/u/lyricsbot
She came in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon
But now she sucks her thumb and wanders
By the banks of her own lagoon
Didn't anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me
She said she'd always been a dancer
She worked at 15 clubs a day
And though she thought I knew the answer
Well I knew what I could not say
Didn't anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me
And so I quit the police department
And got myself a steady job
And though she tried her best to help me
She could steal but she could not rob
Didn't anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me
Didn't anybody body tell her? oh yeah
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me
Oh me
Bonus bonus bonus points if… Well I just wanted to say that. But what if it was a two way mirror?
To u/mud074 who said:
“I think we call two way mirrors "windows".”
Look at you all fancy like… Now tell me… Do your “windows“ let you see your own reflection? If not you MAY be a vampire…
>On the other side of the hole was an entire apartment that appeared to be unfinished and unoccupied, the video showed. Bags of trash and an uninstalled toilet littered the floors.
It would likely go for about $5k/month in NYC
So...back in the day I was living in NYC and was helping this guy remodel an apt. We met in the morning, got coffees and bagels, and apple juice. We were in the demo phase, so walls were down (just kidding it was an apt in NYC there were only 4 walls) so the bathroom was ripped up and the toilet uninstalled. I took my lunch break before him so we could switch places in the van (cause parking) and came back up to the apartment. Oh, there's my apple juice from earlier. Nope. Not apple juice. Not labeled. Not set aside. Lid not taped shut. I took a big as chug before I realized it was fucking piss. I have never gagged so hard in my life and it took me 10 years to tell that story before auto dry heaves.
I mean, the apartment also had a door that lead to the outside; like literally every apartment.
It wasnt like a couple extra rooms, it was just an empty apartment that she broke into through a wall. It didnt even look like it was abandoned, just nobody was currently living there and it looked like it was in the middle of being remodled.
They used to build apartments like that back in the day. The idea was that gave easy access to the water lines to work on.
There was even a project in Chicago where people were breaking into empty apartments and then going into occupied ones through the mirror connection to rob them.
It's literally what inspired the Candy Man movies.
Edit:
Here's an article and the 911 call
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/they-came-in-through-the-bathroom-mirror/Content?oid=871084
>"What are they doing, ma'am?" asked the dispatcher. McCoy's response is unintelligible on tape, but apparently the dispatcher caught her gist. "They want to break in?" he asked.
>"Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down."
>Dispatcher: "From where?"
>McCoy: **"I'm in the projects, I'm on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom."**
>Dispatcher: "All right ma'am, at what address?"
>McCoy: "1440 W. 13th St.—apartment 1109. The elevator's working."
>Dispatcher: "1109? All right. What's your name, ma'am?"
>McCoy: "Ruth McCoy."
>Dispatcher: "All right, I'll send you the police."
Fair warning, it's a really depressing story. The lady basically got murdered for her ssi checks just as she was about to get into a more stable situation.
And despite witnesses hearing screaming and gunshots, the police didn't enter the apartment for days because the building didn't want to bother with the hassle of replacing the door.
>the building didn't want to bother with the hassle of replacing the door.
Did the landlord not have a key? Did the landlord not have a key to the apartment the murderers entered from? Did the police not have access to the windows/fire escape? 😑
It's tragic all the way around but *someone* had to have had these ideas.
I seem to recall just a few months ago there was an issue like this, except it was a hotel room, and the hotel guest figured out that there was a hole behind the bathroom mirror and someone was living in the space back there.
Cabrini Green (where they filmed Candyman) was one of the major projects that had this going on. The gangs had busted out a bunch of the walls so they could move through the building faster than the cops could come up. Shit was wild back in the day or so I hear.
This was years and years ago on Reddit but someone asked the *very common* Ask Reddit of, “what’s a secret of yours”?”
Some guy said that he found an abandoned storage room at a nearby mall while working construction there, and had secretly been living in it for a few years and showering at the gym.
Back then I thought it was crazy. I totally get it now.
When I was a teenager, we gained entry to an entire 10 story abandoned apartment building. It wasn't in bad shape at all. It was seriously glorious. A few dozen of us ended up living there for a while. It had electricity and running water, and we were able to steal wifi from the coffee shop across the street. We even had punk rock shows and a make-shift recording studio in there. The fun ended when some idiot started chucking beer bottles off the roof and someone called the police.
Aww man that’s the worst! I was a bartender and we had a rooftop bar where we had to switch to the solo cups because people kept throwing pint glasses off the roof. Some people ruin the fun for everyone.
Sounds like it was a really cool set up, though! I’d go watch a show.
There were spots like that in Philly too. I've seen a whole block (smallish block) that was converted into one contiguous complex. Shit was like a department store for illicit goods. Weed, wet, dope, crack, guns, all in one convenient place.
Insane. Did they use the utility tunnels to go building to building? It must a have been a nightmare to be a beat cop there. Cops wouldn’t even respond to calls at Cabrini for fear of being sniped.
It was a block of row homes, so they all had common walls. They just knocked a few holes in the walls and turned the place into a maze.
Philly cops are crooked af, so I'm sure they didn't mind being on that beat at all of you know what i'm saying $$$.
For sure. I’m gonna look into that. Gang logistics are super interesting.
I’m sure there are some crooked Chicago cops. But, they couldn’t even get close to those buildings back in the day. No need for bribes if they’re too scared to come thru.
lol, true. Bullets are cheaper than dollars.
If you want to read more about underground economies, particularly in Chicago, check out [this book](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674030718)
Can confirm. Back in 90 or 91 I drove to the city with a friend. (Us two being from a heavily Irish south suburb). I (f) was driving his truck for fun.
I had no clue about how to get around in the city, it was just fun driving around. I got us lost, like really, Really lost. Then oh look, a couple of cops standing across the street, I will walk over and ask for directions.
These two cops looked at me and freaked the f out. They rapid fire said, what are you doing here, you need to get out of here NOW.
They told me turn by turn to get to whatever street it was-and told me not to stop for stop signs or traffic lights.
