Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

— The Tell-Tale Heart

Loose floorboards can be a nuisance. They can reveal you creaking down the stairs in the middle of the night. Someday someone could step on a loose floorboard and hit him in the nose. Other times it can creak under your own weight. You can repair a loose floorboard by driving nails or screws.

However, loose floorboards in a room can also be a useful place to hide your stuff instead.

Whenever you need to hide something secret from your family, a loose floorboard is the right spot for you. Loose floorboards can be used for your Porn Stash and your Secret Snack Stash. It can be perfect for hiding contraband items. A loose floorboard hiding spot can be found in any room in the house, including your bedroom. Every time you hide something under your floorboard, no one will ever notice that you're hiding something. Be careful not to step on it or else someone will discover your secret stash.

Compare to Constructive Body Disposal, where a dead body is hidden in a building under construction, Hidden Supplies and Emergency Stash, which is often used to hide ammo and weapons. Also see Secret Compartment. Contrast with Inside a Wall where a character hides between the walls. Book Safe is also an option for smaller objects, and it avoids messing too much with a floor.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Darker than Black Gemini of the Meteor: Hei keeps a spare coat, mask, and set of knives hidden under the floorboards of an abandoned house.
• Goblin Slayer: Goblin Slayer's sister hides him under the floorboards to save him from a goblin attack. He survives; his sister does not.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In Season 5 episode 22, Careless S. thinks one of his weapons, which have been confiscated by Headmaster Tele due to him becoming reckless and destroying the school as he uses them, is hidden in a floorboard in his classroom. When he uses a toy claw to grab it from the space under the floorboard, he thinks he's latch on to not one, but two of them, but he pulls Big M. out of the bathroom in the floor below instead.

Comic Books

• The Lost Boy: After picking out his new bedroom Nate discovers a loose floorboard. Underneath he finds Walter Pidgin's tape recorder and audio logs.

Fan Works

• Oni Ga Shiku Series: In a flashback, Hisashi and Inko use the allowance Majima gave them to buy him a Christmas gift, and they hide it under the floorboards of his apartment, only telling him about it when they move out. Not even he knew the floorboards were loose. Majima shakes his head a little because they were supposed to use that money for themselves, but he takes the gift anyway. It's his iconic gold snakeskin jacket.
• Pocky In Ramen: Chocoholic Mello hides a backup stash of chocolate bars under the floorboards, though it only contains ten bars.
• Throw Away Your Mask: When Junpei complains that hiding Takaya's gun under Akechi's bed was too obvious, Akechi retorts that he "doesn't have loose floorboards".

Films — Animation

• Tangled: Rapunzel hides Flynn's satchel and stolen crown under a loose board on her tower's stairs, which Mother Gothel later finds.

Films — Live-Action

• Centurion: Arianne hides her Roman visitors underneath the floorboards of her hut when Etain and her warriors come calling, which saves them from being killed.
• Cinderella (2015): Cinderella keeps a box of mementos underneath the floor of the attic in which she sleeps. She hides the glass slipper there after the ball.
• La Comunidad: Julia figures out that the deceased man hid his jackpot money prize under a loose tile, which she identifies thanks to a paper in the dead man's belongings that reveals that it's the one erroneously white tile in the middle of the black and white-checkered floor.
• Deadpool 2: Wade pulls up a floorboard in Blind Al's apartment, revealing a bag of cocaine and a box labeled "Cure for Blindness."
• Don't Breathe: After killing Cindy, the Blind Man puts her corpse in a big metal box that he fills with acid, then covers it up with a piece of flooring.
• Equilibrium opens with emotion police, called Grammaton Clerics, raiding a hive of citizens indulging in sensation. Most are shot dead on the spot, and their cache of books and paintings are exposed after some floorboards are pulled away. (The Clerics had intel where to look.) This cache is obliterated with a flamethrower, showing La Joconde going up in flames.
• Frequency: In a hiding space within a hiding space, the Sullivan home has a loose board inside the bottom of a window seat. Frank uses it to hide his wallet, protected by a transistor bag, for 30 years in order for his son John to get access to it and the Nightingale killer's fingerprints covering it.
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai: A bit more complex than a typical example. Ghost Dog has a loose, small board on the floor of his shack, hiding a key under it. It then requires to properly slide around and re-arrange other boards to find the lock for that key and also make it possible to open the hatch of a gun box hidden in the floor. Without sliding the boards around, both the lock and the boards would hold the hatch closed.
• Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Phoebe discovers a slide puzzle on the living room floor of her new house. She solves the puzzle, revealing a secret compartment under the floor containing a ghost trap inside.
• Inglourious Basterds: A very serious example; in the opening scene, the Dreyfuses hide under the floorboards in the farm. Hans Landa figures out that they're there and orders his men to shoot through the floors at them.
• James and the Giant Peach: James took out a box of crayons and a birthday candle under a loose floorboard in his room. He uses them to make a floating lantern out of a bread bag in order to contact help to get away from his abusive aunts.
• The Lives of Others: Dreyman hides a typewriter he uses for his anti-government writing under the floor. The Stasi agent supervising him is perfectly aware of the spot, but let's let it slide: first to keep the surveillance he's doing secret, then to protect Dreyman.
• The Lovely Bones: Lindsay breaks into Mr Harvey's house and finds his sketchbook hidden under a loose floorboard. It has a record of the investigation into Susie's disappearance. (In the book, it's on Mr Harvey's bed.)
• In The Professional, Mathilda pulls a large stack of money from a hiding place underneath a floorboard in her apartment.

