Dad Finds Secret Hole In His Bathroom, Then Makes A Strange Discovery From 40 Years Before

Have you ever wondered what’s lurking behind the walls in your home? When one family found a hole in their bathroom cabinet, they couldn’t resist investigating. Inside, they discovered an incredible treasure trove from the past collected over 40 years. And now they’re sharing the momentous find with the internet.

Missing Items

You’re probably asking what drove Brown’s father-in-law to look inside his property’s walls in the first place. Well, it started when some recent possessions went missing from his bathroom cabinet. He became curious about these mysterious disappearances. And when he sat down and thought about it, he realized these missing items were just the latest of many objects which had gone AWOL over the years. 

Starting An Investigation

The homeowner had long suspected something was amiss but had never investigated the cause. Still, one day he’d finally had enough and decided to track them down. What he discovered surprised him, so he told his daughter and her husband Brown all about it. They found it fascinating, and shared the discovery on social media.

Treasure In The Walls

It turns out the man’s family weren’t the only ones captivated by his hidden treasures. The pictures proved very popular online, and soon they’d gone viral. Brown’s father-in-law couldn’t believe it when he heard about the post’s success. Now he’s revealed the full story behind the unexpected trove inside the house’s walls.

YouTube Famous

If you recognize Brown’s name, you might be familiar with his online presence. In an interview with website BoredPanda in 2020, he revealed himself to be the Peter Brown who runs Shop Time. That’s a hobbyist and crafts website, in case you didn’t know. In addition, Brown has a YouTube channel where he shares crafting tips.

Project Hobbyist

Brown wrote on Shop Time, “I’m a hobbyist maker and professional computer geek in Northern California. My name is Peter and I make crazy projects and post them on YouTube! I am not a teacher, an expert or a videographer. I’m just a geek with a full set of power tools.”

The Medicine Cabinet

Of course, the house in which the discovery took place actually belongs to Brown’s father-in-law, who has remained anonymous. To be more specific, the trove originated from a bathroom medicine cabinet. Brown explained as much in his interview with BoredPanda, and revealed how lost items had accumulated over the years. 

More Than Meets The Eye

Brown elaborated, “This back bathroom has a built-in style medicine cabinet. It’s got three shelves and like most medicine cabinets, it’s crammed full of stuff.” So how did objects begin disappearing from the closed cabinet? Well, according to the hobbyist there was a little more to it than met the eye.

Tiny Little Gap

Brown continued, “Unfortunately, this one had a small gap in the bottom shelf up against the near wall. It’s only about 1 or 2 inches wide and you really have to crane your neck between the cabinet and bathroom mirror to see it.” You guessed right: it was this gap that was the cause of the disappearing cabinet contents.

Falling Into The Void

According to the hobbyist, “Most of the items lost would have been pushed to the back and side of the cabinet. So it’s not too surprising that it wasn’t noticeable.” Things had been falling through the gap for years, where they remained largely forgotten. And they only had one place to go.

Tracking It Down

The cabinet was attached to the walls so any supplies that fell through actually went inside them. Up until now, though, Brown’s father-in-law hadn’t paid the hole in the wall too much attention. Then one day he lost something from the cabinet and decided to track it down, as he told Brown.

Looking In The Hole

Brown informed BoredPanda, “When I was telling my father-in-law about how many people were liking and commenting on this story, he said, ‘I’ve known the hole was there for a little while now, and I thought maybe one or two things had fallen in.’” Recent events incited the father-in-law to investigate further.

Opening The Wall

Through Brown he said, “I had just lost something and since we’re on lockdown, I might as well open the wall and get it out.” So that’s just what he did. The homeowner cut a hole in his bathroom wall and found far more lost items in there than he had ever expected.

80s Lotion

Brown said of his father-in-law, “He was flabbergasted by the volume of items!” The first image the hobbyist uploaded was of a Jergens dry skin lotion bottle from the ’80s. Although the faded label revealed it had clearly seen better days, it was still remarkably well-preserved. The photos immediately induced a flood of nostalgia from hooked online readers. 