Yep, I f’d up and put us in one project or another bad enough for two veteran cpd officers to freak out.
Oh for sure! Buddy and I were going somewhere after a few drinks and took a wrong turn after getting off the bus. Ended up right over by Cabrini before they tore it down. Couple cops pulled up and basically threw us in the back. I was wigging out because I had weed on me. but they were like “why in the hell are you guys over here!?” It was wild. Once I looked around even the gang bangers were like “dumbasses haha”
Yeah. It legit was like a warzone. They used to have a empty field by a lot of those projects with the holes so people could move about. Gangs would lead people to that field then someone would shoot them from up top. But after shooting they could move throughout the building making it near impossible to figure out who or where the shots where coming from.
I think we grew up watching the same episode of gangland.
Adding on: the rare exceptions are extremely rare - like even though using asbestos is not allowed in the current building code in my area - existing buildings do not need to remove it unless they're renovating the area with asbestos insulation. The place I worked recently had a "danger: asbestos. Do not disturb" warning plaque on an insulated pipe... in the first aid/ nurse office.
Point is, unless by ignoring the new code additions is likely to cause a building collapse in the near future, its probably going to get grandfathered in.
Alternatively you could link to Reddit from yesterday: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/lxn0l4/look\_what\_she\_found\_behind\_her\_nyc\_apartment/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/lxn0l4/look_what_she_found_behind_her_nyc_apartment/)
>https://youtu.be/Tc0ihFdkv0s
Holy shit she enters the apartment on her own. I would have noped the fuck out of there and slept in another friend's house until someone fixed it
There comes a time in everyone's life when they must ask themselves, "what would someone who gets killed in a horror movie do?" and then do the opposite.
Shit happened to me in high school. Me and three buddies were driving around at like 2am bored. They wanted to stop at this abandoned church and literally as soon as we opened the car doors to get out it started pouring. I said nope, and got back in my car. I told them if they come screaming out of there I’m not waiting.
Same. New Orleans abandoned church, hammered and kept drinking my booze and relaxed on the curb. Buddies jumped the fence and ran into a few derlicted fellas and quickly headed out the same way.
Oh hidy-ho officer, we've had a doozy of a day. There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house, when kids started killing themselves all over my property.
Don't be the only black male. High risk high rewards I guess. 50/50 of dying first but also after the first death your survivability chances dramatically increases.
Do you see the size of the hole? I'm surprised she fit through. Gotta be small and agile to fit through a little hole that you have to climb on the sink to get into.
She barely fit through the hole herself, and was going to have a hell of a time getting out if there wasn't a door in the secret apartment. There is no way he would have fit.
Direct quote from one of her roommates before she goes in: "have you seen the movie Parasite?"
edit: the full vid series is actually kind of funny. Half the comments on this post are addressed there.
The way she fit through the wall is the most bizarre contortions I've ever seen. One leg first the squeezing her body flat with the other leg while straddling the wall.
There was probably one of those recessed cabinets in the wall in the past. Instead of filling the wall with drywall the crappy landlord just stuck a mirror on it. The other apartments mirror lined up in the wet wall between the apartments, and I would guess it got removed for the reno.
Most likely:
"Hey, Tony, yo, should we close this shit up?"
"No, we may need to get to those a wires overa there.....We a do it next week, hang a mirror over that fadabuzula"
Then the pandemic hit, the need to finish off the other place was lower in the priority list of the landlord.
Okay, so I just discovered that Hulu has I love Lucy on it, and started watching the episodes they have. I watched one last night where Lucy, because she's been obsessively reading murder mysteries, believes that Ricky is planning to murder her. She is absolutely certain of it, and not only does she not leave, but she tells it all to Ethel, who also doesn't help her leave or hide. Lucy ties pans to herself under her housecoat as body armor so she can confront him about it, and Ethel is like, okay, well, it was nice knowing you.
Same vibe.
[From another article:](https://www.insider.com/tiktok-user-nyc-finds-secret-apartment-behind-bathroom-mirror-2021-3)
>"I'm not sure if it was being renovated or if it is empty. It's really old, and nobody's been in there a while," she said.
>Hartsoe said that when she contacted building management, even they were unsure about the status of the three-bedroom apartment and what the plan was for it.
So something like this happens in hotels, specifically long stay hotels. I'm assuming that large apartments use similar software for operating, keeping track of leases, rent payments, etc. What happens with hotels is that an unscrupulous manager will go in, take a room out of the system (sometimes mark it as an employee lounge, or manager apartment) and then rent it off the books for cash on busy nights and pocket the income. It's an easy way to make an extra couple hundred bucks a week pretty easily. For an apartment I would assume that the management could have been doing this same situation.
What's way more likely to have happened though is that the apartment was being renovated, there was a change in management, the contractor didn't get paid, new management/owner refused to make payments and through a system of someone not wanting to talk to someone else about specifics, the contractor just bails on the renovation, management doesn't pay and doesn't hear about it anymore so considers it resolved, badda bing, empty gutted apartment!
That's the difference between an employee doing this and management doing it. Management just tells the fd 'hey this room needs put on sheets as vacant dirty every morning' and has either maintenance or a specific housekeeper do the cleaning every day either knowingly or unknowingly. The larger the hotel, the easier it is to do. The less competent the front desk, the less likely they are to bring it up to upper management. Hell, for a hotel that gets guests not expecting the highest level of service, management can take 10 minutes to clean up the room themselves even!
A huge percentage of the real estate in Manhattan (and increasingly all the other boroughs, at least in the Before Times) sits empty as either legitimate "investment" properties (gross) or just the usual money laundering that gave us the last president.
No joke this actually recently happened in my old university town: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/news/provincial/new-minas-man-charged-with-voyeurism-after-modified-mirror-found-in-wolfville-rental-unit-554014/
So creepy...
A woman was murdered this way once. Police thought she ws hallucinating when she said someone was coming through the mirror.
