Woman Behind the Ohio 'Buried Rug' Saga Speaks Out As Videos Go Viral

A woman in Ohio called the police over what she found buried in her back yard, after she began digging for a fence in the home she had recently bought.

Katie Santry, 34, from Columbus, Ohio, purchased the house with her husband last year, but as they dug, they came across something buried about two and a half feet deep: "A very large carpet, like a shag rug."

"When the police came they basically said they thought it was super weird, they were trying to decide if they were going to call homicide," she told Newsweek.

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The rug was too large and too deep to dig out, but the family's curiously increased when, that night, Santry's computer was shattered, and items from her desk were thrown around the room, despite the door being locked and an alarm set.

"That's really what got this whole thing started," she told Newsweek. When she shared a video to her TikTok account, @katiesantry, explaining about the rug and what happened to her computer, it exploded in popularity, and users demanded that she get to the bottom of it.

Santry, who works in sports betting, said that after she called the police, two officers duly arrived to look at the hole in the backyard, with the rug clearly visible. She shared the moment to TikTok on October 1, where it racked up almost 5 million views in less than a day.

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"They put their gloves on and they were looking around, then said before they do anything they would call their boss and see how to move forward," she told Newsweek.

A spokesperson for Columbus Police told Newsweek they were still investigating the incident.

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Santry claims she was told: "It was up to me if I wanted to dig it out, and if I find anything, aka a body, I can call them and they can come back."

But, as she told Newsweek: "The only problem is digging up this rug has become a more difficult task than we anticipated.

"It is bigger and deeper than our hand shovels are able to accomplish, so we are looking for help in digging this rug out without completely destroying our yard."

The clip brought a huge response from TikTok users, with thousands commenting, including one who insisted: "Go get a shovel and start digging girl!"

"You gotta do it," another agreed.

Some suggested the rug may cover over a dead pet belonging to the previous owners of the house, while one guessed it could be a burlap sack from the root ball of a tree planted in the yard.

While the entire journey has been wild, Santry says the "craziest part is how many people care about a rug in the back of my yard."

"I posted it as a joke, that a 'ghost' shattered my computer and I was blaming the rug being haunted. I never expected to get 100,000 followers and millions of views and an entire world invested in it. There are people from pretty much every country I have ever heard of messaging me that they are invested in this story!"

It may come as no surprise that Santry's apparent ghost stories piqued the interest of so many people. According to a survey conducted in 2021, around four in 10 Americans believe in ghosts.

In data collected by Statista, 36 percent of US respondents said they believed in ghosts. The same survey found women were more likely to believe in ghosts, while men believed more in the existence of UFOs.

TikTok users invested in the mystery will be pleased to learn that Santry is still "trying to figure out how to get [the rug] out."

"I don't want to hire someone because I don't want to make the financial investment. But my goal is definitely to get the rug out and curb everyone's curiosity."

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