The discovery of a mysterious “vault” in the backyard of a recently purchased property out in Seattle, Washington, sparked much discussion on social media before the truth was eventually uncovered.
A local resident by the name of Matthew took to Reddit, posting under the handle u/iowafarmboy2011, to share what he found behind his girlfriend’s property.
“My partner recently purchased a home and as I was redoing the landscape I came across a grate,” Matthew wrote. “When I opened I found this large vault with a large cylindrical piece of equipment with either hoses or tubing coming off it. It was producing heat.”
Matthew told Newsweek his partner had been living at the address for two months before the unusual discovery was made. “The previous owners had done some landscaping that left the side yard with a mound of soil on it and so I was leveling it to better suit our taste,” he added.
“I had found random things buried under the soil such as old garden tools, hunts of concrete, landscaping rocks, etc. and so I originally thought the vault, which was buried under the mulch and soil, was just discarded landscaping rocks or flagstone.”
However, as he continued to brush away the soil, Matthew realized he was dealing with something that had a large flat surface with an unsecured grate in the middle. He was initially concerned over what he might have stumbled upon.
“It stunned me, and then I grabbed the grate and I realized it was hollow underneath and pulled it up,” Matthew said. “I originally thought it was a room, like the one in the movie Prisoners and was concerned with what I may find in it.”
Moving house is a stressful experience. A 2021 survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of North American Van Lines, even saw it ranked by respondents as their most-stressful life event (45 percent) just ahead of a breakup or divorce (44 percent), getting married (33 percent) and having a baby (31 percent).
Matthew had only set out to help with a little landscaping, but in the process he was now worried he had stumbled on something sinister. So he turned to Reddit for help.
Matthew posted several pictures of the discovery on the social-media platform. The post went viral, racking up over 15,000 upvotes, as well as, crucially, a definitive answer as to what it actually was.
“It’s an electricity transformer,” Matthew said. “It takes high voltage power from the utility company and transforms it into lower voltage so it can be put into houses. This is one that supplies power to all the houses in the cul-de-sac.”
Though Matthew had his suspicions that was what it might have been getting confirmation was most welcome, not least because, had he interfered any further with it, it could have had lethal consequences.
Ultimately, he is happy to have gotten the answer he needed and happy to have gone viral. “I didn’t expect it to be so popular, but I am not really surprised. Redditors love a good ‘hidden room’ post almost as much as when someone discovers an unopened safe,” Matthew said.
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