If you don’t have a Narnia-themed playroom hidden behind a wardrobe, a zombie-proof shelter accessible via your kitchen island or a gun safe under your 900-pound bulletproof couch, you just aren’t living. Some of these hidden rooms, secret passageways and cleverly concealed storage spaces are probably a bit excessive, but who doesn’t wish their house contained at least one of these cool features?

Real-Life Bat Cave: Hidden Garage in San Francisco

In San Francisco, where private parking spaces are just as rare and precious as affordable housing, one house in Haight-Ashbury took the situation into their own hands in a way that wouldn’t upset the city council. The base of the Haight-Ashbury house is indistinguishable from the rest of the historical Victorian facade, but at the push of a button, it reveals a hidden four-car garage.

Narnia-Themed Playroom Hidden Behind Wardrobe

When building a new house, the parents of one particularly lucky nine-year-old girl realized there was some extra space next to her bedroom and decided to have a bit of fun with it instead of just using it as storage or sealing it up. A tiny doorway concealed in the back of a wardrobe leads to the small Narnia-themed playroom complete with a mural that stretches up onto the ceiling.

Storm Shelter Under a Kitchen Island

In some parts of the country, having a storm shelter is just as essential as having a bedroom. A company called GFS Storm Shelters came up with a brilliant way to fit one into a home – by placing it under the kitchen, with the entrance hidden under an island. While its actual usage might be a bit mundane, it’s fun to imagine it functioning as a hideaway during the zombie apocalypse or just a fun secret. Hopefully there’s another exit that leads directly outdoors in case a real tornado takes the entire house down on top of it.

Porthole to a Playroom

A circular porthole that blends right into the faux wood floor of this modern home spits you out onto a slide that curls down into a colorful playroom.

Covert Concepts: Fireplace Door & Storage

Anyone searching your home for valuables probably wouldn’t think to check the usually-decorative panels on a wooden fireplace surround, making this a pretty safe place to keep items you’d like to conceal.

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Hiding In Plain Sight 17 Secret Spaces From Safes To Pubs

You’d never guess that there’s anything amiss at ‘The Press,’ a sandwich bar in Shanghai, unless you actually witnessed the surreal sight of someone pulling a lever on a vintage Coca-Cola machine and disappearing into it. The soda machine acts as a secret entrance to ‘The Flask,’ a contemporary lounge that forms a stark contrast to the brightly-lit sandwich shop.

Collectively known as The Flash and the Press, this hidden speakeasy by Alberto Caiola may not be the only such concept in town, but with the Coke machine and unexpected visuals, it adds another layer to the experience of accessing an exclusive-feeling ‘secret’ space.

Once you open the door to that machine, the fun, bright, upbeat environment of the diner melts away and you’re enveloped by a dark, angular elegance marrying traditional speakeasy details like oversized glass liquor bottles with modern aesthetics. The bar is dimly-lit and eclectically furnished to recreate the subversive, fly-by-night feel of the originals.

Another hidden speakeasy, this one in New York, requires a bit more of visitors in order to gain access – you have to meander up a winding path through a deserted building to reach what seems like an industrial wasteland. ‘The Night Heron’ was held illegally inside a water tower on top of a vacant building in Chelsea.

Hidden passages have a long history of appearing in fictional novels and films but an even richer past in reality dating back to Egyptian tombs passages for Christians to worship in hiding from Romans. Over the years hidden passages have been used to arrest kings and evacuate popes, hide shogun warriors, facilitate guerrilla fighters, enable drug smugglers and conceal serial killers. In recent times, however, many more modest individuals have created (or discovered) secret passages in ordinary everyday households and there are even companies dedicated to designing secret doors, rooms and passages in middle-class houses. In some cases the discovery of a secret room is a wonderful dream find but it can also be a twisted nightmare.

With so many secret rooms built into houses is it any wonder that some people are surprised to discover that their very own house has one they were entirely unaware of? One couple in an ordinary and unspectacular A-frame house found out they had their very own secret room after a year of living in the structure. The room itself: a space as large as their main bedroom and complete with somewhat creepy accessories including a sleeping bag, electrical outlet and even unopened beer cans.

While for one couple the discovering of a secret room was exciting and resulted in additional usable space for another family a similar find was the beginning of a nightmarish tragedy. In their secret room they found a mysterious note from a previous owner of the house who claimed that the structure was riddled with harmful mold that had made his children very sick. As it turned out, the note was right: an inspection revealed high levels of various dangerous molds and the new owners were able to sue and settled for having the house repurchased at the price they paid. And the previous owner? Apparently he was worried about someone with a vested interest in selling the house finding the note and therefore hid it.

Hidden rooms today usually serve one of two purposes: security or fun. Sometimes a hidden door is used to disguise a safe or a ‘panic room’ where residents can hide in an emergency. The room showed above, however, is one couples’ unusually creative gift to their very excited teenage daughter. This room works as an office and play-space and goes entirely unnoticed by clueless visitors (or even building inspectors). A remote control amazingly lifts an entire staircase out of the way revealing the hidden passage.

There are a number of design and construction companies that have grown up with the public’s recently renewed fascination with secret doors, rooms and passageways. Creative Home Engineering has a number of stock products and also creates custom hidden door and room designs. Their ready-made products include classics like the fireplace that opens when you twist a candlestick and a bookcase that opens when you tilt a book. The Hidden Doors company and others have dozens of simpler and less expensive stock items to choose from as well – from cabinets to pool racks and wine shelves masking hidden doors.

Want a secret room but aren’t sure you want to pay for one? Well, there are do-it-yourself options for creating your own disguised doors to hidden spaces though the process is somewhat complicated. There are of course a lot of things that have to be considered with a secret door such as hiding visible gaps with trim and giving the doors a comfortable swing capacity. Also, load issues need to be considered if you have, for example, a swinging bookshelf in mind. Remarkably, though, this can all potentially be accomplished for just a few hundred dollars – a relatively small price to pay for such a clever interior design feature.