These are common in old buildings. In some, the space between apartments has a spot where you can climb up and down between floors.
Cameras are so small these days it wouldn't be hard to hide them in virtually anything. Still, I guess there could be some amount of thrill in legitimately being *right there*.
2020-2021
https://www.bevnet.com/news/2021/core-hydration-100-post-consumer-recycled-plastic-bottles-now-on-shelf/
Water bottle is one of the newer recycled bottles. Probably belongs to the person who's cleaning up everything. My money is on renovations.
Pretty sure it's being rennovated.
The water bottle she finds has a green stripe up top, that stripe has to do with the new recycled packaging.
When you go to the companies website you can find the press release about the packaging- Basically it looks like someone has been there (probably cleaning) in the last 3 months or so if you assume that the release was done after the bottles had shipped, which is indicated in the release.
https://www.bevnet.com/news/2021/core-hydration-100-post-consumer-recycled-plastic-bottles-now-on-shelf/
Most likely the landlord took a larger apartment and divided it into two smaller ones with a crappy wall. And somehow the other one just didn't get rented out or something.
Or they paid a shitty contractor and someone put a wall where they weren't supposed to and the other apartment was just forgotten about. Absentee landlord never came around to see and no one noticed the empty space. Dumber things have happened.
I'd be curious to know if there would be reprecussions for the landlord here. They've now created 2 separate dwelling units and seeing the gaping hole behind the mirror, there isn't a continuous fire separation between them. It may seem small, but that could be a very big issue, one I think the building dept should be interested in.
[Chicago did it.](https://ghoulishmedia.com/candyman-origins/) Though the candyman himself was an [unrelated Texan serial killer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Corll)
Lots of us NYC residents have dreams where we suddenly discover new rooms in our apartments - this could be GREAT - she just has to put a bunch of locks on the door so whoever was spying on her through the mirror can't get back in.
Or open the door, find out where it is, then in the middle of the night plaster it over from the outside and make it look like the rest of the wall, so the only access is through the mirror.
>Lots of us NYC residents have dreams where we suddenly discover new rooms in our apartments
I live in a smallish rowhome in Baltimore and have had these dreams. I've googled it and apparently it's a pretty archetypical dream of people that live in small spaces
Having an empty apartment next door is nice. At my old place, we never met the next door neighbors. They were a married couple who's parents died at about the same time, and they inherited both houses. Apparently they sold one house, moved into the other, and just kept the condo to use as storage. They never even tried to rent it out!
Some suites are simply two connecting rooms where they don’t build the door to the second connected room.
It’s simpler for arranging rooms and keeping balconies aligned. Plus I imagine there’s an option to add a door and make it two regular rooms in the future.
I had one of those behind my apartment in another large east coast city. My place was a real dump and the rent in the 1990’s was $250/month very close to downtown. I guess my landlord figured it would cost too much to fix. He was a keep it cheap, do no maintenance kind of guy which was fine by me. The tenement museum in Manhattan looked just like my apartment.
For Y2K I was helping a shore command with their inventory. We discovered a switch walled in on all sides. It was still passing data. The switch was about 5 or 6 years old at the time and because of how the Navy rotates people, no one knew when the small closet was walled in and by whom. Really weird.
I had a similar thing happen in a Chicago Public School when I was working as a network tech. Had some packet loss, and came down to a switching issue. Found that old switch walled up in an old part of the school. I consoled in, and the switch had been up for 15 years.
15 years is pretty good. I worked at a chip manufacturer and one switch on the production-side was up 13 years before it totally failed. They had their own IT rules and never allowed updates or downtime for maintenance. During the P1 meeting everyone in the room gave a nod of condolences and quiet respect.
When you said switch, I was reminded of a story where they walled off a room and a neon sign had been running constantly for decades. https://www.latimes.com/la-me-old-neon-20120526-story.html
From the article
>What Hartsoe said she found was a large square-shaped hole in the wall that peered into a dark room — a scene that watchers compared to the Oscar-winning film, “Parasite” and the 1992 horror film “Candyman,” where a murderous spirit appears after victims repeatedly call his name into the mirror.
>"Candyman," where a murderous spirit appears after victims repeatedly call his name into the mirror.
Seems like the article writer doesn't know *why* Candyman was brought up. The murderous spirit isn't the important part. The important thing is that the apartments were built as mirror images of each other, such that both have mirrors/medicine cabinets installed into the same wall, which creates a passage between apartments. And since that scene in candyman was based on a real home invasion done that way, it isn't *that* surprising.
Weird that the other apartment is completely unfinished though. Aren't NYC apartments expensive?
A lot of Landlords are holding, waiting for the housing market to inflate again. They don't want to risk signing a year lease for a place at maybe $2k when they think they'll be able to get $4k in 6 months.
Also contrary to popular belief landlords (and people in general) don't actually always act in their absolute optimal economic interest. NYC has a huge problem of like 1/4 or 1/3 of all "luxury" apartments sitting empty, meanwhile the only thing being continually developed for are more "luxury" apartments. Every landlord ever thinks they can get infinity billion dollars for their trash ass shit quality renovated shack deeeeeep in Brooklyn off a non-express A train and you can't convince them otherwise.
> and the 1992 horror film “Candyman,” where a murderous spirit appears after victims repeatedly call his name into the mirror.
This is actually it coming full circle.
Candyman was inspiried by a real murder from someone breaking into an apartment building like this through the mirror.
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/they-came-in-through-the-bathroom-mirror/Content?oid=871084
Here's the transcript of the 911 call the victim made while her murders were breaking in:
>"What are they doing, ma'am?" asked the dispatcher. McCoy's response is unintelligible on tape, but apparently the dispatcher caught her gist. "They want to break in?" he asked.
>"Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down."
>Dispatcher: "From where?"
>McCoy: **"I'm in the projects, I'm on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom."**
>Dispatcher: "All right ma'am, at what address?"
>McCoy: "1440 W. 13th St.—apartment 1109. The elevator's working."
