California - For years, a California family was completely unaware that their home was hiding a secret. Everything came to light when they decided to spruce up the staircase.

TikToker "Taryn34" reports in a video that her parents wanted to renovate their house. Among other things, they tore the carpet from the stairs leading to their bedroom on the lower floor.

Once they reached the landing, however, the carpet came away from the floor in a strange way, revealing a trapdoor.

Underneath - a narrow room with light, lined with shelves containing tools and a few boxes.

Taryn suspected that this discovery might interest many users on the internet and immediately documented everything that happened as a result. "I really wonder what's in here and what we'll find in this little secret bunker," explains the mother of three.

Her husband agreed to go down into the chamber, where not only a lot of dust awaited him, but also massive amounts of spider webs and rat droppings . Despite this, the American began to gradually pass the boxes and cartons from the mysterious room upstairs.

In a second video, Taryn and her family wanted to satisfy viewers' unbridled curiosity and began unpacking the dusty finds on camera.

Spread out on the porch, the family found a lot of garbage as well as an old issue of Rolling Stone magazine, presumably from 2001. They also came across dozens of music CDs in a cardboard box. A jewelry box also fell into their hands, but its contents were rather disappointingly boring.

The rodents' droppings also concealed crockery, Halloween decorations, model cars and old greetings cards. However, the eagerly awaited mega find failed to materialize.

Nevertheless, some of the clips were clicked on millions of times and attracted many mystery fans, who of course initially wildly debated the significance of the hidden room.

After it became clear that it was more or less a storage room belonging to the previous owners, some were disappointed, while others suggested that the room could be converted into something special.

Other users criticize how insensitively Taryn's family treats the contents of the boxes and demand that the items be returned to the previous tenants. After all, the seemingly unimportant items could have an emotional value for the former residents.