Couple Buys Old Lady’s House for Nothing, They Enter Cellar and Realize It's Worth a Fortune – Story of the Day

Kara and Aaron were cleaning the old house they bought for a suspiciously low price when they stumbled upon a strange door in the cellar. While this discovery should have solved all their financial worries, things take a dark turn for the young couple when someone breaks into their house.

The wooden stairs creaked. Dust and a musty stench of mold assaulted their senses as Kara and Aaron descended the basement of their new house. Old boxes, broken furniture, and debris lay scattered.

"Do you think that old lady sold us the house for cheap just to have us clean out her trash?" Aaron frowned.

"Who cares! Some of this stuff could be worth something," Kara shrugged.

Aaron nodded with a sigh and accompanied his wife in cleaning their new home, starting with the cellar. Hours of dusty chores later, Aaron stumbled upon a strange wooden door in the basement wall.

"Kara, come here! Check this out," he shouted. "I found something."

Curious, the couple opened the rotting wooden door and stepped inside, fear gripping their nerves.

"Careful..." Kara whispered, her frightened tone sending shivers down Aaron's spine.

As she leaned forward and shone the flashlight across the eerie darkness, they saw a large wooden chest sitting in the middle of the cellar, cloaked in cobwebs and dust.

"That's a strange chest!" Aaron grimaced. "What do you think is inside?"

"There's only one way to find out...let's crack it open!" Kara added, her eyes gleaming with excitement.

After a tedious effort, Aaron cracked the box open, only to leap back in disappointment and shock.

"I guess we found the old woman's antique figurine collection," he said, his cold hands clutching a small ceramic statue.

Kara took the statuette from Aaron's grasp, and the blood drained off her face.

"Babe, we need to see what else is in there," she shakily said. "If I'm right, then we've found a real treasure!"

"Meissen...and, oh, look at this! Dresden Lace!" Kara sighed. "They're so pretty. I want to keep all of them."

But Aaron dismissed Kara's idea and exclaimed in shock. "Oh my God! I just searched online. These figurines could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But how did they end up here in this cellar?"

"Do you think they were stolen?" Kara doubted.

They suspected the fortune in their grasp was unlikely to have belonged to a woman who had sold her house for a cheap bargain. After a deep discussion, Aaron and Kara decided to sell the figurines in Pennsylvania and get enough money to square away all their debts and start a new life.

Decision made, Kara stayed back to tidy up the house while Aaron set out on the highway alone, the whopping find stashed in his car trunk.

He'd just passed Lake Milton when his phone suddenly rang half an hour later.

"Honey, there was a..." Kara panted and cried. "...there was a thief in the house. I took your rifle and went down the basement..."

Aaron's heart started pounding as he pulled over to the curb. "What? You're okay, right?"

Kara sniffled. "Yeah...he ran at me, and I pulled the trigger. It scared him off. He high-tailed it back out the window. But, honey, he was searching for something around the exact spot where we found the chest last night."

"What? Lock all the doors. I'm coming," overwhelmed by fear, Aaron quickly turned around and sped home.

"It's okay...I'm here...it's okay," Aaron hugged Kara tightly as soon as he arrived home. She was too terrified.

Although Aaron wanted to leave the figurines somewhere so the stranger who broke into their house could retrieve them, he changed his mind.

"This house is ours...and everything inside is also ours," Aaron declared. "And after how he scared you, I'm not letting him have what we found…I think I know a way we can still keep the treasure."

Aaron devised a plan so that the burglars or whoever was after the figurines would never come back looking for them. "We'll move to a new city...and start over with the money we make from selling the figurines," Aaron said confidently.

"Yeah! And that's possible only if these scumbags believe the figurines were destroyed," Kara added with a wicked grin.

Later that night, the couple swapped the figurines in the chest with their old ceramic plates and cups. They went from room to room and doused the furniture with gasoline and almost all flammable liquids they had.

Satisfied with their ingenious plan, Aaron sparked his lighter and tossed it into the house. "I wish we didn't have to do this," he said as he and Kara ran to their car and drove away from their house that was burning down.

"It'll be impossible to tell that the shattered and charred ceramicware in there isn't from those figurines!" Kara chuckled as Aaron nodded behind the wheel.

They crashed for the night at a motel on the highway, where they planned their future with the fateful fortune in their possession. But for some reason, Kara was skeptical if it would work.

"Have we crossed the line, babe?" Kara looked up at Aaron as they retired to their motel room.

"Why...I don't think so! We're just helping ourselves," Aaron said.

"But it's not like those figurines are really ours," Kara said, regret and an untold fear choking her. "What if they were stolen? We should turn them in to the cops."

"Really? I don't think so," Aaron said. "We've come too far to turn back now, Kara. We'll sell these figurines, buy a cozy little house with the money we get, and just move on."

