By Emma O’neill,Michael Moran

Copyright dailyrecord

A family’s dream home turned into a nightmare after they made a series of strange discoveries within the building’s walls. Kaija Bretzius, a mother of three, purchased the property in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania with her husband Bryan, partly because they believed it wouldn’t require much renovation. Kaija explained: “We didn’t want to do a lot of home improvements. We didn’t have a large budget. This house was by far in the best condition for all the ones that we had looked at at the time.” However, it soon became clear that the semi-detached property’s insulation needed an upgrade, so Bryan began opening up some of the walls. It was at this point that the shocking truth about their new home started to reveal itself. As Bryan climbed into the house’s attic to inspect the insulation, Kaija remembered: “He says that he can see some things are shoved down in the wall. And he comes back with some old bottles.” Kaija expressed her delight at the antique bottles and asked her husband what else was up there. He reluctantly told her there were a few pornographic magazines dating back to the 1980s, reports the Mirror . But there was a much more sinister discovery yet to be made. The couple delved further into the cavity between the building’s inner and outer walls to see what else was hidden there. “We got a flashlight, because it was hard to see,” she told the What It Was Like podcast. One of the next things they discovered in the dark, dusty wall cavity was an old sack. “I thought horribly, initially, I thought that it was possibly a baby in the wall,” Kaija recalled. She added that she had jumped to that conclusion because the bodies of some infants had been previously discovered beneath another nearby property. She continued: “I just couldn’t think of like what else it would be in, and what you would wrap in a burlap sack and put down in the wall.” The reality of Kaija’s find was less sinister, but arguably even more bizarre. She continued: “It was a chicken carcass. It was wrapped up and shoved down into a wall in this burlap sack. And a chicken’s about the same size as a baby.” Additional exploration revealed that there were at least 20 chickens’ bodies, along with the remains of several other small animals. Some of the bones were wrapped in newspaper, dating them to the 1920s and 1930s. Regrettably, Kaija and Bryan hadn’t really taken adequate precautions for dealing with long-dead animals. She went on: “We got fevers, we were acutely sick. We inhaled something and it made us sick, for three or four days.” She explained that the mummified remains of the chickens had “aerosolised” as they were being pulled from the wall – freeing countless dormant bacteria. Kaija speculates that the animal remains had been used in some sort of occult ritual that she calls “a pow-wow, or Dutch magic. “We were shocked, horrified and disgusted,” Kaija told WNEP. They had commissioned a survey before purchasing the property, but there was no indication that the house had been linked with witchcraft. She added: “We got the radon inspected, we did everything. But we didn’t know we had to look for chickens.” The couple have been forced to have all the walls completely ripped out and reconstructed – at enormous cost. The repairs have not been covered by their insurance so they have been obliged to find $20,000 (about £15,000) so far, and the work continues. Whoever carried out the strange rituals improved as they progressed, Kaija claimed. “It seemed like whoever was doing this was doing this over years and years and years, just building up layers,” she said. “And then he was sharpening his technique.” Relations of the house’s 1920s occupant still reside in the town, and have recounted tales of him using his magic to cure ailments such as fevers and whooping cough. But, Kaija says, the evil that the healer extracted continues to dwell within the walls of her home. Whilst she was pregnant, her sense of smell heightened and she could detect a distinctive odour from the walls. Join the Daily Record’s WhatsApp community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages. “It just smelled like death,” she said. “If you ever have a mouse die in your wall, and then your house kind of stinks for a month until it dries out. So it was not a good smell.” The occult artefacts, now largely forgotten in American history, are currently housed in a local museum. However, due to the risky nature of the dried animal remains, it’s likely that the items from Kaija’s walls may never be exhibited to the public. Don’t miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond – Sign up to our daily newsletter here.