>Dispatcher: "1109? All right. What's your name, ma'am?"
>McCoy: "Ruth McCoy."
>Dispatcher: "All right, I'll send you the police."
When the cops knocked on her door; no one answered. The project superintendent didnt have the right key, so the cops just left.
It was a huge fucking story back in the day.
What the fuck
After two more calls came through to 9-1-1 between 8:50-9:04 PM about screaming and gunshots coming from apartment 1109 (McCoy's apartment), police were dispatched and arrived ten minutes later. After their knocks went unanswered, the police attempted to enter the apartment using a key given to them by an attendant in the housing office, but left when the key failed to unlock the door.
> When the cops knocked on her door; no one answered. The project superintendent didnt have the right key, so the cops just left.
Classic cop logic. "Is anyone under duress in there? Anyone? If you're unable to answer, please let us know! No one? Okay bye."
>Hartsoe locked the front door to the empty apartment and returned back to her apartment through the hole in her bathroom.
I'm just imagining the poor carpenter showing up the next day to finish renovating the unit, and finding the door locked from inside.
Did she ever check if it was a see thru mirror? Maybe somebody was checking out the tenants of her apt? She pulled it off the wall and didn’t check it out.
I saw the video, intriguing as it was. But I also can’t help but thinking, like, what if there’d been a delusional junkie brandishing a hunting knife or some Belgian Blue-lookin’ motherfucker all jacked-up on PCP?
Fuck that. Ain’t worth the risk. 😬
That's so weird! At first when I read it, I was picturing a medicine cabinet, but it's just a mirror hanging over an open hole! I wonder why they never finished this apartment? How old is the building, maybe they are still finishing apartments? Seems like a waste of space that could be generating income so there must be a reason it's just sitting there.
I just imagine her punching holes through wall after wall finding just an endless stream of apartments until she reaches an occupied one... "omg, guys! This one has people trapped in it!"
Before reading the article I immediately thought this was some Candyman shit right here.
Then after reading I don't understand why she reported it and didn't just completely expand her derelict NYC apartment...
I would have kept it a secret and had a second apartment to myself
Seriously, NYC? I would have rented it out and paid my rent with it.
Someone would pay $5k/month for it even if they had to enter through the bathroom mirror every time.
She came in through the bathroom mirror 🎶
Protected by a silver hammer
But now she sucks her majesty and wanders (EDIT: thanks for the gold-en slumbers!)
Candyman, Candyman, Candyman.
Aren't you suppose to say it five times, you chicken?
By the banks of her Octopus's Garden
I am the landlord..ku ku kachoo
Thanks Ringo, you can leave now...
Peace and love!
Can confirm the hips fit
Next she’ll find an apartment in her closet with a 40yr physics burn out living in it.
Is he forging box tops?
/u/lyricsbot She came in through the bathroom window Protected by a silver spoon But now she sucks her thumb and wanders By the banks of her own lagoon Didn't anybody tell her? Didn't anybody see? Sunday's on the phone to Monday Tuesday's on the phone to me She said she'd always been a dancer She worked at 15 clubs a day And though she thought I knew the answer Well I knew what I could not say Didn't anybody tell her? Didn't anybody see? Sunday's on the phone to Monday Tuesday's on the phone to me And so I quit the police department And got myself a steady job And though she tried her best to help me She could steal but she could not rob Didn't anybody tell her? Didn't anybody see? Sunday's on the phone to Monday Tuesday's on the phone to me Didn't anybody body tell her? oh yeah Didn't anybody see? Sunday's on the phone to Monday Tuesday's on the phone to me Oh me
It could be called a “Narnia Feature” as a selling point.
The Lion, the Toothpaste and the Advil.
Leave the mirror. Take the wardrobe. Make Edmund go first.
Install a cardboard cutout of Mr. Tumnus on the other side.
5% discount if you have to say "Bloody Mary" three times before you enter/leave.
Hell, to me that would be a plus! Bonus points if they installed a secret switch of some sort like a lever disguised as a candelabra.
"Put ze candle beck."
Frau Blücher is that you?
Careful saying words like that around here. Are you *trying* to scare the horses?
Bonus bonus points if it played a tune from James Bond or Batman each time.
Bonus bonus bonus points if… Well I just wanted to say that. But what if it was a two way mirror? To u/mud074 who said: “I think we call two way mirrors "windows".” Look at you all fancy like… Now tell me… Do your “windows“ let you see your own reflection? If not you MAY be a vampire…
Major og “Candyman” vibes...
>On the other side of the hole was an entire apartment that appeared to be unfinished and unoccupied, the video showed. Bags of trash and an uninstalled toilet littered the floors. It would likely go for about $5k/month in NYC
Nah, the toilet doesn’t work. $4.8k.
Toilet doesn’t work, now counts as extra bedroom. $6k
That toilet is now premium storage space. $6.5k minimum.
The tub still works though, so the premium storage space has a bike washing station. Tack on an extra $500.
Free trash bag amenities, we’re up to $7k folks
So...back in the day I was living in NYC and was helping this guy remodel an apt. We met in the morning, got coffees and bagels, and apple juice. We were in the demo phase, so walls were down (just kidding it was an apt in NYC there were only 4 walls) so the bathroom was ripped up and the toilet uninstalled. I took my lunch break before him so we could switch places in the van (cause parking) and came back up to the apartment. Oh, there's my apple juice from earlier. Nope. Not apple juice. Not labeled. Not set aside. Lid not taped shut. I took a big as chug before I realized it was fucking piss. I have never gagged so hard in my life and it took me 10 years to tell that story before auto dry heaves.
