Couple renovating new home start getting sick after horrifying discovery behind walls

What was supposed to be a minor renovation project turned into a bizarre occult mystery after a couple found a huge amount of bizarre objects hidden in their walls

A family’s dream home turned into a nightmare^[1] after they made a series of bizarre discoveries in the building’s walls. Mum-of-three Kaija Bretzius bought the property in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania^[2] with husband Bryan partly because they thought it wouldn’t require much renovation.

Kaija explained: ““We didn’t want to do a lot of home improvements. We didn’t have a large budget. This house was by far in the best condition for all the ones that we had looked at at the time.”

But it soon became apparent that the semi-detached property^[3]’s insulation needed an upgrade so Bryan set about opening up some of the walls. It was at this point that the shocking truth of their new home began to unfold.

As Bryan climbed into the house’s attic to investigate the insulation, Kaija recalled: “He says that he can see some things are shoved down in the wall. And he comes back with some old bottles.”

Kaija said she was delighted with the antique bottles, and asked her husband what else was up there. He sheepishly told her there were a few pornographic magazines dating back to the 1980s. But there was a much more sinister discovery to be made.

The couple dug further into the cavity between the building’s inner and outer walls to see what else was down there. “We got a flashlight, because it was hard to see,” she told the What It Was Like^[4] podcast.

One of the next things they found in the dark, dusty wall cavity was an old sack. “I thought horribly, initially, I thought that it was possibly a baby in the wall, “ Kaija recalled.

She added that she had jumped to that conclusion because the bodies of some infants had been previously discovered beneath another nearby property. She continued: “I just couldn’t think of like what else it would be in, and what you would wrap in a burlap sack and put down in the wall.”

The truth of Kaija’s discovery was less grim, but if anything even more weird^[5]. She continued: “It was a chicken carcass. It was wrapped up and shoved down into a wall in this burlap sack. And a chicken’s about the same size as a baby.”

Further investigation revealed that there were at least 20 chickens’ bodies, along with the remains of several other small animals. Some of the bones were wrapped in newspaper, dating them to the 1920s and 1930s.

Unfortunately, Kaija and Bryan hadn’t really taken adequate precautions for dealing with long-dead animals. She went on: “We got fevers, we were acutely sick. We inhaled something and it made us sick, for three or four days.”

She explained that the mummified remains of the chickens had “aerosolised” as they were being pulled from the wall – freeing countless dormant bacteria.

Kaija speculates that the animal remains had been used in some sort of occult ritual that she calls “a pow-wow, or Dutch magic.”

“We were shocked, horrified and disgusted,” Kaija told WNEP. They had commissioned a survey before buying the house, but there was no clue that that the house had been connected with witchcraft. She added: “We got the radon inspected, we did everything. But we didn’t know we had to look for chickens.”

The couple have had to have all the walls completely torn out and rebuilt – at massive expense. The repairs have not been covered by their insurance so they have had to find $20,000 (about £15,000) so far, and the work is still ongoing.

Whoever performed the bizarre rituals got better as they went on, Kaija claimed. “It seemed like whoever was doing this was doing this over years and years and years, just building up layers,” she said. “And then he was sharpening his technique.”

Relatives of the house’s 1920s tenant still live in the town, and have recalled stories of him using his magic to heal ailments such as fevers and whooping cough^[6].

But, Kaija says, the evil that the healer drew out continues to live on in the walls of her home. While she was pregnant, her sense of smell sharpened and she could detect a distinct odour from the walls. “It just smelled like death,” she said.

“If you ever have a mouse die in your wall, and then your house kind of stinks for a month until it dries out. So it was not a good smell.”

The occult relics are part of American history that is now almost completely forgotten. Many of them are now stored in a local museum, but the hazardous nature of the desiccated animal corpses means that the objects from Kaija’s walls may never be on public display.