How do I search an 1850's Mansion for caches in attic or house?

B

BlackbeardsGhost

Jr. Member
Jun 7, 2015
38
35
Philadelphia, PA
Detector(s) used
AT PRO, CTX 3030
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I can't find much information on how to go about actually searching the walls and floors for caches. I have an ATPro but i'm not 100% on how to filter out nails to find the real goods. The house is an amazing house with a giant attic and lots of places to drop stuff around the edge where the wall meets the curve of the roof. The owners are relying on my experience in metal detecting but i don't have any in searching old home walls without damaging anything un-necessarily. Also, just to note, they've lived there for 30 years but every once in a while still find a hidden place they didn't know about (like a hidden hatch above the stairs, cubbies that the window blinds tuck into).

Please help if you have any information on how to hunt home walls, floors, doors, stairs.

Thanks!
 

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Houise searches are my favorites! First - walk through the house room by room stop in each and think where would I hide something. Look for woodwork & trim that just doesn't fit or looks different. My next step is to blacklight the rooms. This will show you any pendants (patches) even under several layers of old wallpaper. Mark any pendants with postits if your not wanting to damage the walls. Use your eyes, as a primary tool. Your detector is only your tool to verify.

Tools - blacklight, small flat prybar, screwdrivers pliers, a mirror on a stick (inspection mirror), if you have a lot of nooks a inspection camera (cheap Harbor Freight one works fine), gloves some knee pads.

You can Google up How to hide anything books to get some ideas what to look for. get some books on housebuilding especially old books on framing.
Where to look hints - take out the medicine cabinet and check between the studs to the floor. built in cabinets in the kitchen, pull out ALL the drawers check em and check for loose boards in the cabinets. If there's an unfinished attic, detect the ceiling in all metal low sensitivity. This will narrow down the area you'll have to crawl.

It'd take me a week of typing to go into ALL the places. Grab a book on house framing. Google How to hide anything for pictures and info on hiding places. Basements & cellars are the easy part. Use your head & eyes and visualize the room asking where would I hide something.

Keep us updated on how you're doing! I'm sure others will jump in with some ideas for you too! Good Luck!!! Find lots!!
 

BlackbeardsGhost said:
Please help if you have any information on how to hunt home walls, floors, doors, stairs.
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You might check into getting one of the infrared thermal imaging devices that firefighters use to look for fires inside of walls. Technically, they can't see through walls, but they can discern temperature differences of as little as .05*, maybe even less these days. One that I know of is the K1000 Elite, made by ISG Thermal Systems USA. You still would most likely have to do some interpreting of the image, but this would be the visual equivalent of what you already do with your ears and dials when using a metal detector. Depending on how thick and solid the walls are you might also be able to shine a set of bright halogen lights on the opposite side of the wall to generate a heat source. Initially, an object in the walls would be cooler than the area around it, but over time an object, especially a metal object that stores heat would be hotter. Using a light to generate heat would obviously work better on interior walls, but late in the afternoon walls facing the sun might light up with a good profile, too.
 

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I have an at pro as well, and i have been curious also, i live in a mid 1800s house.
I was pondering the thought of searching walls, locating a gold signal with a really good large coin signal underneath the gold signal, reason being, that old madon jars had zinc lids, and those give off a good gold pull tab signal., you can follow the copper signals around and keep an eye on where the electrical conduit is running. Just ignore iron signals, put your depth at about 2_3 bars and try it out, i would imagine some small coins could be along the base boards as well
 

Check the stairways, it is easy to make a hiding spot under a pulled up tread..or even a hidden compartment under the stairway.off ten a closet will be built under the stairs and as the height of the closet ceiling tapers with the downward movement of the stairway, a hidden cubby is possible at the lowest point .
 

villagenut said:
Check the stairways, it is easy to make a hiding spot under a pulled up tread..or even a hidden compartment under the stairway.off ten a closet will be built under the stairs and as the height of the closet ceiling tapers with the downward movement of the stairway, a hidden cubby is possible at the lowest point .
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Interesting that you mention that. Several years ago an elderly man with Alzheimer sold his house and moved into a care facility. The people managing the estate held a couple of massive estate sales off site because the house was so packed with stuff. I think they raised between $100K and $200K. After that the house was empty and scheduled to be demolished. Me and a neighbor went through the house checking closets, cabinets, holes in the wall, etc. We found some minor junk, and I salvaged the old, full flow shower head from the bathroom (a great find in my eyes), but that was it. A couple of weeks later the crew arrived and demolished the house. I was talking to them that afternoon and they told me that they found about $10,000 in hundred dollar bills, and divided it three ways between the crew. The only two places were it could have been hidden would have been under the house in the crawlspace or in a hidden stair tread or a kick out riser. The bank wrapper around the money had a date within the last few years, so it it unlikely that an elderly man could have gotten in the crawlspace. That leaves the stairwell as the only logical place where he could have hidden the money, and the one place we didn't search by pulling up on the treads or risers.
 