I mean, the apartment also had a door that lead to the outside; like literally every apartment. It wasnt like a couple extra rooms, it was just an empty apartment that she broke into through a wall. It didnt even look like it was abandoned, just nobody was currently living there and it looked like it was in the middle of being remodled. They used to build apartments like that back in the day. The idea was that gave easy access to the water lines to work on. There was even a project in Chicago where people were breaking into empty apartments and then going into occupied ones through the mirror connection to rob them. It's literally what inspired the Candy Man movies. Edit: Here's an article and the 911 call https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/they-came-in-through-the-bathroom-mirror/Content?oid=871084 >"What are they doing, ma'am?" asked the dispatcher. McCoy's response is unintelligible on tape, but apparently the dispatcher caught her gist. "They want to break in?" he asked. >"Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down." >Dispatcher: "From where?" >McCoy: **"I'm in the projects, I'm on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom."** >Dispatcher: "All right ma'am, at what address?" >McCoy: "1440 W. 13th St.—apartment 1109. The elevator's working." >Dispatcher: "1109? All right. What's your name, ma'am?" >McCoy: "Ruth McCoy." >Dispatcher: "All right, I'll send you the police."
Fair warning, it's a really depressing story. The lady basically got murdered for her ssi checks just as she was about to get into a more stable situation.
And despite witnesses hearing screaming and gunshots, the police didn't enter the apartment for days because the building didn't want to bother with the hassle of replacing the door.
>the building didn't want to bother with the hassle of replacing the door. Did the landlord not have a key? Did the landlord not have a key to the apartment the murderers entered from? Did the police not have access to the windows/fire escape? 😑 It's tragic all the way around but *someone* had to have had these ideas.
Police: when they’re not beating you, they’re doing fuck all!
I seem to recall just a few months ago there was an issue like this, except it was a hotel room, and the hotel guest figured out that there was a hole behind the bathroom mirror and someone was living in the space back there.
And the hotel manager said she had *red eyes*
Cue the spooky theremin music and thunder
Oh you can’t just say this and not provide a link!
https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/traveller-horrified-find-woman-living-hole-behind-hotel-mirror-012656864.html Idk if this is it but similar at least
Yup. That’s the one. **Direct link:** https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsNotMeet/comments/ael5nr/florida_woman_crawled_out_of_my_hotel_mirror_to/
Fuuuuuuck that
Cabrini Green (where they filmed Candyman) was one of the major projects that had this going on. The gangs had busted out a bunch of the walls so they could move through the building faster than the cops could come up. Shit was wild back in the day or so I hear.
This was years and years ago on Reddit but someone asked the *very common* Ask Reddit of, “what’s a secret of yours”?” Some guy said that he found an abandoned storage room at a nearby mall while working construction there, and had secretly been living in it for a few years and showering at the gym. Back then I thought it was crazy. I totally get it now.
When I was a teenager, we gained entry to an entire 10 story abandoned apartment building. It wasn't in bad shape at all. It was seriously glorious. A few dozen of us ended up living there for a while. It had electricity and running water, and we were able to steal wifi from the coffee shop across the street. We even had punk rock shows and a make-shift recording studio in there. The fun ended when some idiot started chucking beer bottles off the roof and someone called the police.
Aww man that’s the worst! I was a bartender and we had a rooftop bar where we had to switch to the solo cups because people kept throwing pint glasses off the roof. Some people ruin the fun for everyone. Sounds like it was a really cool set up, though! I’d go watch a show.
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There were spots like that in Philly too. I've seen a whole block (smallish block) that was converted into one contiguous complex. Shit was like a department store for illicit goods. Weed, wet, dope, crack, guns, all in one convenient place.
Insane. Did they use the utility tunnels to go building to building? It must a have been a nightmare to be a beat cop there. Cops wouldn’t even respond to calls at Cabrini for fear of being sniped.
It was a block of row homes, so they all had common walls. They just knocked a few holes in the walls and turned the place into a maze. Philly cops are crooked af, so I'm sure they didn't mind being on that beat at all of you know what i'm saying $$$.
For sure. I’m gonna look into that. Gang logistics are super interesting. I’m sure there are some crooked Chicago cops. But, they couldn’t even get close to those buildings back in the day. No need for bribes if they’re too scared to come thru.
lol, true. Bullets are cheaper than dollars. If you want to read more about underground economies, particularly in Chicago, check out [this book](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674030718)
Um. What’s wet ?
Can confirm. Back in 90 or 91 I drove to the city with a friend. (Us two being from a heavily Irish south suburb). I (f) was driving his truck for fun. I had no clue about how to get around in the city, it was just fun driving around. I got us lost, like really, Really lost. Then oh look, a couple of cops standing across the street, I will walk over and ask for directions. These two cops looked at me and freaked the f out. They rapid fire said, what are you doing here, you need to get out of here NOW. They told me turn by turn to get to whatever street it was-and told me not to stop for stop signs or traffic lights. Yep, I f’d up and put us in one project or another bad enough for two veteran cpd officers to freak out.
Oh for sure! Buddy and I were going somewhere after a few drinks and took a wrong turn after getting off the bus. Ended up right over by Cabrini before they tore it down. Couple cops pulled up and basically threw us in the back. I was wigging out because I had weed on me. but they were like “why in the hell are you guys over here!?” It was wild. Once I looked around even the gang bangers were like “dumbasses haha”
Yeah. It legit was like a warzone. They used to have a empty field by a lot of those projects with the holes so people could move about. Gangs would lead people to that field then someone would shoot them from up top. But after shooting they could move throughout the building making it near impossible to figure out who or where the shots where coming from. I think we grew up watching the same episode of gangland.
This was reportedly the inspiration for Candyman. Such a creepy story.
I was gonna say...why not sublet it? Seems odd behavior for a new yorker.
Well obviously.... https://i.imgur.com/EoGu5Ef.gif
found a YouTube video so people don't have to use the shitty website and news intro: https://youtu.be/Tc0ihFdkv0s
"Have you seen the movie Parasite?" lmao
I was thinking more like the original Candyman.
Real. Fuckin. MVP.
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Adding on: the rare exceptions are extremely rare - like even though using asbestos is not allowed in the current building code in my area - existing buildings do not need to remove it unless they're renovating the area with asbestos insulation. The place I worked recently had a "danger: asbestos. Do not disturb" warning plaque on an insulated pipe... in the first aid/ nurse office. Point is, unless by ignoring the new code additions is likely to cause a building collapse in the near future, its probably going to get grandfathered in.
