Bats!

We referred to our now home as the "dead cat house" before it was gutted and renovated. Even our car recoiled the first time we drove up and saw the dead cat on the lawn, that somehow rose up and started coming at us like something out of Steven King's Pet Cemetary. We joked about having a huge demo Halloween party that year; now I really wish we had. There was a three foot chain anchored into the porch floor, presumably ready to release the hounds, a goat pen in the cobweb covered basement, worms in the toilets, dead mice, a disembodied doll's head covered with moss near the woods, and we're told that "the biggest cow we've ever seen" is buried in the backyard... Decayed outbuildings vacant of their former resident cows, pigs and chickens, mysterious stains and smells, mmm, home sweet home! (I did come every day during the next two years' reno to take care of the poor "dead" cat that was left behind by the previous family -- poor girl was 20+ years old.) The one personal artifact found in a crawl space was a sweetly signed Halloween greeting card of all things.

I had NO intention of living here until we wiped a little soot from the window and saw the view. My husband handed me a paper and pencil and said, "What would you do with it?" and I drew up a plan I couldn't walk away from.

@Barnhart Gallery. You are braver than I! Holy cow!

Barnhart Gallery, all I can say is WHOA.

The day I moved in I found, hanging by a nail on the wall of my spooky unfinished basement, a kitschy little scarecrow figurine holding a sign saying "Autumn greetings". It's definitely unsettling when your basement greets you by name.

The demo guys were not happy to find a couple of dead rats and a large quantity of rat poop in the fir down that held the duct work. We called it the rodent runway. Some days you're in, but now they are most definitely out!

Newlywed we moved across country to New England into an old Victorian house that my husband recalled mowing the lawn at when he was a boy. His dad had called and said the house was for sale and thought it was a great starter home and needed a "little work". The first day a bat flew out of a hole in the wall and when the water was turned on the old pipes burst and water sprayed out everywhere. Pretty frightening for a young bride who had grown up in a ranch house in the Midwest.

When I bought my old house there was an army cot and little radio set up in the totally unfinished crawl space, then the gun and ammo magazines arrived addressed to a name that did not belong to the previous owners. We called it Raymond's room. It turns out the previous owners let a down and out friend live in the crawl space at some point. We heard he later road his bicycle to town and robbed the bank because he needed dental work. True story...he's never been back.

A house renovation in Florida was surprised to find an 8' foot snake skeleton underneath floor boards that were pulled up to run new sanitary lines. Turns out it was a rattlesnake. The wife was so freaked out she demand all the floor boards be pulled up to inspect for any other unwanted residents. We didn't find any other unwelcome visitors, but we did find a bundle under the floor boards It was wrapped in some type of oiled paper or skin. When we got it unwrapped we found an old civil war era rifle and cap and ball pistol...... which with some cleaning, the owners now proudly display over their fireplace.

The other "discovery" was in NC where a digging the house foundations, the crew found human bones. Some further digging revealed a skull.........work came to a grinding halt when it was determined that the bones were quite old and Native American. Turns out the area was an old undocumented Native American burial site......small, but still a protected site. There were maybe a dozen other graves identified. The owners were forced to find another site on their property to build and the original site was documented and left undisturbed.

When we started gutting our 1838 house and removed a drop ceiling in the living room someone had written "go to hell" on the original plaster ceiling. Kind of a bad omen?! Also the electrical fuse box was installed inside a make shift basement shower! Electrocution chamber? Who knows. We got rid of the writing and the shower ASAP!!!

A dead horse, and horse hair carpet underlay. Guess where that came crom?

We'll this wasn't planned as a remodel but after finding a long grey tail sticking out from under my shower pan!!! Out onto the bathroom floor in my basement at the old house Eeeeek we had to rip the whole thing out and remove two large rats one of which luckily had his tail sticking out or else (oh god I shudder at the thought of it again!!!)

We're in the process of restoring a historic 1853 Italianate, 5400 sf on 2 floors. My husband found 2 rat skeletons behind a kitchen cabinet that used to contain wall ovens. They were obviously crawling up or down the wall, & something (heat from the oven?) killed them. There were also stains down the wainscoting where they'd slid down the wall as their body fluids drained. Thankfully he'd cleaned it all up by the time I got home, but he was thoughtful enough to e-mail several photos.