Woman Dismisses Small Crack in Ceiling of New Apartment. Weeks Later, She Hears a ‘Chilling' Sound Before It Collapses (Exclusive)

Woman Dismisses Small Crack in Ceiling of New Apartment. Weeks Later, She Hears a ‘Chilling' Sound Before It Collapses (Exclusive) https://ift.tt/Uu4oRZE

Virginia Worthington didn’t know that her ceiling crack would lead to a total collapse

Virginia Worthington (2)

Crack in the ceiling of Virginia Worthington's apartment.

NEED TO KNOW

• In the summer of 2025, Virginia Worthington moved into her dream New York City apartment with three friends
• When she moved in, she saw a crack in the ceiling, but didn't think anything of it at the time
• As the weeks went on, the crack began to grow, but by the time she finally sent an email to maintenance, it was too late

Virginia Worthington was looking forward to a summer in New York City, but what she didn’t know was that the short stay would be marked by a quintessential N.Y.C. experience: apartment trouble. 

After finishing her finals at Auburn University, Worthington, 22, moved to N.Y.C. for a summer internship. She and three of her college friends moved into a fully furnished lofted apartment with two bedrooms and one bathroom.

Worthington and one of her friends, Merrin, moved into a bedroom on the first floor, but she now tells PEOPLE they "could have never anticipated what a poor decision that would be.”

Virginia Worthington

Crack in the ceiling

“We first noticed a small crack in the ceiling, sprouting out of the overhead light, about a month after moving into the apartment," she shares. "It, very slowly, progressively grew longer and longer as the days went on. But in a way, it was like watching a toddler grow, you don't realize how big they have gotten until you look back at a past photo because the daily growth is so minute it's almost undetectable."

"It wasn't until we started realizing the ceiling was beginning to bubble that we became truly concerned,” Worthington says. 

She says the ceiling didn’t look “wet,” but rather appeared “as if something from above was weighing it down.” 

Virginia Worthington

After the ceiling fell

Eventually, they reached out to the building's management and maintenance with photos, with the email subject “URGENT!” 

On the same day the ceiling collapsed, she received a response saying maintenance would be there to fix it. So, all the residents went to work expecting it to be fixed by the time they returned. However, that couldn't have been further from reality.

"We arrived home from work to a ceiling that was beginning to crumble into our bed," Worthington shares. "All of us got straight to work - moving anything and everything we could out of the room before the inevitable fall."

"We could see our ceiling rapidly cracking and bellowing, so I decided to set up my phone and film just in case anything were to happen," she continues. "Just as we were about to begin removing the furniture from the room, Merrin and I heard a chilling grumble from the ceiling and ran out of the doorway just in time for a total collapse.”

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Worthington is thankful they were not asleep when it happened, since the two women watched a massive brick fall from the ceiling onto the bed, right where their heads would have been.

“The ceiling plaster was so thick and heavy that we were hardly able to shove it out of the way to close the door so that the fumes didn't infiltrate the whole apartment,” Worthington recalls.

Worthington shared a video of the collapse on her TikTok, which amassed 2.4 million views.

They later learned the ceiling had been an ongoing problem, and instead of fixing the ceiling, she claims the maintenance team kept putting plaster on the cracks “over and over" until "it got so thick and heavy it collapsed, not from water damage this time, but from weight.”

“We had a jarring experience trying to get help from our building and cooperation from our property manager," she claims. "The superintendent of our building was sent up to help. He told many contradicting stories about how this had happened previously, then backtracked when we pressed further."

Virginia Worthington

Worthington's room while under construction.

"A bag of jewelry had been left in the room, as we weren't able to remove everything before the collapse, and we sent him in to get it. He came back holding the bag, now filled with dirt and plaster and filth, laughing at my devastation,” Worthington recalls.

The company that rented them the apartment covered their hotel stay while working to repair the ceiling. Once it was fixed, the women were able to move back into the apartment for the remainder of their sublease — but they kept an eye on the ceiling the whole time.