And I was right.

Every horror movie has a scene where you realize the “victim” probably shouldn’t open the door, but they do anyway. Here we were, the three of us lined up single file, following the house’s reluctant invitation into the unknown.

The landing of the first staircase spilled out into a large, musty, windowless room. The lighting was dim at best, and the entire level had no windows, save for two small pieces of glass nailed shut inside a couple of scanty, black-carpeted bedrooms at the end of the hall. To the left was a mirror, except there was no reflection.

What looked at first like a warped piece of glass revealed itself to be a large window — into a room we couldn’t reach. Inside, a lone workbench sat in silence, as though someone had left mid-project and never returned.

Later we would discover that this hidden chamber connected through a doorway from a newly remodeled bathroom. In fact, we would soon find that all the bathrooms on the lower two levels had been remodeled. The bathrooms gleamed with new sinks, tile, and shiny fixtures. But the wall-mounted toilets still clung to the walls, barely holding on, like relics no one dared to remove.

More importantly, beneath the fresh surfaces, the air betrayed the truth–a dank, moldy odor that seeped through every crack. Despite the attempt to dress up, the clear rot underneath wouldn’t stay quiet.

To the right of the landing was a boarded-up cavern with a gap at the top, just enough to peek in. Sometimes being small has its advantages. I had my clients boost me up, cell phone camera in hand, so I could report the content.

“It just can’t get any better than this,” I exclaimed.

On the other side of the wall was a defunct elevator shaft. It ran from the garage all the way down to the bottom of the second basement. That’s right. There was a second basement below us. Another windowless cavern.

It did get better after all. So much better.

As we descended to the third and final floor, the smell of mold and mildew became almost unbearable. Each step down felt less like walking into a basement and more like entering a tomb. The light was dim, but not absent — overhead bulbs glowed just enough to cast long, unflattering shadows across the room.

We stepped into what might have been intended as a family room, though the details worked against the name. A lone bathroom sink sat awkwardly in one corner, detached from any context, while two thick metal posts rose from the floor to the ceiling, perhaps last-ditch reinforcements keeping the whole house from collapsing in on itself.

The concrete floor had been painted black, a choice that only made the space feel heavier, while the freshly drywalled ceiling was already scarred with several crude openings–jagged portals revealing plumbing that had clearly fought a long battle with leaks. This wasn’t a place built for comfort; it was a patchwork attempt to keep a weak pulse going.

On the far side of the family room, a long and narrow corridor stretched out before us, boxed in by solid walls on either side. It ran the entire length of the home, a straight line of uneasy purpose. The walls and even parts of the ceiling were peppered with small, jagged openings, as if someone had taken violent bites out of the structure.

At the corridor’s end, the mystery finally sharpened into something undeniable: several heavy metal targets stood in place, scarred and pocked with bullet holes. This wasn’t a family recreation room. This was a private shooting range — tucked deep beneath a 9,000-square-foot brick house.

We turned the corner from the end of the range and found another short hallway. At its end, a door opened into a spacious room. It was so unlike the bare concrete we’d just left behind, yet still sinister.

Lighting rigs stood in place, lengths of silk fabric draped across the walls and sagged from the ceiling in theatrical swaths. Scattered throughout the room were props: backdrops, stands, and forgotten objects meant to be staged under bright bulbs and captured on film.

Did the house have a softer, stranger side? Something didn’t feel right.

As we peeked around the corner there was another, larger room and this one stopped us cold. A full stage stretched across one end, elevated just enough to announce itself as a performance space. Mirrors lined the walls — tall, unblinking, and slightly warped from age — giving the room the unmistakable feel of a dance studio.

It was hard to reconcile. Above us sat an empty brick house with brown, lifeless grass and an oddly colored kitchen. Down here, though, hidden three stories below, was a world of performance and spectacle. A shooting range, a photo studio, and now a stage with mirrors.

Whoever designed this space had not been building a home. They had been creating an underground life, and we had just walked in on the secret.

At that, we agreed we were done here. We had seen more than we had ever come for. I wasn’t sure I could ever top this experience in my real estate career — and, truthfully, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I thanked my clients, reiterated their interest level in the property (a firm and resounding none), and we made our way back toward daylight.

As I drove off, I glanced back. The house stood there as if nothing had happened. And perhaps that was the most unsettling part — this place could sit quietly in the middle of a neighborhood, holding a whole other world inside, and no one would ever know.

Jen Fischer is an associate broker and Realtor. She can be reached at 801-645-2134 or jen@jen-fischer.com.