Could I install a hidden passageway in my home?

Hidden passageways can be anywhere in the home. What may look like an ordinary grandfather clock could slide to the side to expose a hidden passageway. A perfectly normal staircase could swing up from the bottom, like a garage door opening, to reveal a hidden hallway. And your favorite armchair may be a comfortable place to watch sitcoms, but lift up that cushion and instead of finding crumbs and loose change, you could encounter a slide to a secret room below.

Hidden passageways don't work that differently from what we've seen in the movies. Their entry is camouflaged with an everyday object. You may press on a book or twist a candlestick and voila! A bookcase turns or a fireplace rotates to reveal space you didn't know existed. Because thieves may not be looking twice at those commonplace objects, the feature can be great for safety. Say you have two wall niches with a painting in the middle. If you move a vase in one of the niches, the painting will slide upward. Below the painting is a fingerprint scanner, and if the prints match, the other niche will slide open to reveal a safe. Or perhaps you have a certain knock code, an optical sensor or a voice recognition system that activates the door to your hidden passageway -- all of these security features are available.

If you're ready to install a secret passageway, then any architect could design and install it, though you might have to endure some sober fuddy-duddies rolling their eyes. If you're seeking a creative door, then a company such as Hide A Door or the Hidden Door Company can provide custom entrances. There's even at least one company -- Creative Home Engineering in Tempe, Ariz. -- that specializes in designing and installing hidden passageways for the home.

If you were to enlist the services of Creative Home Engineering, then you're only limited by the size of your imagination and your wallet. Want a hidden passageway that would do Batman, James Bond or even Scooby-Doo proud? Then feel free to suggest it. The owner of the firm, Steve Humble, was inspired by the hidden staircases and revolving fireplaces of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" [source: Casey].

Installing a hidden passageway could cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 [source: Summers-Sparks]. A cool activation mechanism, like a clock that will open doors when the hands are moved to midnight, will cost an extra $200 [source: Casey]. Creative Home Engineering does sell a do-it-yourself kit for those who want absolutely no one to know about their secret rooms, but the firm will also send staff all over the world for installation.

For an elaborate series of hidden tunnels, it's better to do the work as part of new construction because an existing home may not be able to meet the structural demands [source: CNBC]. A retrofit may be possible, but there are plenty of small additions, such as a revolving bookcase or a unique doorway, that can be made to homes.

And what does this hard work get you, besides hours of adventure? As we mentioned, hidden passageways can be used for safety and security or something as simple as storage. You're also adding a whimsical touch to the home that may pay off when you're ready to sell. Some real estate agents say that hidden passageways can increase the value of your home, and at the very least, you'll attract more house hunters interested in viewing the property [source: Quinn].

But is there a downside to this kind of secrecy? Turn the page to read about how hidden passageways have been used throughout history.

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Throughout history, hidden passageways have been used to help people hide and escape. One of the oldest usages of a hidden passageway involved Catholic clergymen in the time of Elizabeth I. During her reign, practicing Catholicism was a crime, so wealthy families built priest holes to hide their priests. Secret rooms and passageways were also used to hide fugitive slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad. In more recent history, Anne Frank became a symbol of all Jews forced to hide during the Holocaust with the publication of her diary, which detailed life in a secret room.

Sometimes your desire to hide and escape is a bit simpler, though. Balfour Castle, a home in Scotland constructed in 1848, has a hidden passageway that the family used when unwanted visitors arrived. If family members didn't want to speak to the person at the door, the butler could honestly say that the family was not at home [source: Undiscovered Scotland].

But while these simple and sometimes heroic hidden passageway stories show us the benefits of secret passageways, it's worth mentioning that hidden passageways have also been a popular place for conducting and covering up crime. One horrifying example was brought to light in 2008, when it was revealed that an Austrian man had built an underground dungeon, accessible by a coded hidden passage, in which he imprisoned his daughter. The dungeon allowed no sunlight to reach the woman or the children that the man fathered with her [source: Pancevski].

Another hidden passageway criminal was John Darwin of Hartlepool, England. Darwin was tens of thousands of pounds in debt and figured the only way out was to fake his death in a canoeing accident so that his wife could collect the life insurance. For five years, he lived in a secret room in the family home, crawling nightly through an 18-inch wide secret passageway hidden by a wardrobe to be with his wife [source: Norfolk]. Although Darwin stayed hidden from friends and family for years and was planning to escape to Panama, in 2007 he turned himself in because he missed his sons.

Last, let's take the case of the missing books. In a monastery in Alsace, more than 1,000 antique books mysteriously disappeared out of a locked library. The nuns and the monks changed the locks but the books, many of them extremely rare, kept disappearing. Eventually the police found that there was a hidden passageway into the library, and they set up closed-circuit cameras to nab the book thief. That's how they caught Stanislas Gosse, who had found a map of the hidden way into the library. To enter, Gosse scaled the walls of the monastery and a steep staircase to reach a secret room adjacent to the library. Gosse claimed that his was a crime of passion; he just loved the books so much and felt no one was appreciating them in their current location [source: Webster].

So it's your call. Would a home hidden passageway be a way to keep your valuables safe and your children entertained, or would it be a haven for drug smuggling and crime? While you think it over, take a look at the stories and links on the next page.