo just rotten soap that had leaked out of the soap dispenser.
30. Secret Donor Apartment
An entire secret apartment was hidden in one of the student dorms where I used to work. Was put in at the request of the donor who paid for the building so he had somewhere to stay when he was in town. It was fancy, marble floors, big thick rugs, super-king bead. House-keeping kept it stocked with drinks and basic food just in case he wanted to use it. Almost no one knew it was there, including most of the staff. I only found out because it needed it's phone line checked one time.
29. "Somewhere"
Growing up a friend of mine lived in a 17th-century stately home that had multiple secret passages. Sadly most had been covered up or just left to dilapidate. The kids were forbidden from using them and the most we ever got to see was just opening the door and looking in.
There was this tunnel in the basement that was apparently almost a mile long and led out to the moors to some secret door which is by now most likely either filled in or collapsed. It was pitch black, cold as heck and looked like somewhere you'd never come out of.
Another passage was hidden behind part of the wall on the mid-level of the main staircase. You had to push it from one side and pull from another in just the right places and it would open to reveal a dank spiral staircase that went "somewhere".
28. Old-School Security
I once worked at a place that had once been a post office. There was a small room between the bathrooms the had a door that revealed a staircase up to enclosed catwalks that went the length of the warehouse. The catwalk had “windows”, more like slots, of one-way glass. I guess it was so they could watch the sorter last before it was all automated and make sure no one was stealing checks or whatever.
27. Bedrooms For Secrets
I lived in an old house in university that was pretty spooky and had a ton of weird quirks. One day I was fumbling around in my closet, and it moved. There was a staircase in it that led to two smaller bedrooms upstairs. Just empty bedrooms. Both had closets, nothing in them, but the ceilings were super low.
Always kind of freaked me out.
26. Personal Narnia
There's a small door in the back of my bedroom closet at my parents' house. It leads into unfinished attic space with a sloped roof. The only natural light comes from a small roof vent. At one point the floor was covered in disused couch cushions and pillows, and I hung up Christmas lights and a few old sheets to cover the bare wood underside of the roof. It was cozy and I called it Narnia.
25. Secret Soaker
I have designed a few for clients (I’m an architect). They are a lot of fun. Usually done with the traditional ‘pivoting bookcase’ or false-backed cupboard.
I’ve even done one where the client (CEO of a bank) had a desk with what looked like an old-fashioned ink-well and pen holder. It flipped up to reveal a small tunnel down to the entry porch. He kept a super-soaker next to his desk and would fire it at people ringing the doorbell.
24. Like Popping A Cork
I worked at a corporation that built a 4-story building with only 1 level above ground. It was a showcase place, with a giant atrium rising up from the center of the building, from the 3rd floor up beyond the ceiling. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th were all underground, with the exception of a graded out portion for a loading dock, with a Stone Mountain type of entry in a rear corner.
There was a secret utility access door behind a decorative shelf on the 2nd floor. It had a narrow staircase that travels down to floor 3 and 4. One year, a giant underground water main burst just outside the stairway and forced tons of water into it.
One of my friends worked on the 4th, warehouse level and heard ' watery noise' behind the lower level exit. With some difficulty, he unlocked that access door and he said it was like the Poseidon Adventure sinking burst of water, throwing him across the room like a giant would flick a toy away.
The pressure as maintained in that stairwell had stopped a full blowout of the line, and with that change in pressure, it totally burst free and nearly destroyed the 2nd and 3rd-floor foundation of the building.
23. Up And Down
There’s a church in my hometown that had a very large pointed tower on the roof. You used to be able to climb up the tower and on the inside was a ladder that you could climb down and get into the church through. It was secretly accessible and often used for a few years, you just had to climb up 15ft to get in.
22. No Secret Room For You
When I was around 10, there was a much wealthier neighborhood being built next to mine. There were always Open Houses there, so I would hop the fence and go explore them when no one was around.
One of them I was in an upstairs bedroom with one wall of built-in bookcases when, like a movie, I noticed light along the edge of one part of the bookcase. I pushed it and it swung open to reveal a hidden room built into the area above the garage that you would not have expected to have a room.
I went home and begged my mom to buy it. I was so mad when she said no.
21. Secret On The Roof
I had a strange hidden area on my roof, too. I could climb out my bedroom window and up the roof and on the other side there was this tiny 6x6 platform with an old chair. You'd never be able to see this unless you went poking around on the roof like I did because I was weird.