Vintage First Aid

The Jergens find was just the beginning, though. It turns out there was a trove of old medicinal and beauty products hidden in the wall hole. A second notable discovery was a dusty bottle of Bactine first aid spray. The infamous “no sting” antiseptic brought forth pangs of not-so-fond recollection from Brown’s wife.

The Demon

Brown announced, “The Bactine bottle was the one that got the most reactions from my wife. It has a very particular smell, and it brought her back to her childhood! Plus, the fact that it always stung so bad regardless of the lies on the label. The text she sent me called it ‘The Demon.’”

Bathroom Time Capsule

The selection didn’t end there, either. It included memorable products such as AquaVelva Musk and Brut fragrances, Hello Kitty Band-Aids and Vivarin caffeine tablets. Brown had a hunch that the accidental time capsule would prove popular online, so he shared the photos with the public. And man, was he right. People loved them.

Popular Nostalgia

Brown explained, “I kinda presumed my followers would find the pictures interesting, as it was such an odd thing to happen and a large collection of stuff.” What he probably didn’t predict was that his post got thousands of upvotes and 125,000 views in a day. Everyone loves nostalgia, and this treasure trove had it in spades. 

Historic Value

The products were like a time machine for some people. They wrote online how they could name each brand and even remember how some of them smelled. One person commented, “I can literally smell like 60 percent of this post. Even the wallpaper.” Then there’s the historic value to consider.

More Than Nostalgia

Brown said of the treasure trove, “Most [of it] expired in the ’90s, but some were from the ’80s as well! The caffeine pills expired August of 1985 and were never opened. They moved into this house in 1980, so that might be one of the older items.” What a surprising blast from the past! And, you know, sometimes time capsules will contain more than mementos of a time gone by. Sometimes they can even have vast historical significance...

Suspenseful Opening

When audience of academics, journalists and politicians watched as conservators from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts carefully opened up a heavily corroded metal box, there was rapt silence. “It was like brain surgery, with history looking down on us,” Malcolm Rogers, the museum’s director, told CNN. So where had this box come from? And just why was there so much anticipation surrounding its opening?

Earliest Known Time Capsule

Time capsules – which typically contain items such as newspapers, public records and works of art – are intended to help future generations understand the lives of those who created them. And while nobody knows exactly when the wider practice began, the earliest known time capsules seem to date to the 19th century.

From 1795

Remarkably, though, the ten-pound metal box opened in Boston in 2015 actually pre-dates that period. In fact, the capsule is the oldest ever uncovered in the United States. Known as the Samuel Adams and Paul Revere Time Capsule, it is thought to have been deposited away from sight in 1795 – 20 years after the start of the American War of Independence and eight years before Britain formally recognized U.S. sovereignty.

Buried In History

In a civic ceremony commemorating the revolution’s 20th anniversary, the capsule – which then consisted of a simple leather pouch – was buried inside a cornerstone of a very famous building: the Massachusetts State House in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The iconic structure was completed three years later and is today a designated National Historic Landmark – instantly recognizable thanks to its gold-colored dome.

Carefully Preserved

Then in 1855 workmen inadvertently retrieved the pouch and passed it on to city authorities. The items inside were removed, cleaned and deposited in a much sturdier brass alloy box along with several new objects. So it was that, some sixty years after it had first been hidden, the capsule was then ceremonially reburied by governor Winslow Harley and two representatives from a masonic lodge.

7-Hour Removal

The box then remained buried and forgotten until December 11, 2014, when workers repairing water pipes accidentally uncovered it. Actually removing the capsule was a delicate operation, though, and one that lasted seven hours. And as Boston Museum of Fine Arts conservator Pam Hatchfield chiseled the box free, she saw that coins had been placed on top of it, probably as a good luck gesture. Perhaps this, then, was a sign of the treasures hidden inside.

Carefully Handling The Content

At any rate, Hatchfield subsequently opened the box and painstakingly went through its contents at a prestigious event in the museum’s American gallery. Her tools for this delicate task included a porcupine quill and a dental instrument, the latter of which had belonged to her grandfather. And the operation was conducted in absolute silence, punctuated only by occasional sighs of relief, hushed exclamations of wonder and the snapping of journalists’ cameras.

