Home inspectors and real estate professionals have one thing in common: They know your home's secrets.
12 of the Craziest Things Ever Found During Home Inspections
Updated on May 27, 2025
Exploding smoke detector
This story of a smoke detector turned out to be more of a smoke effector, shares Jeff Miller, co-founder of AE Home Group, a team of real estate agents in Baltimore, Maryland. The previous owners of the house had moved out only one day earlier but had not turned off their electricity or the air conditioning, recalls Miller. In fact, the air conditioning was set to high, which at first seemed like a good thing, because the day of their inspection happened to be the hottest and most humid of the summer. Then they smelled smoke. “Rushing down to the basement, we found that condensation caused the smoke detector to short out.” In fact, the smoke detector was now on fire. “Ironically, the smoke detector almost burned that house down,” says Miller.
Fifi’s final resting place
Jamie Green, a strategic partner of WIN Home Inspection in Crown Point, Indiana, was making his way on all fours through a crawl space of a 70-year-old house. “Crawl spaces are generally pretty spooky because you never know what you’re going to find,” Green tells Reader’s Digest. Green’s hand touched down on something both bony and furry. Turns out, it was a stiff cat skeleton with fur still intact. Unfortunately, the home sellers now had an answer for what had happened to the missing feline they believed had “run off” years earlier.
Pet cemetery
An old, dilapidated property was being sold as part of the estate of the deceased homeowners. Kris Lippi, the principal broker of Get Listed Realty and owner of ISoldMyHouse.com, had buyers lined up who were really excited, although they knew they were going to have to do a lot of work to get the house into decent shape, so it wasn’t surprising when they learned that the home inspection turned up “a bunch of patched holes in the concrete floor in the basement—probably seven or eight of them,” Lippi recalls. Since the inspector couldn’t figure out any explanation for the holes, he noted them in the inspection documents as “inconclusive concern requiring further investigation.”
Seeing the notation, the adult children of the deceased homeowners cleared up the mystery. Turns out it was a pet cemetery. Every pet the family ever had was now dead and buried beneath the house. The homeowners’ adult children didn’t think there was anything unusual about this. In fact, they asked that the buyers agree to never disturb the home’s makeshift pet burial ground. The buyers were understandably creeped out and canceled the contract.
Mystery … um … pet?
Green was inspecting what he recalls was a “big beautiful three-story mansion” when he crept through the attic and came face to face with a skull. It wasn’t human, but it was jarring just the same. It also came with 2 feet of skin but no limbs. “The creature—whatever it was—had been long dead, and now the bats were having their way with the carcass,” Green explains. He never did figure out what died up there, and no one mentioned anything about missing pets. As for the purchasers? They were happy to be rid of the remains and closed on their sale.
Pet raccoons?
“It’s not uncommon to find creepy crawlers, whether it’s poisonous newts, insect infestations or rodents during an inspection,” shares Green. Once, when he was inspecting a home at twilight, he noticed some moisture stains on the ceiling, looked up and realized there was a ruckus coming from above. So Green headed up to the attic, where he discovered that “a family of raccoons had taken over the space—nesting, urinating, dropping feces and generally making a big, smelly, dangerous mess.”
Army of ants
One of professional home organizer Ben Soreff’s craziest stories involved a seemingly normal family, with a seemingly normal home, who hired him to clean and organize for them. He went into the unfinished basement to clear out some space for storage, and there he saw it: thousands upon thousands of ants pouring out of a cardboard box. The people who lived in the house hadn’t been in the basement in years, and this was quite the terrifying discovery for them.
Not your choice for a pet
Jason Jones is a colleague of Green’s who was inspecting the outside of a home with a dark and spooky shed in the backyard. Starting to inspect for termites, Jones saw the head of a creature pop up under the shelf in the shed. Startled, Jones ran out, shouting for his co-worker. The duo called the fire department. Arriving in full gear, the firefighters found that the snake wasn’t just any snake—it was a rattlesnake. And there wasn’t just one, there were two. And they were mating. “Luckily the slithering lovebirds were caught when they were, or the new homeowners would have had to take on a whole family of rattlesnakes,” says Jones.
Ants at the gate
Ah, another ant story, and you’d think this one would be less creepy simply because it took place outside the home, rather than inside. Matt Prato, owner of Tri State Gate in Bedford Hills, New York, was called to inspect and repair an automated driveway gate as part of a pre-sale renovation. In this case, the driveway gate was said to be “glitchy,” so Prato opened up the control panel. “The technician found ants. Lots and lots of ants. And then more ants.” It wasn’t the first time a control panel had been taken over by wildlife. Prato has seen mouse nests inside control boxes, and frogs and snakes as well. “But being that ants are so small and quite persistent, they are often able to eat away at normal protective barriers and squeeze into tiny holes. Once they’re in the enclosure, serious damage usually isn’t far off.”
Roasted rodents
“The furnace is an important area of the home to inspect. It’s also a popular spot for rodents to explore,” Green tells Reader’s Digest. During one otherwise routine home inspection, Green came across the dead bodies of several bats, squirrels and mice that had been electrocuted.
Refrigerator chaos
In a home owned by hoarders, Soreff found a refrigerator that had been blocked and out of use for many years. “If a person with hoarding disorder doesn’t get help on their own, there is usually an event that brings in the fire marshall and social services,” Soreff explains to Reader’s Digest. In this case, there was untreated and unrepaired water damage and structural damage. It was a terrible mess, and like most things in the house, the fridge was virtually unrecognizable as a fridge.
Ghost of pilgrim woman past
Mike McGonigle, a licensed home inspector with Homestead Inspection Services in southern New Jersey, once inspected a home in Thompson, Connecticut, that still haunts him to this day. “The house was built in the early 1800s and was listed as an ‘antique farmhouse.’ I didn’t notice anything odd about the picture or the home the entire time I was there. I only noticed what appears as a figure in the window when I sat down the following day and downloaded the pictures in order to write the report,” he shares. The thing is, McGonigle was solo during the inspection, or so he thought. “My interpretation of the picture is that a ‘portly’ woman dressed in pilgrim type attire appears to be looking in the window.”
Plastic-wrapped plumbing repair
McGonigle also recalls a story from a home in Southbridge, Massachusetts. Simply stated, the homeowners obviously couldn’t be bothered to maintain their waste line properly. Instead, they used cellophane tape to patch and repair the line. “Talk about amateur workmanship,” McGonigle says, “not to mention a gross potential health hazard.”
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Sources:
- Jeff Miller, co-founder of AE Home Group
- Jamie Green, strategic partner of WIN Home Inspection
- Kris Lippi, principal real estate broker at Get Listed Realty and owner of ISoldMyHouse.com
- Ben Soreff, professional home organizer at House to Home Organizing
- Jason Jones, home inspector
- Matt Prato, owner of Tri State Gate
- Ben Soreff, professional organizer at House to Home Organizing
- Mike McGonigle, licensed home inspector with Homestead Inspection Services, Inc.
