My house was a foreclosure that I purchased. On the stair railing was written in a child's handwriting "I hate the banks who take away our house". I didn't cry, but it was close.

When we were unpacking our kitchen, we found a little folded scrap of notebook paper with a pencil scrawl that said: "She said you said I was getting fatter and fatter"

It was poignant because we knew teenage girls had lived in the house before us. This was clearly a note passed from one friend to another at school. I just wanted to hug the girl who wrote that.

My family owns a circa 1847 building in KS. One day, my sister was doing some work on one of the walls and she found scribbled in ink a note that my dad had wrote along the lines of "First name, last name was here and the date the building was built."

My dad passed away in 1996 and we didn't find the note until just last year. It definitely brought a smile to my face.

A few years back I went on a house tour of older homes and the highlight to me was a series of notes left by the previous homeowners over the years scrawled inside a closet. The notes detailed the price of heating oil in the early 1900's and well as documentation of storms and blizzards throughout the home's history. It appeared that subsequent owners had continued the tradition including the current owners who recorded some of the city's recent blizzards. I think I need to find a spot in my home and do this. It may or may not be appreciated by subsequent owners, but you never know.

Well...when my dad had to evict his tenants they wrote "F--- you" on all the walls and ripped out all the copper wiring they could find... don't know if that counts. :-P

When I was around 10- or 11-years-old, I found a family bible from the early 1900's - 1940's stashed in the closet wall of my childhood home. It didn't have a lot of detail -- birth, marriage, and death dates, a few curls of hair from a christening, but I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen.

In my old apartment, the previous resident left a bag of weed and some rolling papers on a really high shelf in the kitchen. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess?

I left a message in my closet when we moved out of my childhood home. It said something like my name and "was here" and the year. I always wanted to find something like that in a new house, so I figured the next person would want to find my signature too!

@mojones That does sound like a really high shelf!

As a child, I remember this little dart permanently stuck into a wall (near the ceiling) that separated one area of the basement from my dad's workshop. Even though we moved, I like to think that it's still stuck there. ;)

The home we moved to had notches carved into the doorframe of the laundry room, tracking the growth of the previous owners' sons. We added a whole lot more notches to that doorframe.

When my parents removed the wallpaper in the living room of my childhood home, they discovered an elaborate caricature of the first owner. It was painted by the workmen, on the bare plaster walls, in wood stain. She must not have been popular with the tradesmen, because it was not a flattering portrait.

Almost thirty years later my wife and I were taking down the wallpaper in the living room of our first house and lo and behold we found another caricature. This one was done in pencil but was no more flattering.

The next year, when we gutted our second floor, we found the old phone number for our house and other random addresses and phone numbers.

They aren't especially poignant, but gave us a little glimpse into the working lives of the people who built our house. Good stuff.

I've never found anything, but when I was 12 I carved my full name and the date in tiny lettering into the wood flooring of my parents kitchen in my childhood home. I really hope its still there and that the people who find it can at least get a laugh out of it!

When my BFF moved to a new house in 5th grade while painting her new room we etched our names into the wet paint in the closet. :)

i recently moved into an apartment and found the address of the place kid-scribble on my bedroom wall.

@ matt in kc, that caricature is hilarious!

When I was 18 my parents moved across the country. We had always tracked the height on my brother and I in a door frame. My mom transposed these lines and dates on register tape so she could put it up on a door frame in their new house. And we also kept track of the height of our cats! Hopefully the new owners of the house appreciated it!

When parents re-did their kitchen I was about 18. As an artist, I saw my opportunity to have a bit of fun and sketched a little picture of a shirtless, flexing dude, labeled "stud," signed and dated -- right where the wall stud was marked. Maybe it will be discovered in a future kitchen reno.

In our current condo, we had to plane the bottom of a door, and left a little note on the underside of the door.

I'd be happy to find a drawing or note rather than the statement an old roommate made when forced to vacate his old apartment: 1 lb or so of raw shrimp dumped into a hole in the wall. Good times!