20. Entrance To Building B
This was in 2007. One of the campuses I've studied at was a mix and match of 19th-century to mid-1970's buildings and was in the (very long) process of being decommissioned. Most of the classes were already relocated to another campus in the suburbs, leaving only CS and one other subject there.
So most of the campus was left decommissioned and of course closed off, with the only visible access being in the middle of the courtyard (so extremely exposed). That was a bummer, because while exploring we had already found an open attic where some of the old CS department equipment was stored and we'd really have loved to explore the rest of the disused buildings. (old equipment = serial terminals, VIC-20s, C64s, that kind of stuff).
But one day, a bunch of friends and I found a seemingly out of place door right after a hidden bend at the very end of a badly lit subterranean corridor. The plaster around it looked much more recent than the rest of that 1970's building. We opened that door only to find another completely dark corridor. So on we went, and a few doors later we entered the mysterious building B.
19. Hidden Entrances To Old Extensions
My grandparents were farmers and their house had been rebuilt and extended several times over a significant period of time (probably a century or so, but I'm not certain). In any case, because of this, there were several weird doors. The one I used the most was a cupboard door that actually led to a small staircase leading to an old bedroom that was actually the only livable part of the "old farmhouse". It was pretty cool, it even had a door leading to stairs down into the ruined part of the old farmhouse (stone construction so the walls were basically indestructible) which served as my grandfather's workshop and somewhere to store wood.
18. Glitch
Not at my house but at a friend's. He found the remnants of an old, unused stairwell that connected his closet to a closet in the computer room on the main floor. We freaked out his dad by going up the functioning stairs in front of him and then walking by and going up again, having ostensibly never come back down, like a glitch in the matrix. He finally caught it on the fourth go-around; was amazed to know of the old stairwell.
17. Closet Doors: Not Just For Closets
My high school was built in the '50s and was designed for about 1000 kids, which was a lot considering it was a Catholic school in a very small town in the midwest. When I attended, there were only 200 students, so many classrooms were not in use and if the staff left doors unlocked, we could explore during study hall, lunch or after school.
One of the cool things we discovered were unused teacher's offices that were located between the classrooms. What looked like closet doors actually led to fairly large offices and storage areas. One of these had tons of interesting science experiment equipment from years prior.
Also, there was a door in the boy's locker room that led to an abandoned fallout shelter. I never actually went into it, but apparently it held dozens of bunk beds and lockers of non-perishable food in case there was a nuclear war.
16. Hidden Garages, Trap Doors, And Passages
My childhood home was built by an architectural engineer who definitely had a lot of anger and secrecy issues. His house was the oldest in the neighborhood and literally nobody knew him even though he had a wife and kids and all the neighbors had several stories of him attacking dogs that came onto the property. It was pretty likely he was a conspiracy theorist of some kind.
The house had a secret concrete tunnel that was a door in the basement that he allegedly hid behind a bookcase before we had the house. It was at least 50 feet long and went 20 feet under our backyard and led to a garage that could fit 2 RVs. He also left several spaces in the walls/ceilings that had hidden trap doors, some of which we didn't find for years.
My favorite was hidden in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen and led to a 10-foot hiding space in the wall. My brother and I found it because we were messing around inside them while putting away dishes and found a small knob at the very top that blended in.
Another was in the master bedroom, the bed was in a corner and had a huge headboard that had indented spaces on the side of the bed to set decor/books. One day we set something on it really hard and the top moved out a bit and we realized you could pull them out and it led to a large space that we could fit at least 4 people in (sitting down). I loved that house.
15. Remodeling Uncovers Secrets
I was renovating an old house in Virginia years ago. It was a massive farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. Isle of Wight county I believe. This house was originally a plantation built in the late 1700s. It had a large pantry the size of a decent bedroom with wall to ceiling shelves all the way around.
We were pulling up the old linoleum floors that were probably from the 1930s or 40s because we were gonna refinish the original wood floors. In the back corner of the pantry, I noticed a perfectly round hole about the size of a quarter. I stuck my finger in and gave it a pull and it was a secret trap door. It opened on the seams of the boards. It was absolutely unnoticeable.
Upon opening it was an iron hand forged ladder that went straight down about 15 feet. My helper and I got some flashlights and went down. It looked like something straight out of a horror story. The tunnel went farther than our lights would shine. Cobwebs like I have never seen. Indiana Jones thick.