Although Kara agreed, thinking of how their life would change overnight for good, something bothered her.

"Today, we burned down our house. What about tomorrow? What if those men come searching for the treasure?" she looked deeply into Aaron's eyes.

"I know, babe. But don't you want our dream house? Something little...and cozy where we could start over...have kids...and be happy for the rest of our lives?" Aaron said.

"Of course I do, honey," Kara held Aaron's hand. "I'm just saying that maybe we should stop everything before it's too late...it's better to stop in time than to regret it later."

"You're just overthinking!" Aaron gently kissed Kara's forehead to comfort her. "But I hear you, alright? We're almost finished with this business. I'll sell those figurines tomorrow, and we will leave this place."

The following morning, Aaron left Kara at the motel and took the figurines to an antique dealer in town.

"Uhm...how did you get these?" Mr. Finch, the antique dealer, skeptically asked as he studied the details engraved on the ceramic items.

A weird sensation crawled up Aaron's gut. But he kept calm and looked Mr. Finch in the eye. "Oh, they're part of a collection that belonged to my late grandmother," he said.

"Hmm...I'll give you $200 for the figurines...and $10,000 for the entire collection," Mr. Finch said as Aaron's brows shot up in shock.

"What? You can't be serious," Aaron nodded in dismissal. "I'll find another buyer if you aren't ready to pay the hundreds of thousands its worth."

"It's not an offer," Mr. Finch grabbed Aaron by the shoulder, stopping him. "I know these figurines were stolen. If you don't sell them to me for $10,000, I'll report you to the cops."

Aaron's face twisted with shock, and he forced a smile onto his face, trying to cloak his fear. "Oh, you're mistaken...I got to go," he said.

"Oh, I'm not! The ball's in your court now. You have until this evening to decide," Mr. Finch said.

Without giving a reply, Aaron hurried out of the store with the box of figurines.

"Darn! What if Mr. Finch is with the burglars? He would tell them the figurines weren't destroyed in the fire. Kara and I should leave this town immediately," Aaron muttered as he sped to the motel.

But when he rushed to his room, he was in for a massive shock. Kara was not there. Clothes lay strewn across the floor. The mattress and pillows were sliced open. And there was a sticky note on the TV.

"Do exactly what we say if you want your lady back alive."

A cold sweat broke onto Aaron's forehead as he read the words:

"Bring the figurines to the abandoned warehouse on Elm Street at midnight. Don't try to act smart and involve the cops. Or Kara will pay for your disobedience. You'll get 25 percent of the value of the figurines if you do as instructed."

Aaron regretted leaving Kara alone, and it was like a boulder rolling downhill.

Crumpling the note and tucking it into his pocket, he drove back to the antique store just as Mr. Finch locked it up.

"Oh, I see you made a smart decision," Mr. Finch grinned wickedly.

"Now, give me the money," Aaron said as Mr. Finch unlocked the antique store and beckoned Aaron inside.

He inspected every inch of the figurines one by one and wrote a check for $10,000.

"It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Finch," Aaron smiled as he hopped into his car and hurried past the store to Elm Street to settle his scores with the thugs who had held Kara captive.

Aaron's heart hammered in his chest as he stepped into the dark warehouse on the outskirts of town an hour later. He peered inside and saw Kara surrounded by several gangsters.

"Aaron!" Kara cried and tried to run toward Aaron. But her might was nothing compared to the menacing thug that stopped her.

"Not so fast, lady! Where are the items?" the guy turned to Aaron.

"It's in the car," Aaron lied. "I wanted to see my wife first."

"Well, you've seen her now. Now go fetch our stuff," the thug approached Aaron.

Just then, police sirens blared outside. "Attention! This is the police. We have you surrounded. Discard your weapons and lie down on the ground," a commanding officer announced over a megaphone.

Half an hour later, Kara and Aaron were standing in the police station, waiting for an update from the cops.

"I'm so confused...why did you do this?" Kara looked up at Aaron, frowning.

"It's better to stop in time, remember?" Aaron said. "I've never been so afraid all my life than when I saw you were gone, Kara. I just did what you would have done. I called the cops and played a part in their operation to catch these lowlifes."

"But I had to make a small stop on the way to ensure the antique dealer didn't miss out on his jail time!" Aaron chuckled.

A while later, a police officer called Aaron and Kara to take their statement before dropping a bombshell on the couple.

"The ringleader of this operation is the grandson of the elderly lady you bought that house from," the officer revealed. "He had no clue she would sell her house until it was too late for him to recover his stash of stolen figurines that were a loan from a private collector."

Disappointment and disbelief gripped Aaron and Kara when the cop added, "We have a charge of arson to discuss, don't we?"

"The inspectors checked your property and immediately realized that the house fire resulted from arson," the officer stared at Aaron and Kara. "Charges will have to be pressed."

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