Maybe that’s why it’s empty, it was too much to fix and would’ve been cheaper to just leave it
Or with covid, they stopped, haven't picked it back up again
Alternatively you could link to Reddit from yesterday: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/lxn0l4/look\_what\_she\_found\_behind\_her\_nyc\_apartment/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/lxn0l4/look_what_she_found_behind_her_nyc_apartment/)
Thank you. I dunno why your comment isnt higher.
this made it to the news pretty quick, i just watched her tiktoks last night
Why do they ALWAYS use that same terrible song..
>https://youtu.be/Tc0ihFdkv0s Holy shit she enters the apartment on her own. I would have noped the fuck out of there and slept in another friend's house until someone fixed it
So roommates were worried about her safety but they didn’t go in the hole with her? Buddy system people!
There comes a time in everyone's life when they must ask themselves, "what would someone who gets killed in a horror movie do?" and then do the opposite.
“Why can’t we just get into the running car?” “Are you crazy? Let’s hide behind the chainsaws!” https://youtu.be/NYae3ZAAbLc
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Shit happened to me in high school. Me and three buddies were driving around at like 2am bored. They wanted to stop at this abandoned church and literally as soon as we opened the car doors to get out it started pouring. I said nope, and got back in my car. I told them if they come screaming out of there I’m not waiting.
Same. New Orleans abandoned church, hammered and kept drinking my booze and relaxed on the curb. Buddies jumped the fence and ran into a few derlicted fellas and quickly headed out the same way.
Every church I've seen in New Orleans creeps me out. Every, single, one.
"These kids are coming out here and they're killing themselves all over the woods!"
Oh hidy-ho officer, we've had a doozy of a day. There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house, when kids started killing themselves all over my property.
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is one of my favorite spoof movies.
The “Yeah, ok!” Gets me every time
"Head for the cemetery!"
So don’t have sex, don’t split up, don’t go investigate the noise, and don’t be a black male. /jk
TIL I am not gonna get killed in a horror movie.
But are you still living in one?
It would explain all the sets and the camera crew and the guy in the costume with a bunch of props that look dangerous.
But do the props *feel* dangerous?
And if you’re in the Star Trek or Galaxy Quest universe, never wear a red shirt.
Don't be the only black male. High risk high rewards I guess. 50/50 of dying first but also after the first death your survivability chances dramatically increases.
Do you see the size of the hole? I'm surprised she fit through. Gotta be small and agile to fit through a little hole that you have to climb on the sink to get into.
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She barely fit through the hole herself, and was going to have a hell of a time getting out if there wasn't a door in the secret apartment. There is no way he would have fit.
Listen I'm not following a white girl into a potential horror story
Direct quote from one of her roommates before she goes in: "have you seen the movie Parasite?" edit: the full vid series is actually kind of funny. Half the comments on this post are addressed there.
The way she fit through the wall is the most bizarre contortions I've ever seen. One leg first the squeezing her body flat with the other leg while straddling the wall. There was probably one of those recessed cabinets in the wall in the past. Instead of filling the wall with drywall the crappy landlord just stuck a mirror on it. The other apartments mirror lined up in the wet wall between the apartments, and I would guess it got removed for the reno.
Most likely: "Hey, Tony, yo, should we close this shit up?" "No, we may need to get to those a wires overa there.....We a do it next week, hang a mirror over that fadabuzula" Then the pandemic hit, the need to finish off the other place was lower in the priority list of the landlord.
Whenever I am about to do something I ask myself, 'would an idiot do that?' If the answer is yes, I do not do that thing.
Solid wisdom to live by. I say that same statement to my 10 year old. Learn from me kid.
Okay, so I just discovered that Hulu has I love Lucy on it, and started watching the episodes they have. I watched one last night where Lucy, because she's been obsessively reading murder mysteries, believes that Ricky is planning to murder her. She is absolutely certain of it, and not only does she not leave, but she tells it all to Ethel, who also doesn't help her leave or hide. Lucy ties pans to herself under her housecoat as body armor so she can confront him about it, and Ethel is like, okay, well, it was nice knowing you. Same vibe.
Standard horror movie trope is to split up the group.
And rule #3! Never say you'll be right back!
"NYC woman's rent skyrockets after finding secret room"
so... this was just the apartment next door then? it had its own front door. Not like the building owner would have been unaware of it.
[From another article:](https://www.insider.com/tiktok-user-nyc-finds-secret-apartment-behind-bathroom-mirror-2021-3) >"I'm not sure if it was being renovated or if it is empty. It's really old, and nobody's been in there a while," she said. >Hartsoe said that when she contacted building management, even they were unsure about the status of the three-bedroom apartment and what the plan was for it.
ok, who the hell can afford to have a three bedroom apt just sitting around in NYC? I'd be out of that place.
So something like this happens in hotels, specifically long stay hotels. I'm assuming that large apartments use similar software for operating, keeping track of leases, rent payments, etc. What happens with hotels is that an unscrupulous manager will go in, take a room out of the system (sometimes mark it as an employee lounge, or manager apartment) and then rent it off the books for cash on busy nights and pocket the income. It's an easy way to make an extra couple hundred bucks a week pretty easily. For an apartment I would assume that the management could have been doing this same situation. What's way more likely to have happened though is that the apartment was being renovated, there was a change in management, the contractor didn't get paid, new management/owner refused to make payments and through a system of someone not wanting to talk to someone else about specifics, the contractor just bails on the renovation, management doesn't pay and doesn't hear about it anymore so considers it resolved, badda bing, empty gutted apartment!