We followed the tunnel to the end and came upon another ladder. We climbed it but the door at the top wouldn't open. We counted our steps back and went outside to see about where it led to. In the horse stables, under the log pile, under a foot of dirt, we found the other door.
After a lot of research, we found out that this house was a part of the Underground Railroad that people would hide out in. It had been lost to history and forgotten. Once we got the news out about it, it was placed on the historical registry and the value skyrocketed. I wonder how many families lived there over the years and had no idea it was there or the significance of the house.
14. Secrets Of The Trade
I work at an old funeral home that has secret hallways behind the visitation rooms so we can move caskets in and out without alerting guests. My favorite entry to one of these hallways from our East visitation room is a framed floor length mirror that swings open. Some of my co-workers that don't handle the bodies don't even know that it's there.
13. Student-Made Tunnel
When I was a teenager we moved to a little rural community with an elementary school. It closed down the next year. I made a few friends who kept telling me there were tunnels under the school. I never believed them. One day we were bored and the subject came up. My friend said he would show me. So we crawled through a hole in the foundation and damned if there wasn't a tunnel under the school. I guess years ago some bad students skipped school and hid under the floor. They took a shovel or maybe a spoon and dug down a couple of feet and across about ten feet and then back up to the surface. So there was actually a tunnel under the school.
12. The Narnia Room
I helped clean a mansion once, and the regular housekeeper showed me the children's Narnia playroom. It was behind a hidden door in the back of a wardrobe of course. This led to a small room, maybe formerly a large closet. The carpet was long white shag, to look like snow, and there was something under it to make a small slope. They had a tall lantern street light and a few fake snowy Christmas trees set up.
11. A Suite For Mementos
My great grandparents had a half-size door in their closet that went to a secret room. They used it for storage, but it was a full-size room with a bathroom, but no window. It was weird because I vaguely remembered finding it when I was little and always searched for it again, but couldn’t find it.
They both passed away when I was 11 and when we cleaned out their closet we found the room again. They kept a lot of mementos of what they were able to salvage after WW2. They were both Jewish so their homes had been taken away and allocated to use during the war. They went home after the war just to pick up what they could. It wasn’t much, but it’s very interesting to look through it all.
10. Secret Party Lair
I work in real estate and was visiting a large block of land that a developer was going to develop 40 townhouses on. We're walking around chatting about what will go where etc, and I ask him if he's demolishing the house on the front corner of the lot. He then got super excited and took us up to visit it.
We walk in, the first thing we see is shaggy yellow carpet not only in EVERY room of the house but also on the walls and the ceiling. We walk around the kitchen, with a bar and pool table in the center of it, and then see an old 1960's looking fridge in the dining room. I didn't think anything of it, considering how weird the place was already.
But the developer opened the fridge door AND IT WAS A SECRET STAIRCASE GOING DOWN TO AN UNDERGROUND BASEMENT. The basement had the craziest sound system and disco balls and a whole stage. There was a large canvas painting down there too and the developer took it off the wall and there was an escape tunnel out to the back of the block. Apparently, the past owner was a super successful lawyer back in the 1970s who took on a lot of substance cases.
Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash
9. Cursed Room
I found a room in the back of a closet at my parents' house when I was a kid. It was essentially a kid-sized hole cut in the drywall that led to a small room under the stairs leading to the basement. None of us had known it was there.
The room was all concrete, with some 2x4s stretching across the ceiling and others acting as supporting beams for the stairs (I'm assuming). Totally empty, but it was covered in graffiti from the previous owners, and that's how I learned about curse words.
8. Spilled Secret
There was a teeny Coraline-like door in my bedroom closet that was hidden when the regular door was opened and against the wall. It led to a finished attic room that I'd hide in to scare my parents.
I didn't mention the room's existence until we had lived there for a couple of years and then they stole it for storage space.
7. Body Storage
My grandmother's house had a lot. I'm sure we missed most of them. It was an old Victorian mansion. Most were so servants could move around without disturbing them. But with modern technology, she didn't need a full staff. One was in the basement. It was really odd since it had slats in the walls big enough for us to lay in. (Which we did) we found out it was the room bodies were stored in if they died when the ground was too frozen to dig a grave.
One was just a prayer room apparently. It had poorly written and drawn bible related things, a kneeler, wax, And a random ceramic pot.
6. The Hales Mansion Pass
I used to rent the garage apartment behind this massive 20,000 square foot house that had formerly been an Archdiocese called the Hales Mansion. The place looked like a museum.