In teeny tiny writing, I kept a list on the back wall of my closet of boys I kissed.

My husband is from Scotland and when we were helping to remodel a very modest country house that has been in his parents' family for generations, we discovered several messages carved in plaster and wood behind the old wallpaper. Turns out, after a bit of research, some of the initials were from great, great, great grandparents and assorted cousins.

It's amazing to think about them carving these things into the house and us finding them so many years later. I'm all for marking things up for this reason!

When I was three years old I used a pencil and traced my hand on the wall of the living room. No one saw me do it and I never got in trouble, even though it was obvious that I had done it. As a matter of fact, no one even mentioned it. Not long after Dad put paneling up and everyone forgot about my tracing. A few years later when the paneling came down there was my tracing perfectly preserved. Alas, it was painted over.

Every place I've lived I've left my mark when I had to leave. I won't say what that mark is, but it's always tiny and no one would ever think anything of it if they saw it. It's my little secret.

I proclaimed my love for Taylor Hanson on my childhood closet walls in glow in the dark paint. We painted over it, but it still glowed a bit.

When we moved into our house a couple years ago, we found two messages in the basement. One was clearly written by a kid and said, "I hope someone will buy da house." The other one, spray painted onto a wall previously obscured by shelves, said, "I'm Rick James, B*tch."

this is the third month i've lived in my apartment, & last week, i noticed that one of the bricks in the wall of my living room is a slightly different color than the others. when i looked closer, i realized that it is a photograph of a brick taped over the brick itself. this is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me.

i made a craigslist post about it including pictures. you can access it here:
http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/mis/1883442839.html

i think the post will be up for a few more days.

emilyska - that is hilarious

In an apartment I moved into, I found a wedding album of the couple that had just moved out because they got a divorce.

In my house, I found a civil war musket ball in the yard, and a official Boy Scout membership card from the 1950's.

The prior tenants' kid had written on the walls, in permanent marker: "Not ulawd to rite un walls with pemminit markur."

Sigh.

I left my name and my favorite quote in the closet in the house I grew up in.
When we were fixing it up to sell it, under the plasterboard in the bathroom we found two sets of initials in a heart with a date. It made me smile.

Every house we have lived in we would always write our names on the floors when we changed the carpet. Recently my mom put hardwood floors in her house and we found our names from when we moved in that house 20 years ago, now our kids names are on her floor.

My house was built in 1929; we bought it in 1994 from the estate of the only previous owner, who moved into it on his wedding day in 1930. On the inside of a cupboard in the basement there is a note saying, "Hoover will never be re-elected." My husband and I are leaving it there.

I find "Andrew" written in the attic, the floor, inside closets and all over the inner garage.

In my childhood home (sold a couple of years ago), there are paw prints in cement left by our beloved cat almost 40 years ago

Paw prints left by our beloved cat 40 years ago in cement in garden of our family home (sold 2 years ago)

My parents recorded our heights in my bedroom of our first house. When we moved my mom copied it like Alyssgirr. The funny part was I still would hang out with my neighborhood friends and one day we rang the new owner's door bell and she gave us a tour of the house. She had turned my bedroom into an office and repainted but said she couldn't bear to paint over our heights. Weird to think they are probably still there 15 years later.

Thorndale...hahahahaha! The report card made my day!

in 3rd grade we decided it would be a great idea to draw penises on my friend's bedroom wall behind her bed... with permanent black marker...

In my bedroom I put back a small victorian fireplace (replacing an ugly sheet of hardboard). Its just for decoration, so the chimney isn't open. I left some coins of the year I did it behind the fireplace.

