Crawl space

"The mom and dad just got in the way, they're trying to get the kid - and if he hadn't have hid in that crawl space they'd have got him too."

- Art Jeffries



A crawl space is an area of a house, usally a basement (or type of basement), where one literally cannot stand up and access can sometimes be as short as one foot. They are typically placed to offer convenient access to pipes, wiring, and other substructures or areas of a house not easily accessible otherwise. As well, crawl spaces are sometimes used as storage spaces for unused items. Though not unheard of, they are sometimes but infrequently located adjacent to or beneath a closet on an upper floor of a home, also for storage use, and is accessible through a removable panel in the wall or floor (this is more typical in older homes, where a closet doesn't entirely occupy the eave of the house, however, closet crawl spaces appear to be making a reemergence in recent years as construction techniques change for modern homes). Though almost unheard of, closet crawl spaces can sometimes offer refuge for when a person's home is broken into, though the average adult by far cannot fit into most of these spaces, and in the few documented occurances, single children have been the usual occupants. The most well-known occurance of this was on June 7, 1998, when, at 2144 West 23rd Street in Chicago's Lower West Side, then-nine year-old Simon Lynch hid in a crawl space under the eaves of the house and adjacent to his closet after Peter Burrell murdered his parents, Martin and Jenny Lynch - this is where former FBI special agent Art Jeffries found the boy hours later.