The house I was going to move into had a hidden room in the basement. I think I would have been locked down there if I moved in.

This was about 10 years ago when I was 23. At the time I was living in a tiny studio with an alcoholic boyfriend (this is important).<br><br>Back then I was a nanny for a very nice woman in her 40's named Willa. She had three kids and she encouraged me to bring my boyfriend over so he could play with the kids (she liked him), and they would invite him out for dinner sometimes.<br><br>Willa owned a lot of property in the area. She had just moved into a new house and she was trying to pack up her old house. One weekend she offered me a deal: if I helped her pack her old house and do some random errands for her, she would let me live in her old house rent free for at least two months. I could have my boyfriend move in too. There was just one catch: she hadn't told her husband about this yet. At first I was kind of annoyed that I had to keep a secret from Willa's husband, but she promised she would tell him eventually.<br><br>I asked her why she didn't need a house with this much space anymore, and she said that she had always wanted to live in one of the neighborhoods in the city (she was living in a suburb), and that she was going to start house hunting. She said she had already found a few promising places, and she was thinking about renting one of them. She wanted to live in the house before she bought it, to make sure it was safe or whatever.<br><br>I agreed to do it. Willa needed a place to stay on the weekends while she worked on her old house anyway, and this was a great opportunity for me to get a bigger place to live for my boyfriend's sake.<br><br>I moved in over the weekend, and she gave me house keys, told me where everything important was, and left on Monday (I took the week off of work). This was when I realized Willa didn't want me to have contact with her husband.<br><br>She didn't contact me much, but she called me one day and said that she was basically living in one of the houses she was checking out, and that she didn't know how long she would be away. She said she was thinking about renting it for a year to really get a feel for the place, and that I could stay in her old house as long as I wanted.<br><br>I basically had my own house to myself for months. I continued to work as Willa's nanny, but I started to worry that I had never met her kids or husband. I told my boyfriend to basically keep my living situation a secret and not tell anyone about it.<br><br>After a couple months of this, Willa told me that she was thinking about selling her house and moving into the city permanently. She said she was thinking about moving in with me there, but I was like,"uh, no." It was a 4-bedroom house, but I really didn't want to be living with Willa forever.<br><br>I asked her if she wanted to give me a longer notice before she moved me out, and she basically brushed me off. I kind of felt like I was being house-sat, but I decided to start looking for a place to live. I felt like my living situation was kind of weird, and Willa didn't want me to have contact with her husband, so I didn't contact him to see what was going on.<br><br>One day my boyfriend and I were doing laundry, and he went into the basement to switch load. He came back up and said, "why can't we use the washer and dryer down there?" I was confused, and asked him what he meant. He said that there was another washer and dryer in the basement, and I told him that was not true. Then I realized what he was talking about. Willa had a washer and drier in the kitchen, and I had always assumed she put it there for convenience. It had never even crossed my mind that Willa had removed the washer and dryer from the basement. There was no reason why a washer and dryer wouldn't be in the basement, and why would they be in the kitchen?<br><br>I went down to the basement and looked around. It was pretty empty, but Willa had left some boxes down there with random stuff in them. I decided to search them. I found an old bottle of wine, a bunch of house listings, and something that looked like a receipt. I realized as I looked at it that it was a rental agreement. Willa had listed this house as a rental and she had paid a deposit on it. She had then written herself a check (handed herself the deposit, presumably) and then cancelled the rental agreement.<br><br>I hope I'm not confusing anyone. So Willa had basically rented this house to herself. She had listed it on a rental website, applied to rent it, and then given herself the keys. This was the house she was renting in the city. This was the house I was living in.<br><br>I decided to call the realtor that had listed the house (his phone number was on the rental agreement) and ask him about Willa. He offered to meet me at a nearby coffee shop and talk about what was going on. I was a little apprehensive, but I decided to go.<br><br>He told me that Willa owned about 10 houses in the city and suburbs, and that she had been renting them out to people for years. She would always rent out to a nanny, and she would just disappear after a month or so and leave them high and dry. This was apparently the only house she owned that she didn't rent out. She had recently rented it to a family, but they had left after a few months. He thought it was strange that she had decided to "rent" the house herself instead of renting it out.<br><br>He told me that he had talked to a few of the people who had rented the house, and they had never heard from Willa again after the first month. They had to threaten to call the police to get their deposit back. He told me that I was probably squatting at that point, and that I should get out as soon as possible.<br><br>We talked for a while, and I told him that I had never met Willa's kids or husband. He asked me if I knew Willa's last name, and I told him I didn't. I realized then that I had never seen any photos or family heirlooms or anything in the house. It was completely bare of any memorabilia. Willa had never shown me photos of her kids, and the only photos I had seen of her family had been in the house. They were surprisingly professional, and they looked like they could be stock photos.<br><br>I decided I had to get out as soon as possible. I told my boyfriend what was going on, and I made plans to move in with him over the weekend. I didn't want to leave right away because I was afraid that Willa would call her "husband" and he would show up at the house while I was still there. I felt like my only advantage was that I had more information about Willa and her house than she had about me.<br><br>Over the weekend I packed up all my stuff and moved out. I left on a Sunday and I never came back. I felt kind of bad that Willa didn't get any notice from me, but I felt like I had to leave as fast as possible.<br><br>I heard from the realtor again maybe a month after I moved out. He said that he had talked to some of the other renters, and they had all reported the same thing: Willa would rent out her houses, she would refuse to contact them by email or landline, and she would leave after the first month. He said that he had talked to one of the renters who had lived in the house I was staying in, and she said that she had never noticed anything off. She didn't even remember the washer and dryer being in the kitchen.<br><br>I decided to do some digging. I looked up Willa's house listings, and I saw that she had put her house up for sale. I saw photos of it, and the washer and dryer were back in the basement. I decided to drive by the house and see if I could see anything strange. I wanted to look in the basement windows ideally.<br><br>I knew Willa wasn't home, and I was parked across the street so I could see the whole house. I walked across the street and looked into the basement windows. I saw the washer and dryer, but something else caught my eye. One of the basement walls had been replaced with a concrete slab. I thought this was very strange. I looked around the window and I saw a crack in the concrete wall. It was very thin, but it looked like a door.<br><br>I decided to look into the other windows to see if I could find any other hidden doors. I went around the house, and I saw that there was another basement window that looked like a hidden door. I realized then that Willa must have had a hidden basement room. I realized then that I would have been locked in that basement if I had moved in. It was the only explanation.<br><br>I felt really grossed out and I left. I never heard from Willa again.