I Thought We Were Cleaning Out our Uncle’s House, Then We Found This

Uncle Jerry had been dead for three days, and already the house smelled like a mixture of old newspapers, mothballs, and despair. The family had gathered to clean it out, ostensibly to honor him, but mostly to figure out who got the good stuff before someone else did.

Mom had given us all strict instructions be respectful, don’t break anything, and absolutely don’t open any mysterious locked doors. Naturally, none of us intended to obey any of those rules.

I was in the living room, attempting to sort through Uncle Jerry’s magazines without gagging. They ranged from obscure model train catalogs to an unsettling number of publications with titles I didn’t understand but guessed were not suitable for polite company.

Nina, my cousin and professional chaos magnet, was on the floor wrestling with a box of kitchen gadgets, some of which were clearly older than we were. “Why does he have three egg slicers?” she asked.

“I think he had a problem,” I said, lifting a whisk with suspicious crusted matter on it.

From the hallway, Uncle Dave muttered something about chairs. “Why does he need seventeen chairs?” He was attempting to disassemble one that seemed determined to defy physics.

Mom, meanwhile, wandered through the rooms like a ghost in sensible shoes, muttering about how “eccentric, yet thoughtful” Uncle Jerry had been. She stopped in front of a framed photograph of him wearing a Viking helmet, holding a bottle of something suspiciously labeled Ancient Mead, and shook her head.

As I moved toward the study, I noticed something odd. Behind the bookshelf was a faint seam in the wall. My curiosity immediately overrode any caution, which is a polite way of saying I started fiddling with it.

“Hey, come look at this,” I called.

Nina appeared, squinting. “That wall looks… wrong.”

“I think it’s a secret door,” I said, tugging on the seam. After a few moments of resistance and a suspicious click, a narrow magenta hallway appeared.

“Holy—what is that?” Nina whispered.

“I… have no idea,” I admitted, feeling a shiver of excitement mixed with unease.

Dave appeared behind us, squinting at the small corridor. “A secret hallway? Jerry had a secret hallway?”

Mom finally arrived, adjusting her glasses. “Jerry… oh Jerry…” Her voice was soft at first, almost reverent.

The hallway ended in a solid door with a keypad. Naturally, Nina was already trying to guess the code. “Okay… maybe it’s… uh… 1234?” she suggested. The door did not respond. “Hmm… maybe 1969?”

“Do not touch that door,” Mom warned. “I don’t even want to know what’s behind it.”

That of course only made us try harder. After a few more attempts—and one muttered “LOVEJERRY69”—the lock clicked.

The door swung open, revealing the room.

We froze.

The space inside was a riot of colors, textures, and shapes that would have made any interior designer run screaming. A disco ball spun lazily from the ceiling, throwing fractured sunlight across a crimson velvet carpet. In the center of the room was a throne-like chair with straps dangling ominously, and around the walls were shelves filled with objects that defied explanation.

Mom’s reaction was immediate and unforgettable. She clutched her chest and practically screamed, “OH MY GOD… it’s a sex room!”

I blinked. “Uh… yeah. That seems accurate.”

Nina was already doubled over in laughter. “Look at all the costumes! There’s a pirate outfit, an astronaut suit… is that a sushi chef uniform?”

Dave picked up a thick, leather-bound manual from a side table. The cover read: Vibratory Chair: Advanced Settings. His face went pale as he flipped through diagrams of reclining positions, numbered dials, and flowcharts. “I… I don’t even… what did he do in here?”

Mom wandered further in, inspecting shelves that contained leather cuffs, feather ticklers, and what looked like a Viking helmet with spikes. “I… I don’t even know what to say,” she muttered, as if the words themselves might be dangerous.

I accidentally nudged a button on the throne, which caused it to hum and vibrate loudly. The disco ball spun faster, strobes flashed, and I stumbled backward, colliding with an inflatable flamingo that tumbled across the floor.

“This is insane!” I yelled, crawling away from the hum of the chair.

Nina, still laughing, picked up a binder filled with Uncle Jerry’s detailed “scenario notes.” She read aloud: “Pirate Jerry prefers rum. Astronaut Jerry likes ‘Rocket Man.’ Sushi Chef Jerry… always bring a napkin.” She paused to catch her breath. “He even documented the cat’s reactions. He made the cat wear a costume sometimes.”

Mom let out a strangled laugh. “I thought I knew this man… and apparently I didn’t know anything.”

We spent the next hour exploring, tripping over feather boas, flinging sequined pasties like confetti, and discovering more and more ridiculous items: a karaoke machine, a collection of candles labeled Mystery Musk, Forbidden Forest, and something ominously called Absolutely Sinful. Every discovery was followed by a mixture of laughter, disbelief, and Mom muttering, “Oh my GOD… Jerry…”

Finally, we found the diary. Page after page confirmed that Uncle Jerry had spent years obsessively curating this bizarre, ridiculous, and somehow joyous space. There were notes about costume sizes, preferred lighting, even detailed instructions for “Vibratory Chair Level: Maximum Fun—Use With Caution.”

By the time we hit the entry labeled Extreme Viking Helmet Experiment, we were in tears from laughter. Uncle Jerry, in death, had managed to shock, horrify, and delight us simultaneously.

Nina finally suggested we leave a note for the next person who inherited the house. I grabbed a sticky pad:

Dear Future Residents,

If you find this room, congratulations. Uncle Jerry wanted you to laugh, experiment, and maybe press a few buttons. But seriously… beware the vibratory chair.

As we closed the magenta door behind us, Mom gave a small, wistful smile. “I suppose he always said life was too short to take seriously. Even if it involved… this.”

And somewhere, I liked to think, Uncle Jerry was spinning his disco ball in the afterlife, watching us stumble through the chaos he left behind, laughing at every ridiculous, beautiful, absurd detail.