A startling secret is hiding in the basement of this ordinary brick house

From the outside, it looks like any other midcentury brick house. 

The property is nestled in a patch of woodland on the shores of Lake Michigan in the United States. 

Inside, nothing out of the ordinary immediately grabs your attention. 

There are plush carpets, vaulted timber ceilings and three cozy bedrooms – everything you would expect from a well-loved family home.

It’s down in the basement that the property’s secret reveals itself. 

A vast subterranean movie theatre with soaring triple-height ceilings is hidden beneath the earth. 

Its central feature is a huge 99-year-old pipe organ with 2700 individual pipes. 

In its day, it was the biggest Wurlitzer pipe organ of its kind in the entire world. 

The underground movie palace was the brainchild of the late Fred Hermes Senior, a passionate musician who began playing the organ at eight years old. 

“The organ came into the world the same month and the same time that I did – the middle of March 1926,” he previously told local news station WISN 12.

Fred bought the instrument in the 1950s from the Michigan Theatre in Detroit. 

He built the lakeside house in 1959 with the intention of creating the perfect place to store and play his organ. 

Over the next few decades, the project gradually evolved into an underground cinema where locals and tourists could watch silent films to live music. 

The organist’s son, Fred Hermes Junior, said in an interview he and his father gathered memorabilia from over 25 movie palaces, many of which were facing demolition. 

Now the house and movie theatre are on the market for $US1 million ($1.53 million). 

The listing by RE/MAX Newport bills the home as a “one-of-a-kind property” on “3 wooded acres” of land. 

There is also a private beach that faces east, making it the perfect place to watch the sunrise over the water. 

This is the first time the house has been listed for sale in over sixty years.