What’s in the rug? A mystery the internet can’t look away from.

If you haven't been following the buried rug story, then it's time to climb out from under your rock and settle in.

And if you ARE already across it, there are some ~wild~ updates making the rounds that you need to know about.

But first, let's quickly recap what the whole 'what's in the rug' saga is about…

What's in the rug?

So, about a week ago, TikTokker Katie Santry sent the internet into a total frenzy with a series of viral videos, culminating in the police digging up her backyard.

It all started with a video Katie shared from her sunroom, claiming her house might be "haunted".

After waking up that morning, Katie went into the room, opened her laptop (which she had been using the night before) to find the screen smashed. Her belongings were also in disarray, with a set of stable-top shelves hanging half off the desk, and items not in their usual places.

"I worked in here last night until around 6:30, everything was fine, shut my laptop," she shared. "We close these doors at night so the dogs don't come in — no-one is in this room.

"I came in this morning to work," she says, opening the laptop. "Screen — shattered."

Okay, weird. But then… well.

Katie explained that, as she and her partner were building a fence around their property, they'd recently been digging in the backyard — and had found a rug buried deep under the ground.

Watch Katie Santry discover a rug buried in her backyard. Post continues after video.

After sharing the news on TikTok, many commenters encouraged her to contact the police. So she did, and when the two officers arrived at her house to investigate, they were just as baffled as Katie.

However, as they didn't know what exactly was buried under there, the authorities decided they couldn't expend any more resources, and it was up to Katie if she wanted to keep digging.

While the internet begged her to finish the job, the TikTokker (whose followers had jumped from around 6,000 to over a mill at this point) initially dismissed the idea, as the rug was so deep underground. But after plenty of pressure (thank you, internet!), she decided to grab a shovel and keep going.

People became obsessed with knowing what was buried with the rug. Image: TikTok/@katiesantry

That's when she received a call from the homicide squad.

"They are sending detectives and cadaver dogs," Katie told her heavily invested TikTok following.

Cadaver dogs are trained to use their sense of smell to locate human remains, even if buried underground or underwater. For this reason, they are often used in missing persons cases — and according to some info one of the police officers gave Katie, the dogs are trained in graveyards, so can definitely sniff out remains that have been somewhere for quite some time.

As Katie live-streamed the event, viewers watched in shock as both dogs independently sat beside the hole, indicating that they could smell something in the vicinity.

Dog number one sat when he smelled... something. Image: TikTok/katiesantry.

"My whole house is now caution taped off," a visibly distressed Katie said in a later update, explaining why the whole 'dog thing' was a double shock.

"The dogs run separately. The first dog came out and sat… Then the second dog comes out, sniffs around, and sat."

The cops did clarify that the dogs sitting by the hole didn't necessarily mean there was a buried body. They said it could indicate something else, like traces of blood.

Nevertheless, excavators arrived the following morning to finally dig up the rug and hopefully get some answers.

And the next day, the good people of TikTok finally found out what was in the rug.

Okay so… what was in the rug?

"You guys, they have re-covered the hole," Katie said. "This has been the most absurd, insane experience of my life.

"What did they find? No, they didn't find a body, they found a mother-effing rug with some rubber," she shared on TikTok.

Which was, let's be honest, not the answer many of us were expecting.

Excavators arrived to dig up the hole. Image: TikTok/@katiesantry

"The question remains of why did the dogs sit? I don't know. The other question remains, who broke my laptop? I don't know. I'm so confused.

"But the mystery of the effing rug is solved. And there is no body."

Katie explained during one of her videos that the police had taken the rug away for testing, and that particular move has kept TikTok… suspicious.

"This saga isn't over, something happened on that rug," one commenter wrote.

"They buried the body deeper underground and the rug was meant to be a red herring, that's where my brain went right away," another added.

"But why would someone roll a carpet up and bury it?" a third asked. And truly, that's not a bad question

As the days roll on, more theories and videos continue to appear — including different angles from the dig thanks to Katie's neighbours.

Onlookers filmed the moment the rug was extracted. Image: TikTok/@mrsmamajones

While Katie herself had been updating TikTok with the events as they happened, plenty of onlookers also gathered to film as police exhumed the rug. A video taken the moment the carpet was extracted from the hole, captures a witness claiming: "There's blood stains all over it."

This, of course, has not been confirmed. But many people on TikTok seem to be thinking along the same lines, and let's be honest, that rug in that super-short clip looks like it has SOMETHING on it. (Possibly mud from… being buried, but we digress.)

"[The authorities] wouldn't test the rug if they didn't have a reason to, and also they wouldn't tell you if they suspected anything," one comment read. 

"They definitely found something but didn't tell you," someone added, claiming that police were now keeping Katie in the dark because broadcasting updates could compromise any investigation.

"I don't believe for a second they didn't find anything in that rug," TikTok user @juneau.jupiter added. "I think she was posting too much about it so they decided not to tell her what they found, or because they took it away for forensics."

TikTok user @_mommy.bod took things one step further, sharing insights from her father, who happens to be a retired detective.

"Unless there was a crime committed, we wouldn't have taken the rug," he told her.

As for how long is required for testing, the retired detective said that — "back in his day" — analysis could take a significant amount of time.

"Unless there is an active murder case, it could take months," his daughter relayed. "If it does come back and says it's blood then [the police] are definitely going to come back. So I don't know if this is over."

What other theories are there about the rug buried in the backyard?

At this point, many internet sleuths did their own digging (no pun intended) into the house and its history.

We already knew a bit about the house next door. As Katie explained over the course of a few of her videos, on the day she first moved into her place, the woman who lived next door died. Not so strange in itself — but on the same day workers began boarding up the house next door, Katie's laptop got ~mysteriously~ smashed and her office was messed up overnight. Seemingly by a ghost??

We then found out that Katie's house was built in 1967, and only one family had lived there before her. The TikTokker even contacted the previous owners, who claimed they had no idea why the rug was buried.

Could it have been the remains of a pet that had passed, Katie asked? While the family who lived there previously did have dogs, they said they were cremated after they died. So there went that theory.

The tree in 2012 (left) appears to have been dug up and replaced by 2019 (right). Image: TikTok/@celestialsav

Then, TikTok user @celestialsav shared another theory about the house. Posting Google Satellite images from both 2012 and 2015, Sav pointed out what appeared to be a birch tree near where the rug was located in both shots. However, in a pic from 2019, it seemed to have been replaced by the Japanese Maple (which Katie dug up in her quest for answers).

"My guess is whatever is under that tree was put there between 2015 to 2019," she said, reasoning that it would be impossible to miss the rug when digging up the original tree. "That looks to be a birch tree and their roots grow between two to four feet deep."

There has also been renewed focus on the cadaver dogs' behaviour. In a reddit forum called r/tiktokgossip, one invested user wrote: "Did anyone else notice that both dogs were very interested in the porch? They were just running everywhere and came back to the porch a few times and were there for a while."

Many agreed, with one commenter saying that they would be "surprised if they don't rip up the porch".

The commentary has inflated so much that it's hard to distinguish between the valid theories and what has been blown out of proportion. But believe we will be waiting to see what happens next in this wild TikTok true crime (or… not?) story.

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