You’d think that the worst things that structural inspectors find would be faulty foundations, hideous holes in houses, as well as asbestos in the attic. However, some inspectors seem to have bad luck following them about because they stumble upon the weirdest, creepiest, and horrifying things during their examinations of buildings. Like skulls. Or occult altars. Or dolls that have a ghost living inside of them and whose eyes are totally following you when you look away.
Bored Panda interviewed Derek Marier from California-based Alpha Structural, Inc. about the strange things that he and his co-workers find during their inspections. In fact, there are so many peculiar finds that Marier makes a weekly thread on Imgur about them and always gets the internet’s attention. In fact, the company already has nearly 11,000 followers on Instagram because of the interesting things that its employees see while on the job. We’ve collected some of the best examples to help showcase that the supernatural might be among us.
According to Marier, he found a skull during one inspection and it turned out to be over 1,000 years old!
“Coming across things such as the dolls or a skull shake you up at first. You’re expecting to locate a structural defect but come end up finding something you can almost label as satanic or ancient. I would have to say the skull gave me the biggest chills by far. I assumed that it was fake right from the start, but I didn’t realize that I picked up an actual skull from Peru which was estimated at being 1,000+ years old,” Marier went into detail during an interview with Bored Panda.
Scroll down for Bored Panda’s full interview with him.
So scroll down, upvote your favorite freaky finds, and leave us a comment about which things you thought were the strangest and why. When you’re done with this list, be sure to check out Bored Panda’s previous posts about nightmares and miracles spotted during inspections, as well as the worst thing seen during inspections.
#21
There's 11 different pieces of wood connecting to each other in this photo.
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88points
#22
This was a wooden retaining wall with a stone facade on the front. Over a short time, the hillside began to erode and the dirt started coming down the slope. This caused the retaining wall below to pull away and lean downward, taking parts of the facade with it. Don't use wood for retaining walls. They can be used for compacted and tiered hillsides, but not full on retaining walls.
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86points
#23
Here we have a decent sized sink hole we inspected this week. From the top it doesn't look too bad... But once you poke your head inside, it gets a little more serious. The hole is a little over 7 feet deep and 5-6 feet wide. You can see that there are some very large tree roots in the background. The fact that these are exposed is a sort of blessing in disguise. They do help stabilize the surrounding area but it's still at risk of expanding. We proposed a exploratory investigation to see exactly what's going on and what's causing this too occur. I'll also add that it's only a few feet from the home's foundation and could create some serious structural issues if left without being properly handled.
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83points
#24
This is just like Tetris when you try to flip your piece at the last second and it offsets everything. :(
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80points
#26
We inspected this old porte-cochère that had been slowly sinking and displacing over time. You can see that the deck at the top is clearly sloping down a few inches.
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75points
#27
Termite damage and dry rot do not go well together. Notice he's using a flashlight to crumble the wood to pieces.
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71points
#28
Here's an old girder that's been split in half. We tried finding the missing piece but it was nowhere to be found and the cause isn't really known either.
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70points
#30
This is what happens when an internal load-bearing wall doesn't have a sufficient supporting foundation beneath it. Notice the slope toward the wall.
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69points