A family in Greenville, South Carolina was thrilled with the new house they had purchased. While exploring it, they found a secret room hidden behind a built-in bookcase. After that, they weren't so thrilled. In the room on a shelf was a letter from the previous owner. It said, "You found it!". "It" wasn't just the room in this case, it was what was growing in the room. Toxic mold to be precise. And rather a lot of it.
The secret room in the old mill home on Whitten Street in Greenville's Dunean section contained a handwritten letter from the previous owner titled, "You Found It!"
"Hello. If you're reading this, then you found the secret room. I owned this house for a short while and it was discovered to have a serious mold problem. One that actually made my children very sick to the point that we had to move out," Kerri Brown read from the letter.
According to the note, there was so much mold, it made the last family who lived there sick, and they were forced to move out.
The Browns later learned the home contained the worst types of mold including Stachybotrys, the so-called Toxic Black Mold.
The Browns, who have a young daughter, were stunned.
"It terrified me because my first thought was Megan," Kerri Brown said. "And you know, I had heard reports of what it does for children, and I was terrified."
But at this point, it was only a note, and Jason Brown was skeptical.
"Who would leave a note? Why did he do it? What's he up to? A little bit suspicious I would think. Even cynical almost," Jason Brown said.
So the Browns hired an environmental engineer to see if there was any truth to the note in the secret room.
Indeed, Steve Hendrix of Hendrix Consulting Engineers in Greenville, found elevated-levels of several types of mold, including Aspergillus, Basidiospores, Chaetomiu, Curvularia, Stachybotrys and Torula.
The Browns have filed a lawsuit against the realtor and the broker involved in the sale. Fannie Mae was originally also named in the suit, but they agreed to buy the house back and have been dropped from it as a result. The man who left the note did so because he was afraid the next family would end up in the same boat his family had. They had defaulted on the mortgage after they discovered the mold. They had not had the resources to pay for removal of the hazard. (There is a video report at the link.)
