I ran the camera farther into the opening, and the beam finally reached the back wall. There was a narrow passage beyond the door, just wide enough for one person, with old wooden supports running along the ceiling. The strangest part was that the floor looked almost clean compared with the rest of the well.
Then the camera caught something on the ground. It was a metal bucket with a rope still attached, and beside it were several glass jars arranged in a neat row. They weren’t old enough to belong to the original well. Someone had been down there long after the well was built.
I called the homeowner and asked whether anyone had ever told him about a room beneath the well. He said no, but then he asked me to describe the door. When I told him there was a wooden latch on the outside, he went completely silent. Finally, he said his grandfather had owned the property before him and had always forbidden anyone from going near that well.
I told him we needed to bring someone out before anyone entered the passage. He agreed. But before I pulled the camera back, I turned it toward the far wall one more time. There was something scratched into the stone above the jars — a name and a date, followed by three words that made the homeowner tell me to shut the camera off immediately…