Coins And Newspapers

Among the first objects to be taken out were a collection of coins from the mid-19th century and five newspapers, including editions of the Boston Daily Traveler and the Boston Bee. The newspapers were left folded, however, as it was unclear whether opening the pages would damage them. Meanwhile, the coins – which comprised several different denominations – were in a range of conditions.

Illegally Minted

A collection of much older coins from the 1780s were subsequently discovered, too, with one “pine tree shilling” dating to 1652. The coin in question was minted illegally during the interregnum that followed the reign of King Charles I. This period of English history was, it’s worth remembering, marked by deep political instability; it began in 1649 with the execution of King Charles I and ended in 1660 accompanied by the restoration of royal power. For that brief period, England had actually been a republic.

State Memorabilia

Other items in the capsule, meanwhile, included an imprint of the Seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts – the official state emblem assumed by the Legislature in 1775 – and a copy of colonial records dating to the 17th century. And also recovered was a copper medal of George Washington, proclaiming him President of the United States and general of the American armies.

Engraved Silver Plate

The most impressive item, though, was an intricately engraved silver plate bearing the names of the capsule’s creators: Samuel Adams, Paul Revere and William Scollay. It is likely that the plate was in fact engraved by Paul Revere himself, as he was an accomplished silversmith. And if so, the plate is extremely valuable – and not just in a monetary sense.

Understanding History

“This is the stuff that leads us to Sam Adams, to Paul Revere,” Michael Comeau, executive director of the Massachusetts Archive and Commonwealth Museum, explained to The Guardian in January 2015. “[It helps us to] better understand not only what happened before us but also helps to better understand ourselves, because it’s this power of memory, of shared memory and heritage.”

Early Leader

Born in Boston and educated at Harvard, Samuel Adams was among the Founding Fathers of the United States. An influential philosopher and political revolutionary, Adams was instrumental in engineering American republicanism. He contributed to the Declaration of Independence and the Massachusetts Constitution among other vital legislative frameworks.

American Sovereignty

But while Adams is generally regarded as a national hero, he has also been criticized as a former propagandist and instigator of populist violence. Indeed, separating historical fact from popular myth is a complex scholarly process that rarely results in universal agreement. What’s indisputable, though, is that Adams contributed greatly to the establishment of sovereignty in the United States.

Military Hero

Boston-born Paul Revere, meanwhile, was a silversmith and an industrialist best known for his role as a militia officer in the American Revolution. He contributed to the development of intelligence systems that alerted insurgents to British military activities. Yet Revere is most remembered for his so-called “midnight ride.”

Midnight Ride

This famed ride occurred during the evening of April 18, 1775, after Revere had received word that British troops were heading to Lexington and Concord with the intention of arresting Adams and other insurgent leaders. Revere rode through the night to alert the rebel militias, who then organized and successfully fought off the British. His feat was later memorialized in verse in a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The Lesser Known

The third creator of the time capsule, William Scollay, is less well known than Adams and Revere. With ancestral roots in the remote Orkney Islands of Scotland, Scollay was a Boston-born real estate developer and a deputy Grand Master in the masonic lodge of Massachusetts; Revere was also a deputy, while Adams was a Grand Master. And Scollay’s contribution to the revolution included serving as a colonel in the Boston militia.

American Aspirations

These three men, then, each earned a place in the history books. But the time capsule in which their names were found is important in its own right too. “This is more than simply looking at some historical artefacts, trinkets or curiosities,” commented William Galvin, Massachusetts’ Secretary of the Commonwealth, to The Guardian. “These symbols, when they were placed in the State House in 1795… represented the aspirations of the founding fathers and those who came after. The history of Massachusetts is the history of America.”

Now On Display

If you would like to explore this history for yourself, the items are currently on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts underneath The Passage of Delaware, a dramatic 1819 painting by Thomas Sully. At some stage, though, the objects will be placed inside a new time capsule and reburied in their original place.

A Modern Capsule

So, will the city add extra items before it is reburied? “The governor has wisely suggested that we might,” Galvin told CNN. “So we’ll think about it.” Indeed, in 2015 another Boston time capsule dating to 1901 was returned to its place with the addition of several letters and an iPhone 5 – just one symbol of the technological interconnectedness of early-21st-century society. But just what future generations will make of it remains a question for another time.