Man Finds 100-year-old 'Mysterious' Black Electrical Box In His House

People often stumble upon old relics about which they have no idea. Recently, a Reddit user came across a mysterious black electrical box in a crawl space under his home which left him baffled. He took to Reddit to ask other users about the black box which he claims to be at least 100 years old. The internet quickly jumped to conclusions and offered explanations which would blow your mind.

On Reddit, there is a group called “What Is This Thing” where people often ask the help of others to identify unknown things. In this group, he explained that the strange object was a black box with wires attached which was at least five inches long which he found in his 1905-built house’s crawl space. He shared that the object “felt kinda heavy” when he tapped the side. He also explained that it was not nailed down and instead just sat on the brick ledge that separated the two halves of his crawl space. He said that it was undiscovered for decades and he had to army crawl to get to it.

He further shared that the black box has a handle and six metal circles arranged in a semi-circle on the front. He added that the numbers 0,4,6,8,10 were written on the circles. This led to the internet speculating and coming up with a wide range of theories about what the object might be. A few guessed it to be a transformer while others assumed it to be a kind of voltage regulator.

A user commented, “Looks like a model train transformer to me. I couldn’t find that exact model but a lot look close on eBay.” One more commented, “The brass indents and selector, and the heavyweight, tell me it is a transformer. I could see it being used to change speeds on a ceiling fan, as those were common in the early 1900s. The 1920s were the early years of radio, so possibly it was installed then for use with a radio receiver. A grid leak detector, perhaps. Knowing where the wires go would be helpful.” Another comment read, “Check the bolts where the wires connect for electric current before touching if you have a digital meter.”