Pennsylvanian Man Discovers an Underground Secret After His Lawn Bubbles

Picture this: it’s a relaxing Sunday morning. Last night’s storm left behind a clear, blue sky. You’ve just come back from church, and you’re ready to put a little work into the garden while the sun’s out. As you make your way to the flowerbeds over the lawn, you hear a sound you’ve never heard before: a whispering hiss—and it’s coming from the earth beneath your feet.

It was a typical Sunday for James Carlington and his wife, Sarah. They got up, ate breakfast, and attended the morning service at church. There were a few chores to do around the house, but besides that, it was the perfect day to set aside for rest and relaxation.

The weather is fairly moderate in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, but that’s not to say that the town doesn’t see its fair share of storms. It had been raining hard last night. The grass and leaves still glistened with raindrops. An energized wind still rushed through the air.

Maintaining his garden gave James a lot of peace and joy. He was proud of his work. Sarah said that he often got lost in his own world while gardening. It was his way of recharging from the day-to-day demands of work.

James examined the outside walls of his home, then inside, to no avail. Both he and his wife were puzzled and a little concerned. The hissing noise might be the result of a leak. It could be the sound of an animal. The two continued to search up and down.

After examining every pipe, every appliance, and every nook and cranny, James and Sarah finally took their investigation back outside, where the noise seemed to be getting louder. It didn’t occur to them that the hissing noise could be coming from so far away from the house.

Of course, it had been difficult to see from the house. But now, up close, the grassy lump was practically bursting. Neither James nor Sarah had ever seen this before, certainly not in their backyard, anyway.

James put his best foot forward and touched the lump with his toes. In response, it jiggled back and forth like the mattress of a waterbed. It seemed to be filled with liquid of some kind. James walked around to the other side and gave it another poke.

James decided to stab the bubble, hoping to pop it and release whatever was inside. But the lump was too spongy, and his foot alone was not enough. James decided to step things up a level.

James continued to jump on the mound as if it were a trampoline. James even started to enjoy himself. But no matter how hard or how high he jumped, the mound would not burst. It was more solid than it had first seemed.

As James worked, Sarah was capturing these strange happenings from the sidelines. They’d tried poking it, jabbing it, and even jumping. It was evident that it would take something more to flatten this bump.

Sarah joked that there was actually a nest of snakes waiting for them to make an opening, but nothing deterred James from his mission. He took his umbrella and began carefully digging into the soil, expecting a spring of liquid or an explosion of water and mud.

Sometime later, their neighbor took a turn, using gardening tools. They poked on top and around. With a little effort, they managed to break through the skin of the lump, at long last. 

As James stood on top of the lump, victorious, he watched as his feet sank into a pool of clear water—the rain from last night’s storm, he figured. At last, the grass had been lowered back onto solid earth.

After James opened up the mass on his lawn, the flow of water would not stop. It looked as if a pipe had been burst. But at no point had James stuck anything solid. Where was all this water coming from? What was going on?

For half an hour, the water just kept coming. While their yard was filling up, James decided to investigate the lump. He wanted to know what was underneath out of curiosity. This curiosity led to quite the find.

James noticed what looked like a piece of black plastic protruding out from under the grass. He tried to pull it out, but it would not come. No matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t move an inch. It seemed attached to something under the earth. 

After a little while, their pool of water drained out into their neighbors’ yards, where it was absorbed into the earth or evaporated. James and Sarah were still curious about the contents of the black bag, and so they investigated further.

James grabbed a shovel and started digging around, hoping to find the other side. But every time he lifted the earth, the plastic seemed to reach further and further. It seemed to go on and on.

After examining the black plastic bag, James realized that it must have been there for years, maybe even before they bought the house. He tried to carefully extract it, but still, it was spread too far and too wide.

James dug up little samples all over his yard. It turned out the black tarp covered just about every inch of the garden. James had never seen such a thing. He walked back to the spot where the lawn lump was still flattening out. 

When he was done, James had uncovered something remarkable. He stood over old wooden planks. They looked to have been buried there long ago. Try as he might, he could not loosen them. They were fixed in place.

First the lawn lump, then the huge plastic tarp, and now a mysterious floor running beneath the garden. The mystery went deeper than he would have ever imagined. They had no idea what they would find if they kept on digging.

While all this was happening, James’ wife Sarah was out on errands. When she pulled up to the house and saw the mess in the garden, she was horrified. When James called her over, however, her outrage turned to confusion. 

