A Man Pops a Giant ‘Water Bubble’ in His Lawn to Find a Passageway Hidden Underneath

James Carlington walked into his yard one mornings to find something that would concern most (if not all) home owners. He heard a hissing noise coming from under his feet.

James and his wife Sarah were enjoying a typical Sunday. They were getting the house cleaned up after their morning church service. It was a perfect day for relaxation!

In Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, where the couple resides, the weather is usually pretty temperate. However, the town has seen its fair share of storms. The previous night had brought on one such storm. There was still some wind whistling in the air when James stepped into his yard.

James found that spending time in the sun and in the garden gave him some peace. And he was able to get lost in his work. He found it to be a way to recharge from the demands of his work and the day-to-day grind.

James examined the walls of his house, both inside and out, thinking maybe a pipe had broken somewhere. Maybe there was a leak? Or maybe an animal was stuck somewhere in the walls. Crazier things have happened!

After they spent a good chunk of time looking in and out of the house, they had determined the sound was coming from the yard. But, what on earth could be causing such a noise?

They couldn’t see the lump protruding from the ground from the house but now that they were closer it was clear. The bubble under the lawn looked like it was practically ready to burst. James and Sarah had never seen anything like it before, let alone in their own backyard.

He gingerly touched the bubble with his toe to test the waters. The bubble wiggled back and forth like a waterbed! There must be some liquid under there. He walked around tot he other side of the bubble 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.