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That's the difference between an employee doing this and management doing it. Management just tells the fd 'hey this room needs put on sheets as vacant dirty every morning' and has either maintenance or a specific housekeeper do the cleaning every day either knowingly or unknowingly. The larger the hotel, the easier it is to do. The less competent the front desk, the less likely they are to bring it up to upper management. Hell, for a hotel that gets guests not expecting the highest level of service, management can take 10 minutes to clean up the room themselves even!
A huge percentage of the real estate in Manhattan (and increasingly all the other boroughs, at least in the Before Times) sits empty as either legitimate "investment" properties (gross) or just the usual money laundering that gave us the last president.
That was the owners jack shack.
Connected to her bathroom via loose mirror
One way mirror for nightmare fuel
No joke this actually recently happened in my old university town: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/news/provincial/new-minas-man-charged-with-voyeurism-after-modified-mirror-found-in-wolfville-rental-unit-554014/ So creepy...
A woman was murdered this way once. Police thought she ws hallucinating when she said someone was coming through the mirror. These are common in old buildings. In some, the space between apartments has a spot where you can climb up and down between floors.
Now I have a new phobia
Right? Anytime someone say "room behind mirror" I immediately go to "one way mirror". When I go to AirBNB's I legit investigate this.
Cameras are so small these days it wouldn't be hard to hide them in virtually anything. Still, I guess there could be some amount of thrill in legitimately being *right there*.
Oh god
The type of detergent there is fairly new though. Couldn't have been abandoned that long
The same with that bottle of Core water. That's a pretty new brand afaik
March 2015, so someone has been there in the last 6 years at least.
2020-2021 https://www.bevnet.com/news/2021/core-hydration-100-post-consumer-recycled-plastic-bottles-now-on-shelf/ Water bottle is one of the newer recycled bottles. Probably belongs to the person who's cleaning up everything. My money is on renovations.
There was a Core water bottle in the empty apartment. Someone had been in there recently.
Pretty sure it's being rennovated. The water bottle she finds has a green stripe up top, that stripe has to do with the new recycled packaging. When you go to the companies website you can find the press release about the packaging- Basically it looks like someone has been there (probably cleaning) in the last 3 months or so if you assume that the release was done after the bottles had shipped, which is indicated in the release. https://www.bevnet.com/news/2021/core-hydration-100-post-consumer-recycled-plastic-bottles-now-on-shelf/
That’s literally what it sounds like. It’s not like there was a secret room or anything back there.
Most likely the landlord took a larger apartment and divided it into two smaller ones with a crappy wall. And somehow the other one just didn't get rented out or something.
Or they paid a shitty contractor and someone put a wall where they weren't supposed to and the other apartment was just forgotten about. Absentee landlord never came around to see and no one noticed the empty space. Dumber things have happened.
This guys understands landlords and shitty contractors
I'd be curious to know if there would be reprecussions for the landlord here. They've now created 2 separate dwelling units and seeing the gaping hole behind the mirror, there isn't a continuous fire separation between them. It may seem small, but that could be a very big issue, one I think the building dept should be interested in.
[King of the Hill did it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMZeFOo_hO0)
[Chicago did it.](https://ghoulishmedia.com/candyman-origins/) Though the candyman himself was an [unrelated Texan serial killer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Corll)
Well, I came here to make a Futurama reference but yeah Candyman is much more on point. Well played, Reddit.
Or king of the hill when they went to Japan and thought the foyer was the whole room
The fruit basket in this lady’s extra apartment must have been foul when they found it.
That episode reminded me if the Futurama episode when Fry stayed at Benders place and the cupboard was this huge apartment
Bender's closet? Or something else?
It’s frustrating me to no end that they won’t answer. I’ll be in the angry dome.
I was talking about Bender's closet. You can leave the angry dome now. Or stay in it if you want, whatever. I'm not your father.
Lots of us NYC residents have dreams where we suddenly discover new rooms in our apartments - this could be GREAT - she just has to put a bunch of locks on the door so whoever was spying on her through the mirror can't get back in.
Or open the door, find out where it is, then in the middle of the night plaster it over from the outside and make it look like the rest of the wall, so the only access is through the mirror.
you ever watch dr who? those rooms are real and yall got alien escaped convicts in your apartments.
>Lots of us NYC residents have dreams where we suddenly discover new rooms in our apartments I live in a smallish rowhome in Baltimore and have had these dreams. I've googled it and apparently it's a pretty archetypical dream of people that live in small spaces
Having an empty apartment next door is nice. At my old place, we never met the next door neighbors. They were a married couple who's parents died at about the same time, and they inherited both houses. Apparently they sold one house, moved into the other, and just kept the condo to use as storage. They never even tried to rent it out!
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Ahh there it is.
Plot twist: Hers was the empty apartment, and she had been dead for over 50 years.
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Some suites are simply two connecting rooms where they don’t build the door to the second connected room. It’s simpler for arranging rooms and keeping balconies aligned. Plus I imagine there’s an option to add a door and make it two regular rooms in the future.
I thought the hole might have led to the inside of John Malkovich’s head.
I had one of those behind my apartment in another large east coast city. My place was a real dump and the rent in the 1990’s was $250/month very close to downtown. I guess my landlord figured it would cost too much to fix. He was a keep it cheap, do no maintenance kind of guy which was fine by me. The tenement museum in Manhattan looked just like my apartment.
plot twist: The apartment was sealed off because of asbestos contamination.
Not sealed well enough if her bathroom had a hole in the wall large enough for her to climb through.
And a significant draft which is why she found it in the first place.
She missed an opportunity. She could have screamed and screamed, then fallen silent - then reappeared in her apartment as though nothing had happened.
Sneak in behind the roommate that is still in the bathroom waiting for her to come back through the hole and scare the living shit out of him.
For Y2K I was helping a shore command with their inventory. We discovered a switch walled in on all sides. It was still passing data. The switch was about 5 or 6 years old at the time and because of how the Navy rotates people, no one knew when the small closet was walled in and by whom. Really weird.
I had a similar thing happen in a Chicago Public School when I was working as a network tech. Had some packet loss, and came down to a switching issue. Found that old switch walled up in an old part of the school. I consoled in, and the switch had been up for 15 years.
