Indiana Jones and the Really Creepy Fort

We have some good friends who have lived in their current house for years. It's a large, older, very nice house on a big lot with many trees. A couple of months ago they started some basement remodeling and removed all the finished walls, ceilings and floors so they could start from scratch. Not long afterwards, the husband, Scott, reported that when he removed the wooden cover to what he thought was the crawlspace, he was surprised to discover an entire room behind the wall! The floor was covered by a large pile of dirt so he wasn't sure how finished the room was or why the previous owners would have left it in such a state. Scott nicknamed the room "the crypt".

Here's the wall with the wooden cover to the "crawlspace".



Last week, Scott and his wife hosted a New Year's Eve party. While we were there, everyone wanted to see the crypt, so we trooped into the basement where Scott set up a ladder and removed the wooden door.

Various people looked through the hole and commented on how odd it was, noting this feature or that, including a plank going from the hole into a wooden structure. When I looked through, something struck me right away. "That's a fort. Someone built a fort in that room."

The term "fort" is, of course, a name for a child or teen's play area. The connotation is one of whimsy. However, the existence of this "fort" raised several chilling possibilities, including, most alarmingly, that this secret room was somewhere one might keep someone prisoner. Images of a serial killer building this room for his victims weren't hard to conjure. With some trepidation, I and two others (both also named Scott) crawled into the crypt to check it out.

Here's the plank leading into the fort.

Note the nice construction, how the boards are level and the nails regularly spaced. It seems unlikely this was built by teens. There is a Champion sparkplug sticker behind the fallen insulation and a dog poster on the wall. Note also the extension cord running from the light socket into the fort. The vent straight ahead leads directly outside.

Going inside the fort and looking to the right, you can see a partial paintjob on one wall. The extension cord leads to a small lamp. There were at least six pillows of various shapes and sizes, some with garish designs indicating a seventies origin. To the right of the picture below, an old Star Wars poster is on the interior wall. You can also see a lockable "backdoor" to the fort. Not sure why you'd need a backdoor to leave the fort as it just goes into the same room.

And, yes, that's a gold shag carpet. More evidence of an origin in the seventies.

This final picture is looking to the left from the fort entry hole. The hanging insulation blocks most of the picture but you can see more pillows and a block wall. On the other side of that wall is another room of approximately the same size with the same dirt pile, but no fort.

So, what were our conclusions? Based on the lack of restraint devices, dried blood, fingernail scratches, or anything horrific, and the vent that lead directly outside, we reluctantly concluded that the room was not used by a serial killer to hold his victims. We also eliminated the possibility of a playroom for kids, because what parent would want a small child in such an inaccessible, dirty, part of the house accessible only by plank?

We decided it was most likely a teen hangout, built by way overly permissive parents in the seventies or early eighties. The pillows and posters are something teens would have in such a room. And the size is right. I imagine it would have been a cool place for teens to make out, although that was probably not the parents' intention.

It's really quite interesting that this hidden room and fort have been forgotten in the house for so long, their origins unknown.

Please feel free to add any speculation of your own in the comments.