- Katie Santry and her boyfriend stumbled upon a rug buried deep in the ground as they were digging up their lawn to build a fence
- She posted about it on TikTok, asking her followers, “What on earth happened?”
- In one video that has now amassed 3 million views, she shows herself holding a tag from a bloodgood tree located above where the rug is buried, adding extra eeriness to the situation
Katie Santry has captivated the Internet with what she believes is a mystery waiting to be unraveled.
It all started when the Columbus, Ohio, local and her boyfriend, Brandon, began digging up their lawn to build a fence. While shoveling, they stumbled upon something unusual: a rug buried deep in the ground. They found it odd but didn’t think much of it at the time.
A few days later, Santry, who works from home in the sunroom, came downstairs to a shocking sight: her computer screen was shattered, and her desk was in disarray. Confused, she wondered, “What the heck happened?” and started accusing everyone in the house — her boyfriend, his two kids and her own son — of messing with her belongings. However, her family swore they hadn’t been near the sunroom, insisting the doors had been closed.
Perplexed, Santry speculated aloud, “Is there a dead body in that rug? Or is it the ghost of the rug’s past?” This bizarre situation inspired her first TikTok, in which she asked followers, “What on earth happened? Is there a ghost breaking my stuff?”
“My next-door neighbor also died in her house the day we bought this house last October,” she adds. “That house started getting boarded up the same day this happened. So it was just a series of weird, coincidental events that, with a creative mind, could be construed as ghostly.”
From there, Santry tells PEOPLE exclusively that the family started digging up the rug, and she began recording and sharing the process online. However, as they continued their investigation, they quickly realized it wouldn’t be easy: the ground was rock hard due to a lack of rain.
“We’re just average people with normal shovels, and we couldn’t get much further than we did,” Santry, 34, says. “We were just kind of messing with it and realizing this is just the tip of the iceberg. The rug looks like old-school shag carpet, and we didn’t even know which direction to dig. Plus, we had trees and bushes in the way.”
Feeling frustrated, Santry made a TikTok declaring, “I give up. I can’t dig any further.” At that point, she had just hit 10,000 followers and was thrilled. Then, just as she thought it was over, “all hell broke loose on TikTok,” as her videos went viral, garnering millions of views.
In one video that has now amassed 3 million views, she shows herself holding a tag from a “bloodgood” tree located above where the rug is buried.
“I pulled it out and said, ‘This is called a bloodgood tree. If I were a murderer with a sense of humor, I’d plant a bloodgood tree on top of a dead body and be like, ha!’ ” she laughs. “I think that’s actually the video that went the most viral.”
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Eventually, Santry admits that her kids lost interest in the digging, and they all decided to give up. However, while sitting in the sunroom, she was struck by a thought: “What if there really is a body? How could you not help that person find peace? How could you not help a family?” This prompted her to finally call the police, two days after her first video went viral.
“Brandon was baffled,” Santry tells PEOPLE. “He thought I was clinically insane. He was like, ‘What are you going to tell them?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Just that there’s a rug.’ ” So that’s exactly what she did. She called and said, “ ‘Hey, this could be the dumbest call you get today, but there’s a rug in the ground.’ ”
Remarkably, two officers arrived within 15 minutes. While the officers acknowledged the situation was super weird, they informed Santry that it would take significantly more time and effort than they were willing to invest to dig anything up. So, Santry decided to do some “virtual digging” before any physical digging.
She called the listing agent and spoke with the daughter of the original homeowners. The house was built in 1967, and only one family had lived there before her. The daughter mentioned that she would investigate further before committing to any physical digging. She had no idea why the rug was buried; and though they had dogs, none had ever dug in that spot and they were all cremated after they died.
As they spoke, the daughter was on her way to the nursing home to talk to her 90- and 95-year-old parents, and offered to see if they had any insights about the rug. That’s where TikTok currently hangs in suspense — waiting for the daughter to relay information to Santry.
“I truly don’t think there’s a dead body down there,” Santry says. “The curiosity about why that rug is there definitely haunts me. But my biggest concern is my computer because, at the end of the day, it shattered for no apparent reason. That leaves me with the most question marks. I actually have a psychic who reached out to me and wants to do a reading.”
“The kids find it comical,” Santry continues. “Brandon doesn’t believe in ghosts, but my 3-year-old son sometimes tells me he sees skeletons in his closet. I’ve never thought much of it because he’s 3, but now it’s ringing alarm bells and raising red flags in my mind.”
Santry explains that even if they don’t uncover what the deal with the rug is, she is ready to give up.
She says,”If I dig in one direction, I hit a rock fire pit area, which would ruin everything. If I dig in the other direction, just two feet over, there’s a bush taller than me — like a 10-foot bush.”
“I’ve already ruined one tree, which has some agriculturists on TikTok really upset because, apparently, bloodgood trees are very expensive,” she adds. “I don’t want to kill another bush, so I’m honestly torn. If I put a post there and then something else weird happens, now there’s cement over it and I’m kind of stuck, trying to figure this out again. So, I’m like, okay, we’re just pausing on the fence for now while we try to decide what to do.”
As for the theories circulating online, Santry mentions, “There are guesses about actual bodies. Apparently, a lot of people go missing in Columbus, Ohio — something I’m not too familiar with, even though I am a big crime junkie. The Internet is about 50/50 on whether it’s a dead body or an animal, and maybe 10% think this was just a junkyard. However, we’ve dug a lot of posts and fenced in most of our yard at this point, and I can say we haven’t come across any other rugs. So, the Internet thinks it’s either a junkyard, a dead body, or a dead dog.”