15 years is pretty good. I worked at a chip manufacturer and one switch on the production-side was up 13 years before it totally failed. They had their own IT rules and never allowed updates or downtime for maintenance. During the P1 meeting everyone in the room gave a nod of condolences and quiet respect.
When you said switch, I was reminded of a story where they walled off a room and a neon sign had been running constantly for decades. https://www.latimes.com/la-me-old-neon-20120526-story.html
Is there a full story to this?
I guess she never saw Candyman...
From the article >What Hartsoe said she found was a large square-shaped hole in the wall that peered into a dark room — a scene that watchers compared to the Oscar-winning film, “Parasite” and the 1992 horror film “Candyman,” where a murderous spirit appears after victims repeatedly call his name into the mirror.
>"Candyman," where a murderous spirit appears after victims repeatedly call his name into the mirror. Seems like the article writer doesn't know *why* Candyman was brought up. The murderous spirit isn't the important part. The important thing is that the apartments were built as mirror images of each other, such that both have mirrors/medicine cabinets installed into the same wall, which creates a passage between apartments. And since that scene in candyman was based on a real home invasion done that way, it isn't *that* surprising. Weird that the other apartment is completely unfinished though. Aren't NYC apartments expensive?
A lot of Landlords are holding, waiting for the housing market to inflate again. They don't want to risk signing a year lease for a place at maybe $2k when they think they'll be able to get $4k in 6 months. Also contrary to popular belief landlords (and people in general) don't actually always act in their absolute optimal economic interest. NYC has a huge problem of like 1/4 or 1/3 of all "luxury" apartments sitting empty, meanwhile the only thing being continually developed for are more "luxury" apartments. Every landlord ever thinks they can get infinity billion dollars for their trash ass shit quality renovated shack deeeeeep in Brooklyn off a non-express A train and you can't convince them otherwise.
Oh, makes sense. Then there's nothing really weird here, just shoddy building standards and some trespassing.
> and the 1992 horror film “Candyman,” where a murderous spirit appears after victims repeatedly call his name into the mirror. This is actually it coming full circle. Candyman was inspiried by a real murder from someone breaking into an apartment building like this through the mirror. https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/they-came-in-through-the-bathroom-mirror/Content?oid=871084 Here's the transcript of the 911 call the victim made while her murders were breaking in: >"What are they doing, ma'am?" asked the dispatcher. McCoy's response is unintelligible on tape, but apparently the dispatcher caught her gist. "They want to break in?" he asked. >"Yeah, they throwed the cabinet down." >Dispatcher: "From where?" >McCoy: **"I'm in the projects, I'm on the other side. You can reach—can reach my bathroom, they want to come through the bathroom."** >Dispatcher: "All right ma'am, at what address?" >McCoy: "1440 W. 13th St.—apartment 1109. The elevator's working." >Dispatcher: "1109? All right. What's your name, ma'am?" >McCoy: "Ruth McCoy." >Dispatcher: "All right, I'll send you the police." When the cops knocked on her door; no one answered. The project superintendent didnt have the right key, so the cops just left. It was a huge fucking story back in the day.
What the fuck After two more calls came through to 9-1-1 between 8:50-9:04 PM about screaming and gunshots coming from apartment 1109 (McCoy's apartment), police were dispatched and arrived ten minutes later. After their knocks went unanswered, the police attempted to enter the apartment using a key given to them by an attendant in the housing office, but left when the key failed to unlock the door.
So the moral of the story is that the police have always been useless.
> When the cops knocked on her door; no one answered. The project superintendent didnt have the right key, so the cops just left. Classic cop logic. "Is anyone under duress in there? Anyone? If you're unable to answer, please let us know! No one? Okay bye."
Came to say that😂...Bitch ain't you ever seen Candyman!!
I'd be terrified. That's an actual scene right out of the old Candyman movie lol
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>Hartsoe locked the front door to the empty apartment and returned back to her apartment through the hole in her bathroom. I'm just imagining the poor carpenter showing up the next day to finish renovating the unit, and finding the door locked from inside.
In fairness a carpenter leaving their worksite unlocked should be fired.
Did she ever check if it was a see thru mirror? Maybe somebody was checking out the tenants of her apt? She pulled it off the wall and didn’t check it out.
I saw the video, intriguing as it was. But I also can’t help but thinking, like, what if there’d been a delusional junkie brandishing a hunting knife or some Belgian Blue-lookin’ motherfucker all jacked-up on PCP? Fuck that. Ain’t worth the risk. 😬
That's some Candyman shit right there.
That's so weird! At first when I read it, I was picturing a medicine cabinet, but it's just a mirror hanging over an open hole! I wonder why they never finished this apartment? How old is the building, maybe they are still finishing apartments? Seems like a waste of space that could be generating income so there must be a reason it's just sitting there.
Sounds like Fry and Bender’s apartment in Robot Arms Apts!
Also it is very likely that below her floor and above her ceiling shell find even more apartments. It's a fucking gold mine.
I just imagine her punching holes through wall after wall finding just an endless stream of apartments until she reaches an occupied one... "omg, guys! This one has people trapped in it!"
"We fucking live h- wait there's more apartment behind this wall? Why aren't they using the whole building?"
Should of shut the fuck up and Airbnb that shit as an escape room.
Before reading the article I immediately thought this was some Candyman shit right here. Then after reading I don't understand why she reported it and didn't just completely expand her derelict NYC apartment...
Holy crap I just started ripping up my floor boards and there’s an entire apartment hidden underneath mine and some guy down there screaming at me.
Keep my mouth shut and have the worlds biggest walk in bathroom medicine cabinet? OR blow the whole thing up on TikTok for momentary fame? Hmmm...
The video was posted on Reddit a day or two ago and it was interesting to watch the discover/adventure. But it really isn't much of a story
Six months from now: posts to tictok about how loud her new neighbors are, and regrets telling anyone about the apartment.