Literature

• Boy: Tales of Childhood: Young Roald Dahl and his friends used a loose floorboard in their classroom to put their stuff in. One day they discovered a dead mouse and used it to pull a prank on the mean owner of the sweet shop, Mrs. Pratchett.
• Caging Skies: Johannes discovers that his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa under their floorboards.
• In the second The Famous Five book Five Go Adventuring Again, one of the secrets of Kirrin Farm House is a floor stone which lifts up to show a small hidey-hole. It is empty, but looks exciting to the children, who later discover much bigger secrets.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: During the summer term with the Dursleys, Harry uses a loose floorboard under his bed to hide his school supplies and birthday presents.
  • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, he stashes sweets under the floorboards when Aunt Petunia forces the whole family to adhere to Dudley's new diet.
• In the novel Ice Station Zebra, while investigating the fire that destroyed the ice station, Carpenter discovers that someone stashed a goodly amount of supplies under the floorboards of one of the intact huts: food, stove fuel, batteries for the station's radio, and a radiosonde balloon. The cache of supplies is further protected from discovery by the fact that the same hut was chosen to be the station's makeshift morgue for the men who died in the fire.
• The Magic of Oz: The plot starts when a former wizard's son sneaks a room he was banned from, believing some magic implements are hidden there. He finds nothing, goes to the exit... and stumbles on a floorboard. So, he pries it off to check what's hidden underneath it... nothing. Then he notices the writing on the bottom side.
• Public informer Marcus Didius Falco is tasked with investigating the death of another informer who probed a case too deeply and too unwisely. Falco knows all the tricks for concealment and keeping things safe - he uses them himself. He soon deduces that a knothole in a floorboard that looks like any other floorboard in the room is just big enough to insert a finger into. This allows him to lift the board up and discover this is the safe hold for the dead man's note tablets and other evidence relating to cases he has been working on.
• The Mermaid's Mirror: In the corner of Lena's parents' bedroom is an antique chair that no one ever sits on, and that usually has other things piled on top of it. Lena suspects it's hiding something, so she pushes it aside and yanks up the carpet, under which the floor has been cut. Lena lifts the floorboards to find a sea chest full of pictures of her biological mother Lucy, letters she wrote, newspaper clippings about her "suicide," a jeweled comb, and the titular Magic Mirror.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • In "The Second Stain", the stain of the title is a bloodstain on one side of a carpet, which strangely has no corresponding stain on the floor below. Holmes deduces that the carpet is covering a hidden compartment in the floor, and was hurriedly replaced the wrong way round. Holmes finds nothing there because there is nothing there, the incriminating document was stolen the night of the murder.
  • "The Naval Treaty" has the titular treaty go missing for several weeks after being stolen, which seems to correspond to the time it took for the last person to see it to recover from a mental breakdown (as he was also the person charged with its safety). After a few attempted break-ins, Holmes realizes the treaty must be hidden in the room and waits in ambush to avoid having to search the room. It turned out to be the room's former occupant and the victim's brother-in-law, who'd hidden the treaty behind a mobile board used by plumbers to access the pipes.
• The Tell-Tale Heart: After the villain protagonist killed the old man, the villain hid the dead body under some loose floorboards before the police arrived to investigate.
• World of the Five Gods: In Knot of Shadows, when Penric and Desdemona search Thernias's room Desdemona finds the loose floorboard under which he has been keeping his embezzled loot. As a chaos demon it was easy for her to detect it.
• Yours Truly: Truly and Mackenzie discover a compartment underneath the floorboards in Truly's closet that contains the diary of the original Truly Lovejoy.