Not far from where the lawn lump had first appeared, James made a startling discovery. While digging around, he uncovered a handle on the planks. It was old and decayed, but it was a hatch. James figured there must also be a latch mechanism too.

James and Sarah were a thorough and careful couple. When they were planning to buy their house, they had even gone over the building’s blueprints. When they were making their assessment, there was nothing about a buried floor or an outside basement.

James got back to work with the shovel and started digging. He cleared an area around the hatch and cut a square out of the tarp. Just as they thought, there was a latch mechanism on the other side of the handle.

Finally, James finished his digging. With great effort, he turned the hatch over and looked inside. At the bottom was an old staircase covered in dirt and stone. It looked as if it was falling apart. The couple was in shock.

James and Sarah grabbed their flashlight from the house. With courage and care, they made their way down the staircase. To their surprise, the tunnel opened up as they approached the bottom. What they found was amazing.

The place seemed to have been hastily abandoned. It smelled worse than sour milk and fermented fruits. The glass bottles on the floor were covered in heavy dust. As they explored, one question ran through their minds: Why didn’t anyone tell them about this secret wine cellar?

With a clue as to the cellar’s age, the couple hit up the local library and consulted professional advice. They’ve since learned that the wine cellar was kept a secret by its builders for the one simple reason: they never got the necessary planning permission.

Okay, the secret cellar was hidden to save money. But why was it covered with plastic? Why not just cover it with soil? Well, it’s not quite as simple as that. The soil on their lawn was not all that deep.

If they hadn’t covered the cellar, its original owners would have had to have torn up the roof and filled the pit with an enormous amount of dirt. But it was because of the plastic tarp that their lawn bubbled in the first place. 

Instead of demolishing and creating a new lawn, which would have been expensive and laborious, the original owners probably decided to just put a black cover over it so they could pour soil on top and plant grass seeds, pretending as if nothing was hidden below.

Naturally, the couple was worried about the grassy bubble that appeared on their lawn. Did the cellar have anything to do with it? Actually, it didn’t. The black tarp was the real culprit. As it had trapped so much rainwater, the lawn above began to swell.

What happened to James’ yard had something to do with the storm that happened the night before they discovered the wine cellar. Since there was an excessive amount of water, it built up under the plastic sheet. 

Finding a long-lost, secret underground wine vault isn’t a regular Sunday pastime for most people. It certainly would have been an interesting story to tell around the watercooler on Monday morning, back at the office. We’ve always loved the idea of finding a hidden treasure like that, but it’s even more special when you think about how it was right in their backyard!

As much of a hassle as it was that James and Sarah had to deal with a buried wine cellar in their backyard, it was certainly a story. Although unusual, they were not the only ones to discover something strange lurking around their house.

A man began to post on the website Imgur that he had discovered something unusual one day when he began to renovate his basement. The man said he was ripping up parts of his basements’ dusty ceiling when something caught his eye.

The man pulled at the strange parcel and uncovered two small and unassuming green and gray suitcases. According to the man, his initial thought was that he had stumbled onto a lost collection of sport cards or some other form of collectibles.

The man and his wife were puzzled at what the mysterious boxes could contain. When they opened it, it’s safe to assume that they were gleefully surprised at what they found!

Each box had three packages wrapped in wax paper and was lined with a copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, dated March 25, 1951, which might be assumed that is when the packages were stored.

But how much money did the couple find in these mysterious boxes? Any free money is a welcomed addition. To find an extra hundred dollars would be miraculous to find in your home, heck we would even take a random tenner floating around! But this is not what the couple found.

Can you imagine finding an extra $23,000 in your walls? What a great day to renovate your basement. But what about the second box? At this point any money on top is just a cherry on top of a cherry on top of a cherry.

To add even more to the mystery the bills inside the cases were not all just standard everyday bills. While the first case was all fifty dollar bills (imagine!) that wasn’t the most intriguing part…

After finding $45,000 a lot of us would run to the nearest car lot and drive off with a shiny new car to parade around town. Or perhaps we’d be booking our next vacation to Hawaii, Portugal, or Africa? Either way, we’d be having a jolly time with our new lump sum.

The man posted under the screen name Branik12 and stayed anonymous to share his story. This could be due to the fact that usually when people find large swaths of money they are expected to turn it into the police once they do.