When my parents added central air to their house my brothers and I put our hand prints and initials in the cement under the AC unit. My childhood BFF and I scratched our names into the siding of my parents house, right next to the front door. I still see it every time I go home.

an interior garage wall says, "Yo! MTV raps"

I built or changed several walls in my home in Venice over the years. Every time, before I nailed the sheetrock in place, I placed a copy of the day's newspaper and a drawing with a handwritten blessing wishing happiness for whoever lived in the home inside the wall. I also made a blue handprint ( a traditional amulet to prevent the evil eye ) over the door to the bedroom by crushing cobalt pastel, dipping my hand into it and pressing on the wall. I fixed it with matte spray artist's fixative.

I got the idea for the newspaper from finding an old 1920's dressing table in a garage. When I took it apart to paint it I found a perfectly preserved copy of a local newspaper behind the mirror. It was from the day Aimee Semple MacPherson disappeared off Venice Beach, a local event, and also contained a section announcing and advertising the first-ever Los Angeles Car Show, which continues to this day! The cars were amazing.

While gutting my first 1800's moneypit, I found hidden in the floor boards next to heat supply lines to the original radiator a bunch of old newspapers from the turn of the century, an empty beer bottle and a German bible. Never quite got why the bottle and bible were stuffed in there together. We also found an old tin box underneath the floorboards in front of the hearth of the rear parlor's fireplace. It was, sadly, empty.

When we moved into our condo a couple years ago there was a window in an upstairs loft that that was covered up with tin foil, when i took the tin foil off the window, there scrawled in the dust was "God Help Us" that first night i could barely sleep.

My Dad and I signed the ceiling inside our crawlspace of my childhood home.

Also, if you remove the drywall by the front door, you will find a giant sharpie drawing of a gorilla.

My house is 90 years old. I have a height chart on a pocket door that has the heights for children (and a pet or two) since 1970. Our attic has a ghost drawn on a wall in the closet. I find it funny.

And there's a headless cheshire cat on a sliding bathroom door. It makes me giggle (especially since my house is decorated in Alice in Wonderland style).

When my dad was putting vinyl siding on our old house, he let us write on the old wood shingles before they got covered up. I hope one day someone will discover my poignant message: "David Lee Roth is HOT!"
What? It was 1985!

I carved my name and the name of my crush into my bedroom window sill when I was seven. I can't remember but I'm sure I got in big trouble. When I moved out my mom covered it with about 40 coats of paint.

I used a safety pin tip to lightly etch in a crush's name I had in jr. high in the marble-y plastic counter from the 80's. Looking at it makes me laugh now, but I got married and wish she'd change it already.

My house is 1940's, so for my area, it's not really old.

About 6 years ago we were replacing our kitchen and I had this dream of finding something really interested. When we tore down our cabinets, we found a reciept behind them that told us they were original 1940's cabinets all the way from Italy! It was super interesting, and it made us think twice about replacing them with nice white new ones.

But they were super ugly, so they had to go.

Before I move out, I plan to write a little message on the inside of my closet or leave a note under the floorboards! (:

When my parents moved out of my childhood home while I was in college (I had lived there all my life except for the dorms), I taped a little note inside my closet above the door (so if you went into the non walkin closet and turned around, it was above the door). It just said that I had lived in this bedroom my whole life and I hope they enjoyed it and made good memories there. I always wonder if anyone ever found it (there have been at least three families in that house since we moved out 5 years ago, so lots of kids who might have spotted it).

I took a class from a woman who owned an old farmhouse, she said that if you look at the original glass windows in one of the upstairs bedrooms you can see where one of the daughters who grew up in the house "tested" her new engagement ring to make sure the diamond was real. :)

When I was about 5 or 6, my friend Zack's older brother, who was a teen at the time, got in an argument w/ his parents & in his anger, punched a hole in the wall of their dining room. Zack & I decided to throw a bunch of Legos into the hole. I like to think they're still in there collecting dust.

My dad was working on a construction project at a home in Fort Bragg (where he grew up) and when he tore out a wall he found a small card with his name written on the envelope. It was a Valentine's Day card from a third grade classmate. I believe he was in his early 30's when he found it.