Live-Action TV

• The Blacklist: Tom hides a secret stash filled with cash, false passports and a pistol beneath the floorboards of his apartment, which Elizabeth finds while cleaning his blood out of the carpet.
• Breaking Bad: While taking a medical leave of absence from his teaching job, Walt does some repairs around the house using the money he's earned from dealing drugs. One of these acts is cutting a hidden entrance into the wooden floor of the boiler room, which allows him to access the crawl space under the house's foundation. This trapdoor becomes important in later episodes, as it's where Skyler hides the excess cash Walt earns from meth cooking that she isn't able to launder.
• Bridgerton: Season two reveals that the real Lady Whistledown hides her scandal sheet earnings and scribbles in a loose floorboard under her home, hidden under a carpet.
• An episode of Burn Notice has Michael and his team face off with a drug dealer and his gang. They decide their best course of action is to frame the dealer's lieutenant as an undercover cop and do so by hiding fake evidence under a floor board in his house. The dealer misses the fake evidence and discovers real evidence in another spot, revealing that the lieutenant actually is an undercover cop.
• CSI: NY: In "Admissions," the victim is a high school guidance counsellor. When Mac and Lindsay search his office, they find a loose floorboard in the closet. Mac removes it and discovers a box filled with money and a few laundromat tokens. Curious, Mac and Flack go to the laundromat and discover a heavily taped off machine. They insert the tokens, revealing the door to a hidden gambling den.
• Forever: In "The Wolves of Deep Brooklyn" Medical Examiner Dr. Henry Morgan finds small slivers of white pine under a victim's fingernails. When they visit the victim's house, the new floors are white pine, leading to Henry discovering a stash of $100,000 and a key hidden under a loose floorboard.
• Ghosts (UK): In "Getting Out", Alison and Mike have decided to sell Button House, and the ghosts are trying to raise money to stop them from doing so. Fanny's solution is a priceless gem which she had hidden under a floorboard in the house. Too bad that her husband had found it a long time ago and pawned it.
• Gilmore Girls: Lane hides her concert tees, her makeup, and more individual, less conservative clothing under the floorboards of her bedroom from her strict mother. By the 2016 revival, she hides food from her sons in the same place.
• Grimm: Rosalee has a loose floorboard hidden under a carpet in the office of the Spice Shop, where she keeps spare cash and paperwork relating to the off-books fake ID business her brother used to run. When Nick realises the Monster of the Week is after the key and entrusts it to Rosalee, this is where she hides it.
• The Last of Us (2023): After he decides to go find Tommy, Joel pushes aside a closet in his room and takes out a couple of floorboards. Underneath are some weapons and supplies for the trip.
• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: A blackmailer had stashed underneath his floorboards photographic plates showing a man's homosexual activities (a prosecutable offense at that point in time), which Jack informs Phryne about having located. He tells her to incinerate the evidence, because while his hands are tied by being a police officer, she has full freedom to do so as a civilian.
• Resident Alien: Sheriff Mike finds a cooler of botulinum toxin under a loose floorboard in Harry's cabin, stored there by the now-deceased human Harry after using it to poison Sam Hodges's insulin. Harry uses his Psychic Powers to implant Fake Memories in the Sheriff and Deputy Liv's minds that not only cause them to forget this discovery but also remove him as a suspect entirely.
• Westworld: Maeve keeps having what she thinks are dreams featuring a Westworld staff member in a Hazmat Suit. When she suspects her memories are being tampered with, she sketches the figure of the staff member and hides it under a loose floorboard, only to discover she's already done this several times.

Music

• Sufjan Stevens's song "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." about the real-life serial killer of the same name contains the following lyrics:
  And in my best behavior
  I am really just like him
  Look beneath the floorboards
  For the secrets I have hid

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III has many loose floorboards that hide treasure, so long as you pass the perception to discover them.
• Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse: Nico thinks the key to her neighbor's apartment is located under the doormat, when in actuality it's under the floorboards that are under the mat.
• Halfway through Dark Fall: The Journal, with the help of special ghost-hunting goggles, the player can uncover a floorboard with a stash of stolen cash and a Plot Coupon inside.
• Far Cry 4: Ajay Ghale and two members of the Golden Path hide below the floorboards of the Ranas' house just as Pagan Min shows up to visit. After briefly chatting with the Ranas about their hospitality and noting that he would not want them to be associating with the Golden Path, Pagan asks if they'd like him to preserve their honorable reputation. As soon as they agree, Pagan has his soldiers walk in and shoot the Ranas, whilst Ajay can only watch from below the floorboards.
• God of War (PS4): Kratos hides the blades of chaos, his old weapons, under the floor of his house, which can only be accessed when opening the basement.
• Half-Life 2: In Episode Two, one of the secret stashes is hidden in a small shed, but all you can find in said shed is a sawblade embedded in the floor. Soon after, a hoard of zombies attacks the player, and some might try to rip up the sawblade with the Gravity Gun for use as an Improvised Weapon, only to pull up the floorboard along with it, revealing a veritable jackpot of supplies hidden underneath. Though you'd need to break open the rest of the floor (ideally with the crowbar) to get everything.
• Pink Panther's Passport to Peril: The storage cellar of Camp Chilly Wa-Wa has one of these. Pink can use it to hide the evidence he has gathered against The Dogfather, most prominently the two letters he picked up in England and Egypt.
• In Scratches, after Micheal Arthate gets a related letter translated by his secretary, the maid of Blackwood Manor turns out to have an incriminating photo of James Blackwood under a loose board beneath her nightstand.

