I found an old wedding dress in my attic crawlspace, presumably left by the previous owners although they didn’t leave me with a forwarding address and never tried to reclaim it. After three years, my fiancée used part of it to decorate her flowergirl’s basket. It was an inexpensive polyester thing but I still would have happily returned it if I had been asked.
They also left a few unexciting bits of furniture up there – a small wooden table and the head/foot boards for a toddler bed.
One that someone may find in the future - I lived with some friends who were doing some remodeling in their house, which included running pipes through what had been a built-in bookshelf in my room, and then drywalling over it.
After the project was completed, one of my friends directed me to his website, where he had put up a photo essay about a stuffed animal I owned - a talking Pikachu from Pokemon.
In true Poe “Cask of Amontillado” style…there was Pikachu. Looking out sadly from behind the wall as the last of the drywall went up.
Someday, someone is going to buy that house and do more work on it(it’s an old house…). I wonder what they’ll think if they open up that section of the wall…
First, as soon as the house sold they moved a “temporary” renter in while it went through escrow. I knew it would cause delays, but had no standing to force them to move her out before I actually owned the place.
They left an extra stove and a bunch of half-empty paint cans* and oil cans in the back yard and garage. She left a bunch of clear velcro stickies all over the walls.
I’m not sure who to blame for the refrigerator. It hadn’t been there. It didn’t work, in fact it heated and stank if you plugged it in. And there was a naked baby doll in the freezer compartment with 666 drawn on its forehead.
Fortunately, when I bought a fridge, the delivery people hauled the old one away. The stove cost me $15 to get rid of.
*There had been painters when I toured the place. It didn’t dawn on me until later, because the new color was so close to the old. But the back bedroom was only half painted. They had stopped the painters as soon as the place sold.
Holy crap! I wonder what that was all about.
Part of “property rental management” is cleaning up apartments after tenants leave. I have found everything from live pets to the proverbial porn. We hold things for 30 days, then take what we want and leave the rest at the thrift store across the street.
Someone once left some expensive, perfectly coordinated outfits just my size, including the shoes. I still have them.
Heh. Nothing interesting yet (we just moved in last week!), but there are two giant trunks in the attic, which were apparently there when the previous owner moved in, and she asked if she could leave them. Of course, she didn’t mention that one of them was locked.
I’m almost afraid to pry it open.
Not so much left for me, as evidence of what used to be… each of the bedroom closets had been equipped with numerous barrel-bolt type latches. On the inside of the closets. And it is clear that several of those latches had been ripped out, as if they were latched and someone forced the door open.
Then there’s the gimp room. In the basement, there’s a dank, musty room that could have no possible utility. There is a hasp on the outside of the door, so I know it isn’t a panic room.
Ooooooh! Have you lifted it? Can you tell if there’s anything inside?
At one house, the owners left a really nice handmade cabinet in a small basement room. It must have been built inside the room though. I wanted to bring it with me when we moved, but we would have had to disassemble it to get it out the door.
At this house, we found a large stack of Playboys from the 90’s.
A friend who remodeled her house found a small closet behind a wall. The only item in the closet was a Civil War uniform. She donated it to a local museum.
Heh, I wonder whether the “house with the walled up dead baby whose previous owner was carted off to the looney bin” would take a big hit in real estate value.
Would make an awesome locale for a budding horror writer to set up a household in, though. 
Our house was built in 1938 and we’re only the fourth occupants. Everyone who’s lived there has lived there a long time (at least 15 years).
All the original architectural drawings for the house, including what everything cost back then to build the house, were passed onto us. They are pretty cool.
It’s hard to say; it’s not the same design as the unlocked one, so I’m not sure. It’s pretty heavy, though. When I first looked at it, it was late at night and I wasn’t feeling particularly brave. This may be a job for my husband.
My friend was doing some work in his house and found a bag full of old coins tucked up in a closet. Hundreds of dollars worth - lots of old silver dollars, coins going back at least 150 years.
A few weeks ago he got a letter from the state trying to track down the previous owners, they had some unclaimed property that was going to be taken by the state if they didn’t claim it. It was $76,000 worth of stock. Buddy went online to locate prev owners, jokingly hoped for a “finder’s fee”.
Previous owners of my place only left a bunch of random trash and construction mistakes.
My mother liked to tell the story for years about the house I grew up in. When my family moved in she was pregnant with my brother. Cleaning out the basement, she opened a cabinet and was faced with a set of grinning dentures. I think she lost her lunch.
Open it! Open it! We must know what’s inside. How long have you lived there? I would have opened it on day one.
Signed,
Pandora
My previous owner left me a “rain bell”. It’s a triangular iron bell that’s hanging in a corner of my front (screened) porch.
Well, it’s not so much as a “rain bell” as it is a bell that only rings when it’s going to rain. Or, specifically, 20 minutes before.
The previous owner was the original owner when the house was built (1973), and it was a housewarming gift for her and her husband. She specifically asked me if I would keep it up, and it’s a cool conversation piece, so it stays.
About eight or nine years ago and it wasn’t OUR house, it was a house my husband was remodeling for someone. The previous tenant had been evicted, and husband was redoing the floors - the guy told him to take whatever he wanted that the guy might have left behind.
I got a wedding pillow, some wedding pictures of other people, and an unbelievable leather coat. It’s easily a few hundred bucks - it’s a Wilson’s leather, with a zip out Thinsulate liner. It’s kinda big on me but that’s ok.
Heh, reminds me of a case I saw on Cold Case Files. Some fellow decides to get rid of a barrel in a crawlspace under his house, finds dead body of woman mummified in it … and it turns out that 4 or so previous owners of the house had never looked in that barrel - which contained the dead mistress of the 5th previous owner, who lived there in the 1960s. They track down the guy, now a retiree living in Florida, but he commits suicide before they can arrest him.
I’m not sure which is more odd: that one would leave a barrel containing a dead body of someone you (presumably) murdered in a house you sell, or that it could go undetected for so very long.
A friend of mine showed me his coin collection: A bunch of old coins in an old kitchen towel. He said he found them under his kitchen sink, stuffed in a hole at the bottom of the cabinet. He’d been living there for about five years and he thinks it must have been under there since the 1950’s.
Well this thread just goes to show that when I move, I’m leaving some weird shit behind on purpose. Weirdest shit I can find as a matter of fact.
My friend has rental houses.
last year he gave me a nearly new futon frame.
Also a 1960’s Russian air-rifle that he found in a 2nd floor crawl space.
