A couple’s home renovation project took an unexpected turn when plumbers unearthed a locked safe beneath the floorboards, a discovery that Josh Brooks and his wife Emily have been sharing with their TikTok followers.
“This just happened today whilst the main job was to fix the heating pipes under the floor,” Josh captioned his initial video, which shows one of the trademsen revealing a mysterious round object under the tiles.
“Twenty years I’ve been doing this and I’ve never seen that before,” the plumber exclaimed in shock.
The intrigue deepened as it became clear that the object was the dial of a safe. And when queried by Josh about the safe’s age, the plumber estimated: “It’s old, very old.”
Josh went on to reveal that the house was built in the 1940s, prompting the second plumber to speculate if previous homeowners had decided not to remove the safe and instead deliberately conceal it.
The resident revealed his own investigations into the house’s past: “There’s no record of the previous owners, I tried to look them up,” adding to the growing excitement over what treasures the safe might hold.
One plumber humorously prioritised the mystery over their work: “I don’t care about anything else now,” he quipped, attempting to open the safe with a hammer. “It might be six hours of pulling out this safe!”
Josh subsequently posted a short follow-up clip, disclosing he’d been informed the safe bore resemblance to a World War II era manifoil device, which its engraving appeared to confirm.
Still no nearer to uncovering its contents, however, he commenced attacking it again with a drill.
Having successfully penetrated the safe 45mm from the combination lock as he had been instructed, Josh then fed a camera through the opening for a better look, which merely heightened the mystery.
“What is that?” he questioned, glimpsing little beyond a tiny bead-shaped object.
Subsequently, it was the plumbers’ opportunity to delve depper. They started by chipping away the dial and pounding a screwdriver into where it had been positioned.
Following the application of various other implements to the metal structure, the duo eventually managed to force the safe open. “There you go, have a look,” one instructed Josh.
The mysterious item proved to be a carefully-folded newspaper, dated October 22, 1977, with a headline urging late football manager Brian Clough to be “given the job” – presumably boss of the England team, which never materialised.
Flipping the newspaper over provided no additional insights into why it had been secured away, however.
“It’s crazy that you would keep that in a safe,” one of the plumbers remarked. They also retrieved another peculiar item – a diminutive, golden object resembling a piece of jewellery in the form of a globe.
The newspaper, which appeared stained in places and featured another story under the headline, ‘How the sexy vicar seduced me’, sparked numerous theories.
Some were left feeling extremely creeped out, with one TikTok user commenting: “Should go to the police, could potentially help a cold case and be used as evidence, if it is in fact a trophy kept from a murder.”
Another urged: “Look for a murder or missing person in the paper and then the gold thing is probably a keep sake from the person’s necklace or something.”
However, not everyone was as concerned. A third person suggested: “Time capsules were very popular in the 70s. Blue Peter did a famous times capsule and people just copied suit.”
A fourth explained of the small object: “This looks like a ‘Sealed Harmony Ball’ – they were made for pregnant woman to symbolise protection.”
Meanwhile, a fifth TikTok user observed: “My grandad used to line the bottom of drawers with random newspapers, might not have any importance.”
Josh agreed: “Yes that makes sense. Let’s just say I’m glad kids weren’t here when I opened it up to Page 3.”