Store as much as you like for as long as you like
Store as much as you like for as long as you like
When most people think of self-storage, they think of furniture, clothes or even business stock. And that’s true for 99.9% of people who use self-storage. But every now and then, self-storage is used for something more sinister. Something, bizarre, illegal or just downright creepy. Since it’s coming up to Halloween, we wanted to share some of the creepiest things ever found in self-storage units from around the world. (Thankfully, none of these were found in our units!).
If you’re a fan of Storage Hunters, you might have caught this one before. During a sealed unit bid in California (where abandoned or unpaid units are auctioned off to cover the costs – a very popular practice in the states), the hosts got a bit more than they bargained for. A garage-sized unit was sold for $80 to a mystery bidder, and when opened it contained pipes, chemistry equipment, bleach and other chemicals – and nothing else. Of course, the unit was reported to the police right away, and it turned out that the mystery buyer (who closed and locked the unit as soon as he won it before leaving right away) was actually the original owner of the unit and it’s hidden meth lab.
Losing a loved one is hard, and sometimes it can be difficult to let go. However, some people struggle more than others. There have been dozens of cases of people keeping the ashes of their loved ones in their storage units, but stranger still is the Florida man who kept the body of his deceased grandmother in a blue casket in his storage unit. As if this wasn’t morbid enough, he kept the body there (unpreserved) for 17 years!
From the morbid to the spine shiveringly creepy, another storage unit was filled, floor to ceiling, with (thankfully) fake hands. From a giant hand sculpture to dozens of tiny doll hands – the unit was completely stuffed with hands. There was even a fake hand suspended in fake formaldehyde. The only thing in there was the head of a Halloween style clown. Admittedly it was a doll head, but it didn’t help with the vibe of the unit!
A buyer got more than he bargained for when he bought a storage unit at auction, only to discover a human leg, neatly wrapped in tin foil, nestled inside a gas BBQ. The storage centre got in touch with the original owner of the unit to inquire about the leg before they called the police. The original owner responded – quite cheerfully – that the leg was his own! It had been amputated after he was in a plane crash a few years previously, and he had been storing it so that he could be buried with it when he died. Unfortunately, he had completely forgotten it was there! Don’t worry though, he was reunited with his missing leg.
Of course, we’ve saved the best for last. Unless you’re a MASSIVE Madonna fan, the name Robert Dewey Hoskins probably won’t make much of an impression on you. But he was convicted of stalking Madonna (and Halle Berry) after breaking into Madonna’s home and threatening to slit her throat. Hoskins was diagnosed as highly psychotic and extremely violent, and he even managed to escape from a mental hospital to go after Halle Berry. But he also had a storage unit, which was auctioned off in 2012. Inside, buyers and police found a clown mask, a headless doll, condoms, butcher knives, a bible, a notebook full of disturbing plans and a ton of Madonna memorabilia. The unit was described as containing a ‘stalker-killers kit’ – which makes us all the more glad he is back in the hospital and receiving the help he needs.
Of course, many of these items aren’t permitted to be in storage units, or even in homes! But they are the perfect food for creepy storage unit stories! At Blue Box Storage we’ve never had anything like this, and we hope we never will. But if you want to know what some of the weirdest things we’ve seen coming in or out of our units are, get in touch with the team today.