Iowa couple discovers secret room behind bookcase in the home they’ve lived in for FOUR years

After living in their home for four years, an Iowa couple was amazed to find a hidden room tucked behind a wall in their basement.

Maridith Morris, a nurse and certified midwife, shared the discovery on TikTok in a series of videos that have been viewed nearly 20 million times.

She filmed her husband stepping behind a bookshelf and sliding the wall aside, revealing a metal door and beyond it a cramped room big enough for only a few people.

“What the fuck, we’ve never seen this in our house and we’ve lived here for four years,” Morris noted in one clip.

She explained how the couple stumbled across the room as they were tearing up the carpet in the basement.

The Iowa woman explained that she and her family had lived in the house for four years and only learned about the room when they were renovating the basement.

In the small room, reddish-brown streaks surrounded a drain on the floor

The room was largely unremarkable, apart from some curious red stains around a drain on the floor.

The blood-like stains prompted Morris to ask, “Should we bring a cadaver dog?”

Her husband, a doctor, had his own theory. ‘“I think this was meant to be some sort of panic room,” he said.

Users in the comments pitched their own ideas about the space’s intended purpose, with some theories more sinister than others.

‘Ma’am, that screams murder room. You can only open the door from the outside, there is a drain in the floor and there is ‘rust’ on the floor,” one commenter wrote. “I think you should have the police come and take a look at that.”

‘It actually looks like a room where a serial killer has taken his victims to dismember them. Look at the random drain in the floor,” another commented.

Yet another user suggested the couple use a black light to “see if it’s blood or not.”

Other users were not convinced. “Everyone says jail cell, but with all that electricity in there, I think they were growing weed,” one commenter wrote.

Morris filmed her husband sliding aside a wall behind a bookshelf, revealing the metal door and the cramped room beyond

Netizens suggested the room was used by a ‘serial killer’, prompting Morris to call the police – who found no reason to investigate

The Iowa woman showed another hidden room, hidden behind a mirror. The renovated children’s playroom was “one of the reasons I wanted to buy this house,” Morris explains

In subsequent videos, the couple showed their children the mysterious room. Morris filmed her daughter and two young sons – one of whom entered the room armed with a wooden cross – as they looked around in disbelief.

The nurse later revealed that the room was not an oddity in the house, as there were several other hidden spaces.

The couple was already aware of one hidden room at the time of their discovery. This was on the other side of a mirror and had been converted into a playroom.

Morris demonstrated how the mirror swung open like a door, revealing a staircase and a pile of toys behind it.

“One of the reasons I wanted this house was because I loved the hidden room,” she said. ‘Unfortunately the mirror isn’t that tight because the kids use it all the time. It is being abused.’

Still, some TikTok users said there was cause for concern about the strange “rust spots” and drain on the floor.

“This is downright inappropriate,” raged one commenter under a video of the Morris boys exploring the space. “There’s a real chance that one or more crimes have been committed here and instead of calling the police, you’re making a joke about it online.”

According to the mother of three, police came to the house to check out the room but found no reason to investigate.

“They didn’t see any signs of crime, they didn’t investigate anything, they didn’t see anything that looked like DNA evidence that needed to be collected,” Morris said.

However, she added: ‘They were really impressed with how the room was hidden and that it was really cool.’