It started, as most things do, with a ghost story.
When Columbus, Ohio resident Katie Santry posted a TikTok four days ago, she wanted to hear from her followers if they thought her house was haunted. The evidence? When she left her study the day before, it was untouched. But when she returned, her office supplies were in disarray and her computer screen was shattered. Did any of her followers think this had anything to do with the rolled-up rug she and her husband found buried in their yard?
“So we’re building a fence and back here we dug a hole,” Santry said in her first video about the incident. “There is a rolled-up carpet buried underground that we came across as we were digging this hole. Who the fuck and why the fuck is there a rolled-up carpet underground?” What started as Santry crowdsourcing reasons for her broken laptop quickly turned into a mystery that’s captured TikTok viewers 4 million people deep, involved the Columbus Division of Police, and — despite some resolution — still has thousands of people thinking there’s something else going on.
True crime and TikTok
There’s a long-established relationship between the social media app TikTok and the genre of true crime. TikTok viewers not only use the app to discuss past cases but often follow current investigations. (The Idaho murders and the trial of Karen Read are a few recent examples.) Amateur sleuthing is common on people’s for-you-pages and can users congregate rather quickly around a mystery, which is exactly what happened to Santry. Her follower count jumped from 6,000 to over 1 million people in just seven days. And on Reddit, there’s already a subreddit dedicated entirely to Santry’s videos, aptly titled r/whatsintherug.
Following the viral TikTok, Santry continued to post videos about the discovery; in several follow-up videos, she and her husband attempted to remove the rug but found it was too large for the hole they had dug. She then found a tag that identified the tree above the rug as a Bloodgood tree. After thousands of commenters urged her to call the police, Santry got in touch with the Columbus Division of Police and told her followers on TikTok that officers would be arriving the next day.
“The entire world was telling me to have the police come,” Santry told the local NBC affiliate. “When I called the police and asked them, ‘Hey, do you want to come to my house and look at a rug,’ I felt insane.”
Santry did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment, but according to several videos she posted, at least two officers came to her home and inspected the hole and rug, but said they couldn’t use any more resources for something that might prove to be nothing. They recommended that she dig them up herself and call back if she found anything. Santry continued to post, mainly waffling because she said she didn’t want to ruin her yard for nothing. But after thousands more people commented, Santry finally caved to her audience and said she would dig the rug up to satisfy the waiting viewers. But before she could, she got a call back from Columbus Police — this time from the homicide department.
Columbus Homicide gets involved
Santry streamed their visit live on TikTok, something she later said she regretted. The dogs were released separately so they didn’t give the other confirmation bias. As each cadaver dog slowly sniffed intently around the yard, they both got near the hole and sat — alerting their handlers that they smelled something. “Absolute fucking shock,” she said in a later TikTok. “I thought that this was the end of everything today. This has taken a fucking twist. I’m absolutely freaked out.”
A spokesperson for the Columbus police confirmed to Rolling Stone in a statement that two K-9 dogs were used as part of a preliminary investigation. “CPD held the scene overnight and the officers resumed the investigation this morning,” the statement said. “There are no conclusive findings at the time of this email.”
The investigation comes to an end
Santry then refused to go live on any of the digs, saying if there was a body, she did not want to be disrespectful to either human remains or any potential family members. Commenters also noted that the tone of her videos drastically changed from ghost jokes to serious concern that her house might be involved in a potential murder. “If anything, my hope is that this is just a bloody carpet that somebody got a bloody nose or scraped a knee,” Santry said in a later video. “But if this ends up being more than that and we are able to bring closure, this wouldn’t have happened without TikTok.”
On Friday afternoon, Santry said police had dug the entire rug up. There was no body, but the rolled-up rug included pieces of rubber. “The question remains, why did both dogs hit?” Santry said in her most recent update. “I don’t know. But praise the Lord there’s no body. I can stay in my house! Everyone knows where I live, but at least it’s not haunted.”
Why Santry seems relieved that the rug didn’t contain any remains, her comments aren’t as happy. One comment might sum up the general consensus of the viewers: “I simply cannot accept this answer.”