Honest Samuel said:
It is so sad that you did not found the money. Next time, be careful.
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I just chalk it up to the demo crew probably needing the money more than me and the chick down the street did. Plus, I did get a monster of a shower head that practically knocks me on my butt when I use it. I have a thing for the old, full flow shower heads and have a collection of them. We thought we searched the house pretty well, and everyone in the neighborhood had a feeling he had something hidden. The man with Alzheimers wasn't Ritchie Rich wealthy, but he was well off and we definitely learned a lesson about searching houses. This guy had oil paintings dating back to the 18th century, an extensive clock collection dating back to the same period, and to fill card collectors with envy, he had thousands of baseball cards dating back to the 1950's. All of that sold at the estate sale. The cool thing about the baseball cards was that he had dozens of cases of baseball cards, unopened with each pack still unopened in the cases and containing that savory gum that came with them. I still wonder if they were more valuable in the unopened cases, or if one would have to open each one to search for the gem cards that might still be inside. It was literally a Schrodinger's Cat type of conundrum. And yes, if I had them I would have had to try at least one piece of that gum...
 

I'm not familiar with you machine. Any machine I have allows me to detach the head from the wand and use it independently as I do a lot of house searches. Use a small coil and attach the detector head to a strap around your neck or over your shoulder. Put it in a bag if nothing else works your not going to need to read anything just listen. Discriminate iron and desensitize your machine. Your looking for caches so they will be larger than a single coin and less than 6" from the coil. You don't need the machine running hot. Search the walls in each room and the floors on the first floor. Seacher the ceiling on the first floor is in effect search the floors of the 2nd floor. You can best search the attic floor where often valuables are stashed by searching the ceiling below. I suggest you bring a roll of painters tape (blue or green) with you. When you get a promising hit mark the wall or ceiling with the tape. Proceed from their. There is much to know about such searches but this is a basic starting point. Good luck.
 

foiler said:
Your looking for caches so they will be larger than a single coin and less than 6" from the coil. You don't need the machine running hot.
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But also keep in mind that not all caches are coins, or even metal. A cloth bag containing diamonds, rubies, emeralds or other precious stones wouldn't trigger a metal detector. Neither will a rolled up piece of artwork, stone artifacts or a map to a cache of coins. To that end I would say that there is no one "device" that will work for all kinds of caches or treasure. That's why I suggested putting a heat source on the back side of a wall or floor and using an infrared sensor to search for cold spots that would indicate a solid item. But that won't work for everything. A crude and cheap way to search a wall would be to use a center finding stud finder that detects differences in density. I've had good luck using one of those to find the centers of studs when hanging shelves. Like you suggested, I used painter's tape and marked the area where the stud finder indicated, then used a magic marker to put a mark on the tape at the precise point. But to know I was really on a stud I also repeated the process at several heights, marking all the spots and then using a level to vertically align the marks I put on the tape.
 

Honest Samuel said:
Maybe he put all his money in the items that you mention in # 11.
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It's definitely possible that he stashed money in the items that were recovered for the estate sale. But if he did, that money was either found by the company that managed the estate sale, or the people who bought the items. It's also possible that any money he stashed in those items remains unfound to this day :). But the $10K found by the demo crew had to be stashed in or around the house, in a place that a man in his early 70s could access. The house was almost empty when me and my neighbor went through it, but there was some lawn furniture in the yard and a small apartment in the back. I was actually surprised that the demo crew talked freely about finding the money, as any and all things remaining on the property technically belonged to the owners who were going to develop it, or the company for whom the crew worked for, depending on how the contract was worded. But this recounting should serve as a lesson to BlackbeardsGhost that you can never be too thorough when searching an old house. I will always wonder how me and the neighbor girl missed it, and where it was actually hidden. We do know that he stashed the money no more than a few years before he had to sell the house because the crew that found it said they also found bank wrappers with the year written on it.
 

ya never know, i was two blocks north of the money house
eating at a 24hr grill, by the time i heard about it,within an
hr. of the find, was swarming,tried to get close. the demo
crew got most of it. i was on vac from fl, would have made
a great vac story if i could have got some of the $$

Video Vault: Demolition of Cleveland 'money house' sets off 1979 free-for-all - newsnet5.com Cleveland

preview of more stashed $$ stories
https://books.google.com/books?id=3...v=onepage&q=Albert Fletcher cleveland&f=false
 

I found a little scope that you can connect to your computer online for about $20! Worked wonders sticking it through cracks and around edges to look around. Ended up finding only nails, acorns(from the squirrels), and an old belt.
 

Always look between the walls if possible!
Last week I found a pre-civil war merchant marines sword hanging between the walls of an old farmhouse in the woods.
You never know!
 

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