Tornado season came around and there was a massive storm so I had to take shelter in the basement beneath the garage. In the basement, there are some old paintings boarded up like they came from the warehouse in Indiana Jones and all this massive machinery since I guess plumbing and electric for such a large structure is a little different than your average one-bedroom.
I don't have service and there's not a lot to do down there so I explore and find this square red metal hatch set about waist high in a concrete wall. Open it up and there's a tunnel with pipes and lights running down the whole length. I couldn't explore it then because I didn't have lights or anything, but I came back later with a flashlight and crawled my way down, eventually reaching a spot where it dropped down to a level where I had to army crawl to the end of the tunnel where I slipped out.
I looked around and saw a bunch of Christmas decorations and random junk and realized the tunnel led from the garage to the main house and I was now in their basement. Quickly went back the way I came since I'm sure the rich folks wouldn't be pleased to find their random tenant exploring their home.
5. Behind The Shops
After a decade of working for a poorly managed embroidery company, my mother offered to buy out the owners and take over. They said no, so she quit and opened up her own shop in a smallish mall in our town. The building was pretty old over the years had seen businesses and owners come and go.
Each store had a small door at the back that had access to a service corridor. It didn't get much use since it only really gave access to the plumbing and electrical, but those of us kids whose parents owned and operated shops would play in it frequently. We thought we were pretty clever being able to randomly appear at different parts of the mall like magic.
One day, we came across a panel that looked like it didn't quite fit right. We pushed on it and found a small room that had apparently been used as storage but had been sealed off for no reason. We showed our parents and the landlord. The landlord was cool enough to have it cleaned up - put a sofa, a small refrigerator and a TV in it. It became the defacto kid hangout for those of us in the mall.
Eventually, my mother moved to another office location, but it was fun for a bit.
4. Unexpected Exit
The landing on the staircase going upstairs was hinged. If you opened it you could drop into the area below the staircase.
From there you could open a door in the wall which leads down into the basement.
In theory, you could act as if you were going upstairs from the main floor and go through the above, get into the basement and escape the house from the basement door.
To Give a little more info, this house is in upstate NY and dated back easily to 1895. Possibly we thought it was some Underground Railroad stuff or possibly prohibition related. We did find old bottles of drinks in the walls when we remodeled and it fit the timeline better than the Railroad did.
Photo by Gabriel Izgi on Unsplash
3. A Hidden Network
One of the tractor drivers on the farm whilst plowing fell into a hole. Suddenly appeared beneath one of the tires. Turned out it was a series of tunnels dug by a Canadian tunneling company (as in army unit) practicing here in England for the invasion of Germany. A whole network of tunnels hidden beneath us, all kept secret for decades.
2. Peace And Quiet
About 18 months ago my dad purchased a house that was a church in a past life. At some point, the church closed and the pastor continued living there for several years as he remodeled the church into a house that eventually bankrupted him and ended with the home going into foreclosure.
Almost every room in the house on the main floor has an exterior door, and there are a couple of different staircases that lead to the basement. Several months after purchasing the house while going up the stairs from the basement into the attached garage my dad noticed a weird carpeted shelf off to the side of the stairs.
Looking more closely he realized there was a handle, which when lifted up revealed a hidden door that goes to another small staircase down. Once down the hidden stairs, he realized there was a hidden 8 foot by 10-foot secret room with all concrete/brick walls. The room is nearly soundproof and you really wouldn't notice it unless you were looking very closely. He jokes that he is going to use it as a storage space for all of his food, water, and weapons for the apocalypse.
It makes me wonder what the church used the room for though...
1. A Bit Wet
During my freshman year at my university, I got inebriated (2013), and decided to go into this cafeteria that had been closed for a year at that point. It had just a thin metal gate preventing anyone from entering, well I pulled on it a little and it snapped, allowing entrance. It was cool being in this cafeteria that nobody had been it, but it got better.
I found how to get into the basement. This basement leads to a corridor that I later found out is 1.5 miles of underground tunnels. I did some exploring but a lot of it was flooded and just smelled of decay and rot, found some coke bottles from the 1950s.
After I did some research on the history I found out I stumbled into the condemned tunnels of the university that was used to transport things between buildings. A hurricane had rolled through in the 80s and flooded a large portion of the tunnels and damaged it. The university decided it was easier to just not use them than to repair them. Pretty cool thinking I was probably one of the only people to step foot in there within the past 30ish years.
