Buying a home can be stressful even if everything goes smoothly. And for one woman who feared she had uncovered a murder scene in her new home, it was anything but.
Audrey lives in the Midwest, and recently took on a new adventure as she moved to a different state and bought a new home.
But not long after moving in, she discovered a leak in one of the rooms, and told Newsweek her husband “started to rip the floor out and that’s when we discovered what was underneath.”
In a viral video shared to her TikTok account @chickennuggetlife8806, she says she worried someone may have been “smurdered” in their home, and showed off a large, dark red stain in the corner of the room.
Bare footprints were seen tracking away from the stain, as Audrey admitted she was “freaking out right now” and pleaded for someone to tell her she was “overreacting.”
She said she was hoping it was paint, but as the liquid had seeped through tiles and stained underneath it, she wasn’t confident.
And speaking to Newsweek, she added: “It took me quite a while to process what I was seeing. I don’t want to believe I crime happened, but given some conditions of the home, it totally could be possible.”
Audrey contacted the police, who “appear to be taking it seriously.” A detective came to her house to check out the scene and run some tests, and Audrey revealed that she later received confirmation that “it’s not human blood.”
Explaining that the detective believes it may be paint but is “not sure,” she said police have asked her not to disturb anything in the room just yet in case they need to take more photographs.
The local police force confirmed to Newsweek: “We sent a detective out to the scene to investigate further. He determined the stains not to be blood. It appears as though the stains were a paint like substance.”
Audrey’s video has skyrocketed across TikTok, racking up over 13 million views since being shared on July 1, along with 1.7 million likes and tens of thousands of comments.
Many comments urged Audrey to call the police, while others debated whether the stain could have been caused by paint, or an animal bleeding out in the room.
Others asked if the real estate agent had disclosed whether anyone had died in the house, which is a law in some states, but where Audrey lives, it does not need to be disclosed unless the potential buyer asks.
She confirmed in a comment that she had not asked whether anyone had died in the house as she believed she had no reason to.
While Audrey’s discovery appears, thankfully, not to be a murder scene, thousands of homicides take place in the United States each year.
A 2023 report from Statista illustrates that California reported the most homicides to the FBI in 2022, with 2,197 for the year. It was followed by Texas, with 2,020 for the year.
Wyoming was at the bottom end of the scale, with just 14 homicides across the state reported to the FBI.
Audrey told Newsweek: “The reactions online have been a bit overwhelming, when you post a video there is always the chance of it going viral however as cliché as it may sound, I did not expect this one to go this viral.”
“So it has been a bit overwhelming because it is impossible to keep up with the comments when I’m getting multiple comments every minute,” she admitted.
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Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.