New York City real estate is often a confounding mystery to those living outside of the most expensive and cursed city in America. But even those who live within the tiny confines of New York apartments, which for the most part are shoeboxes with toilets, no one expects to find an apartment inside of their… apartment. Tiktok user @samanthartsoe posted a four-part documentary special on what started out as a mysterious wind coming from her bathroom mirror but soon became a literal journey into the unknown. As audiences learn in the subsequent installations of Samantha’s TikToks, the air was coming from a gaping hole behind the mirror that opened up into a completely different abandoned apartment.
I have seen many things in the 20-odd years I have lived in New York but never in all my days did I discoer something like this. A colony of rats in the wall? Sure. Drugs being stored behind the insulation? Naturally! But an entire new apartment that no one lives in!? That just produces wind!?
@samanthartsoe TRULY a new meaning to a “hole in the wall” #mystery #nyc #apartment #secret #storytime #fyp #foryou
These videos make several things clear. First and foremost, Samantha is fearless and also quite flexible. There is not a paycheck on this planet large enough to convince me to crawl through any hole found in any apartment in any borough of any county in the state of New York. But it also leaves so many questions unanswered. Jezebel has reached out to Samantha to fully understand the complexities and emotional upheaval of discovering the hole and going where no New Yorker has gone before. We await a response from this urban adventurer.