Creepy Buried Carpet Sparks Viral Firestorm, People Convinced It's a Body – National

What started as a scary yet entertaining discovery of a buried carpet in an Ohio backyard turned into a serious police investigation thanks to the viral power of the Internet.

The saga began earlier this week when Katie Santry, a 34-year-old homeowner in Columbus, Ohio, posted a video on TikTok in which she revealed that she and her boyfriend discovered a mysterious rolled-up shag carpet while digging up her lawn to build a fence.

She said she didn't really think much about the deeply buried carpet until a few days later when she went into the office in her sunroom and discovered that her computer screen was broken and the contents were in a mess on the desk.

“I think my house is haunted and I'm freaking out. I'm literally shaking,” she said in her first clip of the saga, wondering aloud if the office and the buried carpet were connected.

Almost immediately, true crime enthusiasts watched the video, eager to publish their theories and thirsty for more updates.

Eager to give her audience what they demanded, Santry released additional videos that showed footage of a nearly two-foot-deep hole where they first discovered the carpet and shared the tag for a tree that was above the buried object had been planted – eerily called the “Bloodgood” tree.

Meanwhile, more and more comments began to appear under each video, with people urging Santry to dig deeper and find out what, if anything, was rolled up in the carpet.

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“There are assumptions about actual bodies. “Apparently there are a lot of people missing in Columbus, Ohio – something I'm not very familiar with, even though I'm a big crime junkie,” she told People about the outpouring of interest in her videos, which have been viewed millions of times as of Friday.

“On the internet it's about 50/50 whether it's a corpse or an animal, and maybe 10 percent think it's just a junkyard.”

Santry was struck by the comments and said she called the police, who sent two officers to take a closer look. Ultimately, the officers told her that they thought it would be worth calling an excavator to dig up the carpet, but that the police chief shot her and it was up to Santry to dig up the item herself.

In another video, Santry explained that she was thinking about leaving the carpet in the floor. While she was considering her next move, she called the real estate agent who had put the house up for sale last year. This helped her to establish contact with the daughter of the couple who previously owned the house from 1967.

The daughter told Santry that she knew nothing about the rug and confirmed that all of the family's former pets had been cremated, but promised to ask her elderly parents and get back in touch with Santry.

After her “virtual digging” stalled, Santry said she recruited some friends to help her dig up the carpet. But before she could livestream the excavation, she received a call from homicide detectives who were ready to send investigators and cadaver dogs.

When the dogs were released separately in their backyard, both immediately went to the area in question and sat down. “Very suspicious,” Santry said, but noted that it could mean as little as blood from a scraped knee or a bloody nose.

“Even when the first dog sat, I really didn't believe the second dog would do the same. I thought it was just an accident. And when the second dog did it, I freaked out,” Santry told WCMH.

Not long after, a dedicated team of investigators showed up with an excavator and began tearing apart Santry's backyard Thursday.

They returned to the scene Friday morning to continue digging, and while the world waited anxiously for their seats, Santry released her latest video revealing what they had found.

“They recovered the hole and it was the most absurd, crazy experience of my life,” Santry told the camera. “What did they find? No, they didn't find a body, they found a damn carpet with some rubber in it. The question remains why the dogs were sitting. I don't know. Both dogs, not just one, two. I don't know. The other question is who broke my laptop.”

“I’m so confused,” she continued. “There is no body, there is no body. Frankly, let us praise the Lord that there is no body. I can stay in my house…everyone knows where I live, but at least it’s not haunted.”

“But the mystery of the damn carpet is solved and there is no body,” she continued. “And they do a good job of storing my stuff.”

While the hole ultimately revealed nothing of interest and the rolled-up carpet hid no dark secrets, the pursuers found it difficult to accept the rather disappointing conclusion.

“Why does it bother me that there was no body… 😂,” one person commented.

“I just can’t accept this answer,” another person added.

“I don’t know what to do with my life now!!!” Read another comment.

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