Samantha Hartsoe, 26, documented her journey through the bathroom mirror of her Roosevelt Island apartment on TIkTok.
Why is there a passageway in this woman’s bathroom, and where does it lead to? Samantha Hartsoe discovered an opening through the mirror of her New York City apartment, and shared her investigation into the mystery on TikTok.
It all started when Hartsoe, 26, discovered a draft on a cold day in her apartment on Roosevelt Island. While she knew it was normal for an old building to have a draft, she thought it was strange that the breeze coming from her bathroom was so strong, even after she sealed all openings.
“There was cold air blowing… it was freezing,” Hartsoe told Inside Edition Digital. “I kept feeling like the heater wasn’t really doing its job.”
She eventually discovered it was coming from behind the mirror. Concerned with the mirror potentially falling on her from the wind, she decided to take it off the wall.
That’s when she discovered a large hole in the wall, nearly the size of the entire mirror, leading into another room.
“My concerns changed very quickly,” Hartsoe said. “At first I’m concerned with the cold, right? Which now feels like a joke.”
Armed with an N95 mask and a hammer, she decided she would investigate. As a precaution, she had her roommate watch from their side of the apartment, and asked that he call 911 if he didn't hear from her for five minutes straight.
When she finally squeezed through the hole, she discovered an entire unfinished apartment.
“It looks very rundown. There's no way that anybody's lived in there recently. The walls are broken up. The floor tile is broken up. If you look in the bathroom, you can see bare piping. It's really old in there. There are garbage bags everywhere,” she explained.
The whole time, Hartsoe was watching out for signs of any insects or animals – or people.
“My first thought was like, ‘Oh, for sure, I'm going to see a mouse. It's New York. There's going to be a rat. There's going to be roaches,’” she recalled. “But as I'm walking through, I keep remembering I need to be checking for someone … Just to make sure that nobody's behind me.”
Hartsoe clarified that she has never seen the movie “Candyman,” and did not consider the possible horror movie-like twist her investigation could have led to.
“Everyone who's seen ‘Candyman’ was like, ‘Of course you didn't see Candyman. You went in the wall,’” she joked.
Other than a new-looking bottle of water, Hartsoe thankfully did not encounter any unexpected guests and made it safely back to her apartment 15 minutes later.
Her baffled roommates immediately demanded to see the footage upon her return.
“I keep trying to put myself in everyone else's shoes because I truly just don't think I was nearly as shocked as everyone else was,” she said. “For some reason I just was like, ‘Oh cool. A new adventure.’ And everyone is like, ‘That ain't normal, dude. It's not.’”
Hartsoe is now in contact with her landlord to get the hole in her wall fixed.
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