Secret Rooms and Passages

Factual Questions
21
      • I don’t remember the names involved. I don’t remember it as being connected to his house, IIRC it was in his back yard. It was a small underground room he kept a kidnapped girl locked in for (uh,) I forget how long. He ran an extension cord to it and it had a light and a TV with a cable connection. But I do remember watching the news footage of a crane lifting it out of the ground in one piece. The police took the whole thing as evidence.
        ~
  • Somewhat Related: large buildings often use underground maintenance tunnels for power, water and phone line routing. The high school I attended (~2500 students) was about 14 different 2-3 story buildings interconnected by underground tunnels, and it was commonly known by many students and the faculty where the (indoor) entrances to the tunnels were. I never saw them myself, but students caught in the tunnels got a week’s suspension. The janitors were supposed to keep the entrance doors locked all the time (and many teachers would try the doors if they were passing by within reach) but 2 or 3 times a year somebody forgot. Students who got in would usually “escape”; one tunnel went to the edge of the school property, next to some electrical transformers. All the other entrance doors into the tunnels locked “both ways” but the doors there could be opened from the inside but not the outside (they were some kind of fire or emergency doors, the school had to leave them that way). -That exit was mostly concealed by greenery and it was also the only way to get out besides the way you got in. - MC
22

1: My high school had a tunnel that began in the theater, led to an enormous fallout shelter full of 30 year old candy and crackers, and eventually led to an airshaft under the bleachers at the football field.
2: The University of Iowa has an enormus maze of underground tunnels originally used to transport steam from the power plant to individual buildings. It is exceptionally creepy in there.
3: It is not advised to do work on your house without a permit if local codes don’t permit it. If you get caught, you will be scr**ed, glued and tatooed.
4: More people and places than you think have secret rooms and passages. I can attest to this after 8 years as an exceptionally nosy electrician. Oddly enough, Federal buildings all seem to have secret passages. I don’t know if they were put there with the idea of getting someone important out in an emergency or what.

23

Johns Hopkins has steam tunnels too, and the same myth/unwritten rule about getting suspended if you’re caught in them. I want to explore them, but one of my friends did and he says that I shouldn’t because only very thin people (he’s 6 feet and maybe 150 pounds) can get through some of the passages.

There are also hidden cupboards in two of the bathrooms in one building. It would be impossible to see what’s in the bottom of the cupboard, since it goes down several feet past the small door. You’d literally have to rip out the wall in the bathroom and the room below it to see what’s at the bottom. I’ve often thought that if I ever committed a crime, I’d go there and hide the weapon in one of them. I bet it wouldn’t be found for hundreds of years, if ever. However, it would be possible to attach a piece of fishing line to something, throw it down the cupboard, and come back to get it years later.

24

Ever hear of Lord British? Y’know, Richard Garriott? That’s the guy who runs Origin, a gaming company that’s been pretty damned successful. Anyway, I remember, years back, on the TV show Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous (remember THAT???), they showed Garriott’s house… and, just like the Ultima games he designed, he had secret doors and rooms all over the place. I remember one spot where there was a door in front of you, a door above you, and a door directly below you.

I’ve always wanted to get a really HUGE house simply so I can load the place up with secret doors and rooms.

25

Yup, and a year or two ago Richard Garriot sold that house/castle and built an even bigger castle that includes underwater secret passages. The detail that most stuck in my mind was that he could press a button and the roof of his bedroom would open up, and then the bed would rise up, so that he could sleep right under the stars.

Gosh I wish I had seen that episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. All I ever saw on that show were beach houses.