Visual Novels

• The Great Ace Attorney: Petenshy has hid some newspaper clippings and an empty jar under a loose floorboard.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In "White Rice", Francince learns that Stan has been regularly taking her to a hypnotist to make her forget things he didn't want to talk about. When her memories start to return, she realizes that the room Stan uses to keep his commemorative plates was formerly her own workspace. With this in mind, she removes a floor board, revealing a video tape of her stand-up comic routine hidden underneath.
• Arthur: In the episode "Sick as a Dog", Arthur and his puppy Pal ate some two year old Halloween candy under a loose floorboard in his treehouse.
• The Casagrandes: In "Chancla Force", Rosa tosses her chanclas at anyone who doesn't obey her rules, so Carl sneaks into her bedroom in the middle of the night and hides them under a loose floorboard in his bedroom, as several other hiding places were taken by his halloween candy, hair gel, and cash. The next morning, Rosa is unable to stop her family from doing what they want without her chanclas. At first, Carl enjoys this, but things soon begin to spiral out of control, as Carl has his favorite things taken by the rest of his family and nobody is doing their chores. When he tries to make things right by returning the chanclas, Lalo finds them and Sergio blends them. At the end of the episode, the chaos escalation as a result of Carl's bad decisions turns out to be an Opinion-Changing Dream, and Carl returns the chanclas to Rosa the next morning.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Ed Edd "n" Eddy's Jingle Jingle Jangle", while his parents are out for the night, Eddy tries to find his Christmas presents around the house. He checks the attic and finds some loose floorboards revealing the presents he's been searching for. Eddy opens the presents only to reveal clothes, much to his frustration.
• The Simpsons: In "Lisa's Rival", Allison makes a diorama for Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart". Later played straight when Lisa hides the diorama under the gym floorboards.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Squeaky Boots", Mr. Krabs gives SpongeBob a pair of $2.00 fishing boots that he tried unsuccessfully to give Pearl for her birthday in place of the Flipper Slippers she wanted, passing them off as official Fry Cook boots. The squeaking of the boots drives Mr. Krabs crazy, to the point where he sneaks into SpongeBob's house, takes them, and hides them under the floorboards of the Krusty Krab. After SpongeBob becomes upset from losing the boots, Mr. Krabs begins to hear them squeaking even though SpongeBob isn't wearing them. Mr. Krabs confesses what he did, then takes the boots out from under the floorboards, cooks them in french fry oil, and eats them to stop the squeaking.
• Mission Hill: In "Happy Birthday, Kevin (or, Happy Birthday, Douchebag)", it's revealed in a flashback that Andy used to hide alcoholic drinks and pornographic magazines under a loose board in his room. When Andy tracks Kevin back to their childhood home, he shows Kevin his old stash, which is still there.
• Molly of Denali: In "Puzzled," Molly and Tooey find a puzzle box underneath a floorboard in Tooey's room.
• The Snowman and the Snowdog: Billy stumbles over a loose floorboard in his new bedroom. Looking under it, he discovers a picture of James (the protagonist of the original film) and the Snowman and some of the stuff used to create it. It's left unclear why James chose to store this stuff underneath the floorboard, however.
• Tiny Toon Adventures Night Ghoulery: In the "The Tell-Tale Vacuum" segment, Plucky expresses a hatred towards Hamton's vacuum cleaner, so he sneaks into Hamton's bedroom while Hamton is asleep and destroys the vacuum, hiding it under a loose floorboard. The next day, Hamton asks Plucky if he's seen the vacuum, to which Plucky pretends not to know what happened to it. Hamton then starts talking a lot about how much the vacuum meant to him, and this fills Plucky's conscience with guilt. Eventually, Plucky confesses his crime to Hamton and shows him the remains of his vacuum under the loose floorboard. As punishment for destroying his vacuum, Hamton turns Plucky into a vacuum and uses him to clean his house.

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